Steve Henry
Appearances
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
I will say the pictures that you and Joe Bush sent me was better than the instructions that came with it.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
So you just need to put those pictures in.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
I would say it is very easy. The main problems I have is like, okay, where do I – you know, zip tie the module too, just so it's not going to get hot or whatever. Where do I get good clean power? Yeah. And then just, it's two plugs, right? Yeah. It's just two plugs.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Yeah, two plugs on mine, on my combine. Two plugs, then you plug the ones you unplugged back into a little pigtail and you're good to go. It's real easy to take off if you want.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Big shout out to Tech Hub Live for having us as well. That's a great event. We went the last day. For that panel, next year, we're going to go. That was our mistake. For the whole thing. It's in our backyard. Yep. We need to plan it out. It's everything on the cutting edge in technology for ag. I got asked by several people, hey, was that worth it? Because it does cost to go.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And that's literally what it is.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Yep. Yep. That's pretty good. So two more things, cost and is there a warranty on it?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And it's a warranty on the module.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Not on the tractor that it's going on.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And I said, yeah, it probably is. And I wish we would have went the whole time.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
I imagine you've got probably a dealership locator on the website. No, we do not. Really?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
See, our co-host Dave got one for his six series John Deere. He did. He actually was probably that guy until he started farming. And now he's trying to pull a 24-foot field finisher. And we thought, maybe you should only have a 16-foot. And he didn't have a problem with it at all. So it did well.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
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Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Sorry, we weren't planning on doing this. This is an after-hours intro to a very professional show.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Hi, I'm Corey Hillibeau. I'm also a host of the Farm for Profit podcast, so I don't know how I got sat next to you, Tanner, because I get to see you way too much. But I farm in northern Polk and southern Story County and southern Boone County in Iowa, about 2,500 acres, row crop operation. And we also have wean-to-finish hogs as well. And, yeah, I'm excited to be here.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Yeah, Scott Henry, Longview Farms, and we're a multigenerational family farm, farming in central Iowa as well, Story County, Polk and Boone, in addition to some livestock operations in Iowa and Nebraska. So corn, soybeans, seed corn, as well as pigs and cattle.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Yeah, for us, Technology is a path towards better insights on our farm with the hope that that will drive better decision making and for profit, to your point there, Tanner. But we've truly tried to adopt and be at the cutting edge as much as we can, especially as we start dealing more and more with multiple enterprises and being in Nebraska as well, having the ability to monitor things remotely
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
to track things accurately, and then ultimately to see incremental change occur because of those decisions. We hope to be better farmers and better stewards by doing so.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Our guard dog was all over us.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Yeah. So we've, You could go back all the way to the first yield monitor in the cab and do that, but one of the most impactful times for us is we got on a kick to try and figure out how to do aquaponics or aeroponics and trying to say, Oh, can we get closer to the consumer, try and drive more revenue?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And so we, we piloted this project where we were raising microgreens and I watched this system that the company was using literally grab data. They had to change it to every hour because they were running out of storage when they were collecting it every minute and it was updating their algorithm in order to then increase production,
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
influence taste and the flavor piece of it, manage all of the inputs going into it. And they were literally capturing data points every hour for these. And when you think about what we've done traditionally in our industries, you get 40 shots at this in the average farmer life cycle, and you make a change on a crop year basis.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And so to make 40 large scale changes or have 40 chances at it compared to some of the data that this group was collecting every hour really changed our mindset of, are we going to embrace the technology and data that comes not from an agronomist in all cases, but instead from a computer or a report that spit out that didn't even have a human touch to it?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And how much trust do we want to put into that? And so for us, that was a really big philosophical change that's helped us stay more open to to the changes that are coming or the products and services that you all are trying to develop and being willing to open the farm gate, so to speak, because I know that that is oftentimes one of your biggest hurdles to getting off the ground.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
That's how big we're getting. That's right. She's a personal chef. Took a private flight the other day. We've got a personal chef. Yeah. Manages all the power on the farm, on our workhorses. That's right.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Doesn't affect me at all. Nope. I don't own the pigs.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
I mean, everyone can talk about the technology of like GPS and steering. That's been around for quite a while now. I think some of the biggest tech that really helps our farm helps take the emotion out of the decisions. Farming is so in motion. Markets and what fertilizer to put on. And there's a lot of different companies that are trying to get your dollar.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And when you can actually sit there and go, yeah, it's a clear decision that it should be this. So we utilize some companies that use technology for us to make sure that we're putting on the right fungicide, the right fertilizer mix, the right seed. And that really helps. We've even got into artificial intelligence into grain marketing.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Chicago Board of Trade trades with computers, 99% of it pretty much. And now we're trying to combat that with AI. So I think that's what sets some of the stuff we do apart.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
What about you, Scott? I think what's unique for us is somewhat similar. It's more around the financial tools and taking the insights or data from the CAB. and converting that into what decisions are we making in the management and planning process.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And so whether it be data tools and software that helps inform our grain marketing decisions, like you mentioned, Corey, or looking at for us, again, trying to figure out how can we manage our costs and the input decisions in light of low CI grain and in light of additional potential revenue opportunities
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And so, again, I think that the equipment manufacturers have done a great job of creating a base load for us to be able to grab data from. But then where we truly are trying to find that next set of insights or what to be somewhat unique is to then translate that. into better financial decision making.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
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Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
I don't think he answered your question, though. I think at the end of the day, when you think about, like, you guys are all trying to serve farmers in the ag community, right? You're building technology, you're I don't know if I shouldn't swear, but don't be afraid to make a critical decision as to is this a farm that we can get on with a chance to actually succeed.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
As a farmer, as a new adopter of what you're trying to introduce to us, if I tell you that I'm interested in technology or I'm wanting to be on the cutting edge of it, but in reality I'm not actually going to let the data change what I'm doing, then you're not, you're wasting your time and your money.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And I think that a lot of farmers, they like to say that, but at the end of the day, when the solutions provider spits out a number or a product or a practice that goes against 40 years or three generations of ingrained traditional thinking, right? I call it the old McDonald farm. You had a much nicer way to describe it as a 1950s, but you know, I think that there needs to be a level of calling.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
You can't call your customers out, right? But at the same time, you can choose who you want to bring an innovation to to test and making sure that you truly understand when they say they're objective and when they say that they're going to let data drive decisions, well, what if that means you need to change the relationship with the guy that sells you seed? Are you willing to do that?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
I love Rick Hallbaker. He sells me great John Deere equipment. John Deere has been a foundational element to our business. But does that mean that every single piece of equipment on my farm is green? No. And so I think that I do. I think that you have to be willing to help poke and prod and encourage some farmers that when they are testing your products, are you actually willing to switch?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Because if not, we need to keep moving on and allocate resources elsewhere.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
We've interviewed a lot of people that have adopted that. And the CI score thing is very interesting because it's not for sure yet, right? So it's in the law.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
So after getting that out of the way. Yeah. Doing some of these regenerative practices, we need a lot of tools that we don't have on our current farm, right? We need a way to put these cover crops in. We need ways to split our nitrogen applications up and our fertilizer applications up. We need to be able to variable rate, and we need to know and gather all that.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And that's just everything in ag, from soil sampling to drones. And we've taken a lot of drone people in for... doing all of that, spreading the cover crop seed, going and flying on nitrogen. Especially this year, we've had so much rain here in central Iowa. A lot of our nitrogen has been washed away. I wanted to comment on Scott's deal a little bit earlier.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
If we did the same thing as farmers that our grandpa did or our great grandpa, I mean, we'd still be farming with horses and plows. And guess what? We're going to get swallowed up. That's just not going to be able to happen. So we as farmers need to be able to adopt this technology. We can be cautiously optimistic.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
We don't have to jump in whole hog, but I would say we've talked to a lot of people on the podcast about take 20 acres and try it. Put cover crop in. Do the whole gamut just so you can tell yourself. One thing I've learned from talking to everyone, there is not one right way or one whole wrong way to farm. There are so many ways to get to the same outcome, but if we can do it more efficiently...
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
I really like the sprayer technology that's coming out, the sea and spray type stuff. I have not adopted it on our farm yet. I do think that could be... Look, we're in a very tight margin. We are producing commodities. So anything that can save us money on an input, yes, technology is expensive.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
But if you have the tools to implement that and actually know your numbers, if you know your numbers, use things like Harvest Profit and things like that, know your numbers, go for it.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Yeah. So it'll only seize the weed, sprays it. And then you could put a residual product. You could have a whole separate tank that's spraying a residual product, you know, over the whole acre. And then you could save, I mean, some of these costs are getting a 50, 60, $70 an acre. You know, if you can cut that in half, that helps out a lot.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
One technology I'm really excited about that really probably doesn't, I can't tie it back to paying any money, but TerraClear, they have a drone that goes up and maps all your rocks. We have a lot of rocks from the glaciers that come down and gives you the most efficient path to go pick them up. It takes like a eight hour job and takes it down into a one and a half hour job.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
So I guess that would be the money saving. That, if you want to run one through the combine and have to spend $30,000 on it, it's not very good. What about you, Scott?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
You know, I think that in general, the answer is anything that helps us do more with less, but that's too vague. The The biggest thing I think that we're excited about is continuing to look at autonomy in the sense of how can it truly translate to doing more with less people. It's harder and harder to replace labor. And as much as I love our H2A guys,
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
it'd be a lot easier just not to deal with the government anymore than I already do. And so I think that there's efficiencies that can be gained through the autonomous technologies that are coming. And I also think that those innovations are being seen and felt and adopted by existing people already on our farm. And so it's not just me that's trying to figure it out.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
It's kind of the breadth of the industry. I think there's a lot of technologies, frankly, that really get me excited. I think at the end of the day, though, what's going to be most impactful will be what can help us manage the labor problem that we're having or what's going to unlock additional revenue for the crops that we have.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Do you have an autonomy right now?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
So we've just beta test versions of different things, whether it be the John Deere or some of the other equipment folks that we're using.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Yeah, I think the first and foremost starts with, are you talking to the right person? I mean, are you talking to the decision maker? You know, I went, I went to school with a lot of guys that sell a lot of stuff now. And for the first five years back farming, I wasn't the decision maker ultimately, right? And so, you know, it's kind of flipped now.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
So what does the Steinbauer module do and how is it safe compared to other ways on the market that people are trying to get more power?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
We have non-family members running every aspect of our business. So all of our managers at every location is a non-family member. And so are you going to have the most success telling me how great your new DeKalb number is? Like, well, that's awesome, you know, but talk to Wes. And so just identifying the right person to start building that relationship with is a big component of it.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
You can obviously utilize, you know, key stakeholders to drive influence on that. But I know for a fact that, you know, for a period of time when my brother was the purchaser for us. He didn't really care for me being treated as Steve Henry's son. I'm managing the $5 million budget for our farm this year. And so give me the respect that I deserve there.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And so I think that's the biggest thing is, again, just identifying that you're actually making the right finding the right door into what you're trying to get done.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
I was going to echo what Brad said about definitely finding the early adopters, which we are on our farm. We do highly value the technology. We highly value being able to see it before it comes out because we like to give that feedback. Like, hey, we like this. We don't like this. So having that relationship. Ag is a relationship business. Hardly ever is it someone that
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
I don't know that comes and asks me to do something. It's usually someone that already has a relationship. So I would say establish that relationship with them would be the best. And that's how I work. Maybe some people, other people would work differently.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Correct. Yeah, I would say that's true. And on the social media side, there's probably different people for different products, right? This person might promote a GPS technology, and this person might promote lowering your CI technology a lot better. So you've got to know your avenues there. Do your research, and talk to someone that's on it. If you're not an expert in that game... Talk to Tanner.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
He knows. Talk to Rachel. She knows.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
if you have solutions that can help us continue to find ways to better improve what we do and connect with the consumer or whatever the revenue, the premium that we're trying to collect. And so to me, I think that's where we focus so much on trying to find ways to reduce costs, which is great. That's part of things we can actually control.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
But ultimately, there still seems to be this disconnect between what we produce and what we do versus what the consumer or the end user ultimately thinks.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And so if you can deliver solutions that help, again, create alignment through the process, I think that's why you're seeing the farming community rally around, whether it be carbon intensity scores or certain practices and products that help us reduce reliance upon
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
synthetics that are out there it's again it's because it's a story that helps our bottom line it helps mother nature and it makes the consumer feel good and and so that again is an area of where it's it's maybe a different answer to your question tanner but philosophically we're trying to really focus our operation is if we can simplify things on the farm. And so that's first and foremost.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And so if you can bring us a solution that allows us to simplify and optimize and then be aligned, ultimately those are kind of the buckets that we've really tried to focus on.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
I think there's a lot of great technology, but there's a lot that gets really into the weeds as far as user experience. It's hard to run
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
lot of new stuff because it hasn't been polished it might be new but I think a lot of people need to look at like what John Deere has done to their whole John Deere ops system they've made everything interconnected you don't you can even connect to your different color tractors and know exactly between different operators you can know this operator seems to use two more gallons of fuel per hour why you know what's going on and maybe that's a coaching opportunity so I just think that user experience and ease
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
It's got to be there because this stuff's expensive. And if we get too much, I mean, we're not going to be making money. We're here to farm for profit, right? So make sure it's worth it and make sure it's easy to use.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Going back to what I said earlier, part of what our goal the last several years has been to simplify things. So we kicked everybody off the farm that didn't integrate in with John Deere MyOps. It's a harsh reality that exists, and I don't need to put John Deere and Lena Kahn's site. Sorry, Adam.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
But the element for what we're trying to do is the people that are available to run the equipment and the operators that we have in there, we're asking them to do a lot. We're entrusting them with a lot of dollars. And so the less distractions and the less processes that they have to do in the cab in the field matters to us. And so we've tried to simplify their life.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And so we had five monitors in a cab five years ago when I was, when I was planting and we're back down to one. And, Are we leaving some juice in the orange? Probably, but what we found is that last 5%, oftentimes that squeeze isn't worth the juice. And so we've made a decision on our farm to outsource that to John Deere and let those innovations come to us.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And I use John Deere as an example because that's the main power unit provider to our farm. If we were red, we would have the same philosophy. And so now we've actually kind of gone the opposite way. And what we're finding is, one, they do a pretty good job. And if you can bolt in and flow through that, there is enough
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
APIs or whatever that allow us to still get those insights through some of the different platforms that are desktop-based back in the office ultimately. That's been a decision we made several years ago now.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Yeah, just going down to our combine, just putting a different set of stairs on it a couple years ago. It's literally stairs, not a ladder. He's had a lot of surgeries, which pretty low tech, right? It's just steel and welding and paint. But to me, that was a technology that was a $2,000 investment that allowed him to keep going.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And he's a great operator, just doesn't have a lot of physical work left in him. And then on the spraying side of things, it's really easy to fill our sprayers now with five, six different products, nutritional products, all that kind of stuff. When that used to take forever, up and down off the trailer, big bags of stuff. And we've got spray systems that we can fill in four minutes and
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Oh, yeah. The claw. The rock box in the front has a hydraulic arm that will pick up rocks. I have a vendetta against rocks, apparently. But they do. They cause a lot of damage, and there's a lot of them out there.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
You used to go right on the front of the 40-20 with your grandpa and take a couple kids, and you'd go out after you planted and run up and down every dang pass with the planter and try to pick up rocks. No, we don't have to do that anymore.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
By the time the show airs, it's probably less. I haven't been able to have the funds to go on and look.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
I think that you can't forget that these are commodities that we all grow, especially here in Iowa, right? And so we all took Econ 101 back in school, and how much money should we make raising a commodity, right? Yeah. Zero dollars. It's supply and demand. It's very simple economics.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And so the only way that you're going to make more than that is to do something specialized or to do something better than the other guy, right? And so in my mind, the people that are going to be farming in 10 years are going to be those that took advantage of the technologies that allowed them to accomplish that. And so whether it involves
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Yeah, I struggle with the expert part of that. I was a guest on the stage.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
capturing data and insights in order to create a premium for the commodities that we're growing, or it could be a new crop, right? Who knows? You look at covercress and some of these other potential crops that we could overwinter in Iowa as a cover crop, or similar to like the corn, wheat, bean double crop rotation in the south.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And so I think that you're going to see technologies that allow that to happen, and then you're also going to see the technologies on the other side that allow the operators or the operations to do that with much more autonomy. And the concern I have is that what we'll save in labor, are we gonna give back in tech fees or the cost of the equipment?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And is there actual efficiency gained on the cost side? Maybe there is operationally, but I don't, I sound like a pessimist, I apologize, but I, I don't see a future where we slow down the pace of consolidation in row crop agriculture. I do think that there will be opportunities to market and monetize different paths in that.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
But ultimately, again, looking at the audience in the room today, what you guys are trying to do, if you're building something to support a farm 10 years from now, I just think we've got to look and accept the reality of the industry that we're in and where we're going to be is probably less of us and the ones that are here are larger. And so how can you be relevant to them?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
So in simple terms, you're just extending that spray of fuel just a little bit longer, the duration of it.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Good luck with your answer, Corey.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And if you're going to stay small, you're going to have to get specialized. Right. You're going to have to get a real niche deal there. But I think diversification, I think autonomy is coming. One thing, and I don't think it has much to do with tech, but we interviewed a farm yesterday from Canada. They farm 42,000 acres, a lot of acres.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And they said something that I didn't think they would say, and they said they are willing to hire. They are actually looking at acres as units, and they want to hire rock stars is what they said. I think most farmers have pushed back on the consolidation or wanting to get bigger. Because they don't want to hire. Most, most don't want to be, they want to sit in the tractor and farm.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
They don't want to sit back and, and I think Longview has, has gone against that and they've done really well at hiring and, and, and expanding that way. Like you said, you're not the one in the tractor anymore and, uh, I think it might come in the form of a different labor pool. You might be hiring more techie people to run your swarms of autonomous tractors, small autonomous tractors.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
So I think we're going to have to get used to it as farmers if we want to stay relevant. So maybe it's a technology in the HR department or managing people.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And you're still utilizing the system, all the safety features that came on the stock system. You're not messing with any of that stuff. You're not raising fuel rail pressure.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
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Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
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Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
WIC's filters keep your engines working as hard as you do.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
To me, the fuel savings isn't how I thought it was going to come, or maybe I just wasn't thinking about it good enough, but we put it on our S780 last year, and we just were not getting the capacity that we needed out of it. We were only getting 3,500, 3,700 bushel an hour, and we put that thing on. My fuel consumption went up from 24, 25 gallons an hour to 27 or 28 gallons per hour, but my
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
productivity went up to 4,500 bushels an hour in corn. And that was getting like five to seven more acres or something like that an hour. So yes, it was saving me fuel, just not by the hour.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
Right. Does it affect all of the DEF and emissions or sensors with that at all?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
I know a neighbor bought a combine, didn't know it was deleted, went to take it to the local dealership. They wouldn't touch it. They ended up paying to bring it back to stock, and that was a big video.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Tech-Driven Agriculture: Insights from a Panel of Farmers
And is it sold through dealership networks, direct?