Travis Mullinger
Appearances
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
Brent Lytle, I'm the middle region account manager for Iowa and Minnesota and South Dakota now.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
No, TerraClear started in 2018 by our founder, Brent Fry.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
Yeah, so I got a hold of Tanner. Tanner, I live in Aurelia, Iowa, where Tanner grew up. So I got a hold of Tanner and reached out to you guys to actually do a What's Working in Eggs segment.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
And we all grew up on farms, so we know the problem that rocks can cause with everything. But yeah, I mean, we farm very close to our Tanner's family farms.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
And I think we found, I don't know, on 160 acres, we found what, like 300? It was around 300 rocks on your farms. It wasn't a lot of time to pick them up. So what would that normally take you to pick them up?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
I think it was two and a half hours, something like that. That's my next question.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
Yep, you can get the map sent to you to a tablet, any Apple or Android tablet, and go out there, use the map yourself. I've done it several times. Yeah, I think you flew the field and had the map back to me in a day or two. It took about three days to turn the map, and then you have that map on your cell phone. I think you drove around and found a few of them.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
I know Tanner actually used the map on their farm. They actually have a rock picker. Yep, they have a rock picker, so they use that option.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
We have an example here at the show where we had a farmer in northwest Minnesota who mapped their field. There were 1,600 rocks in a 600-acre field. They went out and picked it the old-fashioned way just to kind of outsmart the technology, right? I mean, that's what we all want to do. We've got to see it work. So we went back and remapped the field after they picked it their way.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
There was still almost 1,100 rocks in the field. They missed 65% of the rocks. And part of that is just being able to see from the drone, you're seeing from 121 feet above the ground, and you can see straight down versus looking for them.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
And it's funny, you can tell they started from the south end of the field, because it's a better job in the south end, and by the time they got to the north end, it's a lot less of a job.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
Yep. So instead of two or three days to get the map returned to the farmer, we're hoping for a few hours.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
Yeah, a lot of farms have big skid loaders already, so they can get into it for a not high additional cost to them.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
Is it one plot fee? What is it? So the mapping service starts out around $4 per acre. Okay. We have some early season discounts going on that get you down under $4 an acre and some acreage discounts going on.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
The average cost, I can't remember what your farms were for a quoted cost for us to come pick them up, but the average cost for us to come pick up a field is somewhere between $8 and $20 average per acre. And that includes the cost of map.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
And if you have a rock ingestion on a combine that starts at around $30,000.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
We actually pile them where you tell us to pile them. There's a function in the app where you can actually mark a spot for us to pile them. Some of our service providers are also working with the farmers they're picking rocks for and taking them with them. Some of our service providers are landscapers, so they have a use for them.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
If we could sell them. That offsets the cost of the service.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
And you don't have to have tracks. It's just nice for the operator in the field. Yeah, it's a lot smoother in the field.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Cutting-Edge Ag Tech and Strong Partnership Insights
I have also gone with Tanner's slurping rocks. That one has stuck pretty well as well. Yeeting, I don't know, but I do like eating rocks.