Michael Porter
Appearances
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
So we're excited to launch our MT series or our minimum till ripper, as well as our new coulter chisel or CC series. So exciting new products for John Deere. Obviously, we started in the tillage and the plow back in the original John Deere. And so excited to keep carrying on that legacy with new tillage products.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
A couple, yeah, yeah, a couple, yeah. So instead of one horse, we have 830, so just a little different.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
Yeah, absolutely. So TruSet is that kind of technology you're talking about. And TruSet Active, we're kind of taking the next step, is... where dealers can do prescription, customers can do prescriptions, I mean, set it to the machine, and then that machine is going to hold whatever depth they want.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
And not only just, you know, guesstimating, if you will, but we actually have sensors on board that are measuring the distance between the bar and the ground at all times, so it knows that if a customer says, I really want that MT series to do exactly 13 inches, it's going to hold 13 inches. And if soil gets really soft and it starts to sink, it'll raise it out of the ground.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
Or if something like mud builds up on the tires and it starts to raise out of the ground, it'll lower it down to maintain whatever depth that is.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
Yeah, we're on a stair step from kind of a building blocks, if you will, over the last couple of years. I mean, TruSet's a great example. Things like AutoTrac turn automation and AutoPath are great technologies that our customers are embracing. And this tool's kind of taken the next step. So it's autonomy ready.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
So what that means is it has all the harnesses and lighting packages and an implement mask for Starfire to enable autonomy when paired with autonomous tractor. And so We're just kind of taking that next step and making it even easier for our customers to adopt it when they're ready. If they're not ready, these are still things that provide a ton of value for those customers.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
But then if they decide that I really need an autonomous tractor to help me get through my fall tillage or whatever it may be, it's as simple as hooking it up to their autonomous tractor and away they go.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
Yep. Tractors don't go tractoring. That's the same thing we always say there. We call it our tech stack, and we're – We're slowly, you know, customers are adopting this technology because they realize it makes a huge impact to their business, makes it easier, makes them more efficient, especially with all the things with labor shortages and teaching, getting everyone up to speed on this tech.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
Yeah, absolutely. Like you said, starting with guidance. And now we don't really want or need the tractor to be on that guidance line. We care about where that implement is, right? Planter, tillage. And so we're taking it to the next step is how can we, you know, some of that low-hanging fruit, to your point, maybe we've addressed those, right, with auto track and all that.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
Now it's how exact can we get some of these things. Yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
Yeah, yeah. Check one. Check one.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
That's exciting.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
I think one of the things that he's, you know, that is absolutely a tool for tillage and our autonomous tillage moving forward. I think we're going to see more customers that are going to embrace that technology because with our autonomous tillage and all this new tech, we're going to need those boundaries. And the best way to get that done is with our new Gaylor lineup.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
So working on it, working on it. I think there's a lot of opportunity in the future, you know, especially with autonomous tractor. I think customers have got to figure out ways to get those gators around with them as they're moving them around. So I think we've got some opportunities to collaborate.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
Yeah, no, great question. So, you know, we have a wide range. So to hopefully answer your future question, we have the right toolage tool and the right width for whatever tractor you have. So we have lots of options. With these new tools specifically, our MT series, we start as narrow, if you want to call that, as our MT5 or a five shank, 30-inch wide tool. Okay.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
We go all the way up to the biggest, which is our MT11. And basically for every shank that we're talking about on that number, 50 to 60 horsepower is roughly the right number depending on soil conditions and how deep you're going to go. So, again, if you have a... A five shank tool, a 250 horsepower tractor would be about right to be able to pull that.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
And then all the way up to our MT-11, we'll start talking about those high 500s to pull some of those wider ones.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
Yeah, absolutely. So this MT series for inline ripper, one of the main key takeaways that we heard from customers is we want to make sure that this tool holds up. We're not having to stop in the middle of the year to replace wear parts. We want this to go longer. So that tool is actually twice the lifespan on our wear shins that our previous inline rippers had.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
So if a customer was getting two seasons out of the last one before they're replacing versions, this one's going to go four. But also with that is, again, the adoption of some of the technology like TruSet. So again, that customer, maybe with a previous inline ripper, they weren't exactly sure how deep they were always going. Maybe they were varying that as they go through the field.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
With this, they're going to be confident that they're holding whatever, 12, 13 inches deep at all times.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
And, again, that makes a consistent tillage pass, which means they're going to have consistent yield across that field, allow water to permeate where it needs to go.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
Yeah. So we can talk, I guess, on the tractor side. Obviously you talked about balancing the machine, making sure we have those weight splits right, because without the proper weight splits, you're being a lot really inefficient, right? And so with the new high horsepower, for example, you'll notice we move things like the fuel tank into the middle of the tractor versus the back, right?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
So previously, as you filled that tank up, you had more weight on the back. As you got lower on fuel, more of that weight shifted to the front. Throughout the whole day, your weight splits were changing and traction and some of that was changing and you were losing efficiency.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
So we're thinking about those things when we're balancing these tractors and trying to move the fuel tank to the middle, keep them as perfectly weighted up as we need to. And then we're also looking at what application are we doing and what do we need for ballast? So we're always looking at that.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
On the tillage side, I'd say where we're taking this is, okay, what's my outcome that I'm looking for and how deep do I have to go? And if I don't, I can go up a little bit higher, make sure that TruSet's maintaining that depth, and I'll be able to use less fuel use less energy and go faster across that field and get more done.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
So they're really working hand in hand to get more done and being as efficient as possible.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
Yeah, so I got two different points we'll start with. If we talk about the tractor and what this new tractor can do, 100 more acres per day. I don't think there's any customer out there who's going to say, I wouldn't want to get 100 more acres of tillage done in a day. And that's what that enabled with the same tillage tools compared to our 640, but allowed them to go wider and faster.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
If we start talking about our new CC series, we're saying, what about 50 more acres per day? And that's what that's going to bring over our traditional 2730, getting primary tillage done. We're able to go 7 inches at 7 miles an hour, up to 33 feet wide.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
That's a lot of tillage done in one day.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
And so for those customers who are racing against Mother Nature, right, freezing in the fall or maybe the planter in the spring, getting 50 to 100 more acres a day done, that's a big deal. That's making sure that that planter is not stopped and that they're getting it all in before Mother Nature says they can't. Got it.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
You want to start or you want me to? You go first. Yeah, so I think some of the stuff we're showing at Farm Progress, we've talked a lot about autonomy, right? So our customers have gotten to see now our autonomous tillage solution, but we've been pretty vocal on the fact that we're going to have an entirely autonomous corn and soy production system by 2030. 2030, yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
So when you look at your watch right now and you say that's not that far away, we have a lot of really cool things in the pipeline around autonomy and making things easier and adding efficiency to the farms over the next five to six years. That's going to happen fast.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
I'd say it's both. I mean, it's what does customer have instead of having to go buy all this new equipment, we're really working on making autonomy work on the equipment they already have today. So we're adding things with our performance or our precision upgrades group to add this to older technology. So instead of them having to go buy a lot of new equipment or different equipment,
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
we're going to make it work on the things they already have on their farm. And so for some customers, maybe that is bigger for other customers. Maybe it fits for them where they have a lot of smaller fields and they go smaller and more of them, whatever, whatever works for those customers. We're not picky. We just want to make sure that they have the right product for them.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
I think on my side, very similar. We listen to customers. Customer focus groups are a huge part of our development in all of these. And we also do things like how can we reduce the amount of time, you know, kind of a test or a trial. How do we reduce the amount of time it takes from a customer when they pull into the field to get that tillage tool operating and running?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
And so a lot of that is pre-planning some of this work. You know, operations center, you talked about it, sending that stuff wirelessly, having things where we, you know, auto field detection. They pull in the field. imports all those guidance lines and boundaries. And with something like prescription tiller, it's going to import exactly what depth we want.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
All that customer really has to do is hit the auto track resume button and they're going to get in that field.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
And I think, you know, things like AutoPath, if you've heard that, you were guidance path planning. It makes a lot of this a lot easier for our customers. But at the end of the day, it's the customers telling us, when they get to the field, get me working as fast as possible. And so every day we have engineers and people that are working on how do we make that happen.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
Yeah. Right. Yeah. No, that's a good question. I think for me, I think the first part of it goes into you got to love what you do. So there's a lot of days where, you know, I enjoy what I do, which makes it a lot easier. So that's the first part. But then I think he's right. Spending time with family is probably the biggest one.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
I'm lucky to have a wife who deals with me and all my Travel and woes and a dog and but more importantly a kid on the way So it's definitely changed.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
Yeah changed my opinions on some of that But I work on spending time as much as we can and then when we are not working is Shut the phone off on the weekends and enjoy the time you have and not worrying about what the next week's gonna bring Yeah, we've intentionally not used the word balance. Yeah Balance is it's skewed maybe sometimes but I'd say the good news too is a
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
I bleed green, so for me, I love getting up and getting to talk to customers and dealers and all that. So it makes it a lot easier than what probably a lot of people have to deal with in their work. So that makes it a lot easier too. Very good.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Innovative Grain Drying Solutions and Big Equipment Advancements
Yeah. So we have a lot of... You know, obviously the 830 is still pretty exciting. A lot of customers haven't got to see it. So getting to come here, see it in person, not only have a lot, but also going to go see it at the field demos has been a pretty exciting opportunity. But since then, we've also here at Farm Progress, we're actually launching two new tillage products.