Speaker 1: With Technology textoff from hoom. Hey everyone, welcome to Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am Jonathan Strickland, and today joining me in the
Speaker 1: studio is Scott Benjamin, host of Car Stuff. Hello again,
Speaker 1: how are you Scott great? Thank you again for asking
Speaker 1: me to kind of guest spot on your show, if
Speaker 1: I appreciate you coming on. We had some requests from
Speaker 1: our audience to cover a topic that I haven't really
Speaker 1: touched on in the past, is one about how technology
Speaker 1: is shaping agriculture, and uh, it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that honestly, you know, I was amazed at how technology
Speaker 1: is rapidly changing the face of agriculture because in my mind,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that's been kind of set
Speaker 1: technologically speaking for decades, and it just shows how how
Speaker 1: ignorant I was of the whole thing. I had just
Speaker 1: a tiny bit of insight on this from our listener
Speaker 1: and our listening audience. UM. Back in two thousand ten,
Speaker 1: I think we did an episode about some of the
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that was happening back then. But
Speaker 1: even since two thousand and ten, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of advances. But we have a few listeners in our
Speaker 1: audience that, um, you know, their their ranch hands or
Speaker 1: work on the farm, and they listen to the podcast
Speaker 1: as they you know, or killing the fields or whatever
Speaker 1: they're doing tending to the herd. And um, they said,
Speaker 1: you know what would be really interesting I don't think
Speaker 1: a lot of people know about this is just how
Speaker 1: advanced tractors are becoming, Just how advanced, um, you know,
Speaker 1: barnes themselves are becoming. It's not just that just the machinery.
Speaker 1: It's also you know, everything that goes around around growing
Speaker 1: or or um harvesting and like maximum potential yields. All
Speaker 1: that has to do with with modern technology more or
Speaker 1: less now, I guess, um, it's all becoming pushed far
Speaker 1: more into the future than you would ever think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and it's interesting because we're at a time where
Speaker 1: we're seeing a decreasingly small percentage of the population being
Speaker 1: dedicated to the roles of ranching and farming. Right if
Speaker 1: you look at United States history, this is particularly true
Speaker 1: in the U S, but you can see it in
Speaker 1: other places as well. If you look at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, so around nineteen hundred or so,
Speaker 1: about half of the population of the United States were farmers,
Speaker 1: and then you get to and before that was even
Speaker 1: larger numbers um percentage wise. You know, obviously the population
Speaker 1: itself was smaller, but percentage wise it was. There were
Speaker 1: many more farmers. And what happened was this little thing
Speaker 1: called the Industrial Revolution. You've probably heard that term, Scott, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I figured you might. So the Industrial revolution actually meant
Speaker 1: the mechanization of lots of different industries, including agriculture. And
Speaker 1: so around nineteen hundred, your chief means of operating the
Speaker 1: various machine in agriculture were it was horsepower, literal horsepower,
Speaker 1: actually using horses. Yeah, it wasn't until the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties the tractors really started to get traction in agriculture.
Speaker 1: And then, oh boy, I'm gonna have to leave. I know,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's I've lost so many co hosts this way. Actually,
Speaker 1: to be fair, Chris, Chris was way worse about puns
Speaker 1: than I was. He was king. Yeah, but at any rate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so you get to the nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: those numbers start increasing. But as the mechanization increases, the
Speaker 1: number or the percentage of population that needs to be
Speaker 1: farmers or ranchers decreased because you didn't need that much labor, right,
Speaker 1: you were able to offload the labor to to mechanization
Speaker 1: to some extent. Sure, Well, how many times have we
Speaker 1: heard in the path, I mean, in the past decade
Speaker 1: even that very soon the world population is going to
Speaker 1: outpace the capability that we have to produce food for
Speaker 1: that population. And it's always, I mean, I've I've heard
Speaker 1: this for a long long time. It's not just ten years,
Speaker 1: maybe twenty thirty years or even even longer than that.
Speaker 1: Probably I just haven't been privy to that information. But
Speaker 1: it always seems like they say the world's population will
Speaker 1: exceed the world's capacity to produce food by the year X,
Speaker 1: and the year X is always about twenty years out,
Speaker 1: ten or twenty years out, and and it always seems
Speaker 1: like we always overcome then some way. So and then
Speaker 1: this is I found this interesting. I found an article
Speaker 1: um in the Guardian from Feen that was talking about
Speaker 1: developing nations and uh some innovations, some revolutionary farming innovations,
Speaker 1: and they said that in the last fifty years agricultural
Speaker 1: production has actually tripled in the last fifty years. That's amazing. Well,
Speaker 1: the thing is you're saying that the number of farmers
Speaker 1: has gone down, the number the amount of production has
Speaker 1: tripled in the last fifty years. So they're becoming more efficient.
Speaker 1: And every year that's a challenge for them to become
Speaker 1: more and more efficient with less and less people, less
Speaker 1: and less property to do so because uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the the farmland is at a premium right now in
Speaker 1: a lot of countries, are a lot of places that
Speaker 1: um um, they're they're severe government restrictions on the amount
Speaker 1: of space that you're allowed to use for a farm.
Speaker 1: They're they're building structures, you know, so that they're building
Speaker 1: up instead of out. Um, And that's a way to
Speaker 1: increase efficiency and and it really productivity and yields from
Speaker 1: their crops no matter what it is, it's tomatoes, cucumbers,
Speaker 1: whatever it happens to be. Uh, some of these things
Speaker 1: that they're even finding that building um, you know, here's
Speaker 1: the difference, Like instead of building a six ft roof
Speaker 1: or an eight foot roof on a greenhouse, if they
Speaker 1: put a twelve foot roof on a greenhouse, they can
Speaker 1: double production. And I think it was tomatoes and cucumbers.
Speaker 1: That's pretty incredible. Yeah, So things like that small things
Speaker 1: like that can make a big, big difference. And you
Speaker 1: know you're talking about the increase in population. The number
Speaker 1: you're going to find if you do some searches on
Speaker 1: this on Google. I think the number that's most frequently
Speaker 1: cited is about by twenty fifty, we're looking at nine
Speaker 1: point two billion people on Earth. Yeah. I have today's number,
Speaker 1: by the way, Okay, I looked at it just this morning,
Speaker 1: so as of today, it's about seven point three billion people.
Speaker 1: And I watched the counter for a short amount of time.
Speaker 1: There's a pretty interesting site called um it's called world
Speaker 1: ometers dot info and it's just a world population clock really,
Speaker 1: but you can watch all kinds of numbers as they
Speaker 1: go up and down depending on what you're looking at.
Speaker 1: But pretty fascinating. Seven point three billion as of now,
Speaker 1: but it's steadily clicking up. That's pretty Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's amazing. It's also a little sobering because once
Speaker 1: we hit nine point two billion people, the other estimations
Speaker 1: say that at that point by we will need to
Speaker 1: have him increased food production from today's standards by another
Speaker 1: seventy okay question here though, all right, here's here's now
Speaker 1: they know the numbers are staggering. And if you look
Speaker 1: back at that way, you look at that site that
Speaker 1: I was just talking about today, and I didn't write
Speaker 1: down all these numbers because it was just way too much.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of information there, and it's it's all stats.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty fascinating site. But they said that in
Speaker 1: and this is just to give you an idea of
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy there were roughly half as many people
Speaker 1: in the world as there are today. That means we've
Speaker 1: doubled since nineteen seventy. That's short amount of time. Now
Speaker 1: they say that due to growth rate decreases, it'll take
Speaker 1: about two hundred years for that population to double again.
Speaker 1: But then I look at that number and I think, well,
Speaker 1: how many people were there in nineteen seventy There must
Speaker 1: have been um, roughly three and a half billion people. Ballpark. Well,
Speaker 1: they're talking about going from you know, seven and a
Speaker 1: half billion up to fifteen billion people. That's why, because
Speaker 1: it's an additional seven and a half billion people instead
Speaker 1: of four billion people. So maybe that's the reason. But still, uh,
Speaker 1: the disparity between the number of you know, what is
Speaker 1: that forty five years and you know um two hundred years.
Speaker 1: That's that's an incredible amount of time. I mean, so
Speaker 1: how does all that factor into I mean, there's so
Speaker 1: many numbers here at play that I had a hard
Speaker 1: time figuring out where we stand as far as when
Speaker 1: the food's going to run out. Well, and it gets
Speaker 1: even more complicated than that's Scott, because all so we're
Speaker 1: seeing more countries kind of emerge from developing to getting
Speaker 1: to developed status, as as people become more affluent, as
Speaker 1: they as middle classes begin to emerge in various populations.
Speaker 1: One of the first markers of that is that people
Speaker 1: want access to a better diet that includes more variety
Speaker 1: of foods and a higher quality of those foods. So
Speaker 1: not only are we going to need to increase production
Speaker 1: in order to meet the needs of a growing population,
Speaker 1: but we need to make sure that that is a
Speaker 1: varied approach, not like well we'll just we'll just grow
Speaker 1: more rice or more grains of some sort. It has
Speaker 1: to actually be a variety of foods, which means that
Speaker 1: we have to start really looking at strategies um for
Speaker 1: multiple reasons. And so I'm wondering when you were doing
Speaker 1: your research here we're going into ag tech, did you
Speaker 1: come across the term precision agriculture. This is exciting stuff.
Speaker 1: I think it is. I mean, it really comes down
Speaker 1: to what you would call, I guess a smart farm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't know if that's a term or if
Speaker 1: that's something I came up with her I came across
Speaker 1: it somewhere, but but it does seem to me like
Speaker 1: it's smart farming. And exactly that's exactly right, and it's
Speaker 1: just in the same way that you would think of
Speaker 1: a smart home. This is very apt. But precision farming.
Speaker 1: I mean that that it seems so odd because that's
Speaker 1: something that we never would have heard of. Maybe ten
Speaker 1: years ago, fifteen years ago. It just wasn't that way
Speaker 1: it was, and it wasn't haphazard by any means. It
Speaker 1: was just that it wasn't to the to the inch
Speaker 1: precise as it is today. I mean, sure that the
Speaker 1: farmer would tell till his road, um in his road,
Speaker 1: his field in straight rows, and he would know that
Speaker 1: I can get roughly this amount of seeds in this row,
Speaker 1: and et cetera. But now we're down to planning to
Speaker 1: the very inch to get that maximum yield and to
Speaker 1: the very second, like not just not just in in distance,
Speaker 1: but in time as well. So in ages past, you
Speaker 1: knew you planted in the spring and you would harvest
Speaker 1: in the fall. But with precision agriculture, it is not
Speaker 1: a joke to say you're going to want to plant
Speaker 1: on Wednesday. Like you can end up getting data that
Speaker 1: is so precise, and it's dependent upon multiple factors. Right,
Speaker 1: So we're talking about a lot of different technologies and
Speaker 1: processes that have to work for precision agriculture to work.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna run down some of them. You
Speaker 1: need sensors. Those sensors are going to detect things like humidity,
Speaker 1: the moisture level in the in the soil, the actual
Speaker 1: acidity of the soil, the chemical composition. You want to
Speaker 1: have other sensors that can detect when plants need water.
Speaker 1: There's actually a sensor that is a leaf sensor. It
Speaker 1: attaches to a leaf and it measures the change in
Speaker 1: voltage that happens when the leaf contracts. Now, a contracting
Speaker 1: leaf is an indicator that the plant needs water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you get imagine you are a farmer and you
Speaker 1: get alert on your smartphone that says you need to
Speaker 1: water the fields today. Because this is an early indicator
Speaker 1: that the plants are are quote unquote thirsty, which is
Speaker 1: pretty incredible. I used to work in a nursery and uh,
Speaker 1: like a tree nursery, not not a baby nursery, but
Speaker 1: a tree nursery, and uh, you know some of these
Speaker 1: hot summer days in July and August. I'll tell how
Speaker 1: we knew when we had to water is what we
Speaker 1: looked at the field of trees, you know, the entire
Speaker 1: nursery and said, it looks like they're a little wilted
Speaker 1: with better throw some water on the plants, right, And
Speaker 1: that's what we did. I mean, it was it was
Speaker 1: just kind of seat of the pants stuff. And and
Speaker 1: there's less and less seat of the pants farming going
Speaker 1: on now. It's more precise, as you said. And those
Speaker 1: sensors I mean that you mentioned. It's not just that
Speaker 1: there's sensors and you have to go to a central
Speaker 1: location even to to read or monitor those. You don't
Speaker 1: have to. You can some of them will send mobile
Speaker 1: alert to the farmer via smartphone. Yeah. They're all these
Speaker 1: these systems now that you can put in place at
Speaker 1: your farm that allows these sensors to interact with a
Speaker 1: network and alert you to minute changes so that you
Speaker 1: can make big decisions with the best technology, the best
Speaker 1: information available. Other tech that you will see in precision
Speaker 1: agriculture include satellites or drones, and these are specifically to
Speaker 1: monitor the status of crops throughout the year so that
Speaker 1: you can determine what the maturity level of the crops
Speaker 1: happens to be at any given point. You know, you
Speaker 1: want to harvest the crops at the right maturity level
Speaker 1: so that you minimize crop loss because obviously if you
Speaker 1: if you go too early, then stuff isn't right yet,
Speaker 1: You're not gonna be able to sell all the crops
Speaker 1: that you harvest if you go too late. Same sort
Speaker 1: of problem, except of course on the other side of it,
Speaker 1: so you want to be able to get the crops.
Speaker 1: You want to harvest them when it's absolutely at their peak,
Speaker 1: and that way you maximize the yield, you minimize the loss.
Speaker 1: These are all different factors that go into the idea
Speaker 1: of precision agriculture. Meanwhile, on the on the offtware side,
Speaker 1: you have to have computer algorithms that are incredibly sophisticated
Speaker 1: so that they can crunch these numbers and make it
Speaker 1: meaningful information that farmers can act on. In other words,
Speaker 1: they provide information that can can build maps, visual visual
Speaker 1: representations of what your field it looks like, What what
Speaker 1: the terrain you're talking about looks like. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: where their hot spots are, where the plants are growing
Speaker 1: and their best where they're not growing quite so? Well,
Speaker 1: what the reasons could be behind that. They may analyze, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, why this this one sector of the field
Speaker 1: isn't maybe producing as much as it possibly could, versus
Speaker 1: the sector that's just one yards away yet is is overproducing.
Speaker 1: It's producing more than they expected. And why is that?
Speaker 1: Maybe they can you know, learn something from that section
Speaker 1: or sector and uh and incorporate that into the next
Speaker 1: year's crop, right And uh, you know, it's an excellent
Speaker 1: point you make, because one thing we have to keep
Speaker 1: in mind is a lot of the farms in the
Speaker 1: United States. Okay, if you're looking at farms, Uh, the
Speaker 1: overwhelming majority of farms in the US our familyly owned
Speaker 1: and operated, right ninety Like in the nine upper ninety percentile.
Speaker 1: Only less than five percent of farms in the United
Speaker 1: States are owned by non family operated corporations. So even
Speaker 1: though they're they're huge, we're talking about like craft would
Speaker 1: own a giant farm or something like. Right, you know
Speaker 1: that they would they would grow their own products, yes,
Speaker 1: or monsanto or you know there's tons of them, right,
Speaker 1: but at any rate, uh that that only that only
Speaker 1: accounts for less than five percent of all the farms
Speaker 1: in the United States. However, the midsized farms are slowly
Speaker 1: getting edged out. In the U S. You've got a
Speaker 1: lot of small farms that are doing all right, particularly
Speaker 1: in markets where there's a high value placed on organic
Speaker 1: farming that kind of thing, and local is localized farming, um,
Speaker 1: but it's mostly turning into really big farms and small
Speaker 1: farms in the midsized farms are starting to get weeded out.
Speaker 1: But with those big farms, you can have such a
Speaker 1: huge farm that it is completely possible that one part
Speaker 1: of your land is getting adequate moisture from a weather
Speaker 1: system moving through and another part isn't. And this is
Speaker 1: the kind of technology. These sensors, the the drones, and
Speaker 1: the satellite imagery are the kind of things that tell you, oh,
Speaker 1: the southern part of my farm is fine, that's the
Speaker 1: weather system came through provide enough water, but the northern
Speaker 1: part is in need. Of irrigating, so then you can
Speaker 1: irrigate just the parts of your farm that needed saving water.
Speaker 1: It also means that one of the important technologies with
Speaker 1: precision agriculture is incredibly accurate weather forecasting. It's incredibly important.
Speaker 1: And you can extrapolate this too ranching as well for
Speaker 1: livestock and herds, because you know, they're they're enormous ranches
Speaker 1: in Texas and California, Montana, Montana that are are the
Speaker 1: exact same thing you're talking about, where weather systems moved
Speaker 1: through and only affect maybe the southern or a southeastern
Speaker 1: corner of that of that ranch. And it's very possible that,
Speaker 1: you know, the ranchers might decide I'm gonna move my
Speaker 1: my flock, my herd out of that region in time
Speaker 1: to avoid that blizzard or that that that horrific thunderstorm
Speaker 1: that's going to come through on Wednesday, or you know,
Speaker 1: whatever it happens to be. So ranchers deal with a
Speaker 1: lot of the same things. And of course we're talking
Speaker 1: about food production still, so all kind of ties in.
Speaker 1: Can I say one more thing about drones before we
Speaker 1: move on? In fact, maybe a little bit more than
Speaker 1: one thing, but of course there's the obvious uses for
Speaker 1: them monitoring crops. UM you know, looking at you know,
Speaker 1: distant or remote locations that UM or are difficult to
Speaker 1: get to for a farmer, so that you know, you
Speaker 1: can daily fly a drone up the hillside and look
Speaker 1: at your your coffee crop or whatever happens to be. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, people that use terraced farms, you know for
Speaker 1: space and and UM you know, just irrigation capabilities I guess,
Speaker 1: or you know whatever, so that it's the most optimal
Speaker 1: way to grew crops. It might be the most difficult
Speaker 1: to also reach by foot so or by vehicle. Uh,
Speaker 1: drones kind of eliminate all that. And the other thing
Speaker 1: that is really really important is that UM drones are
Speaker 1: capable of delivering fertilizer and insecticide at precise locations. So
Speaker 1: you know, the maps that we just talked about. With
Speaker 1: the software programs that create maps and and show you
Speaker 1: exactly how crops are growing in certain regions or sectors,
Speaker 1: you can precisely accurately deliver the right amount of insecticides
Speaker 1: or or pesticides or whatever happens to be that you
Speaker 1: need in that area to that just that one sector
Speaker 1: via a drone, you know as a sprayer underneath. And
Speaker 1: whether we're talking about you know, small helicopters or um
Speaker 1: you know the quad copters that we see often kind
Speaker 1: of eight eight one of the octicopters. Um they replace,
Speaker 1: uh you know the guys that would fly in those
Speaker 1: crop dusters. Have you ever seen a crop duster in action? Okay,
Speaker 1: they're they are fascinating, are they. I mean you see
Speaker 1: those guys are like daredevils. I mean it's like the
Speaker 1: best um um air shows on you've ever seen when
Speaker 1: you see them going really i mean remarkably low low
Speaker 1: LT street. What's it's startling if you're in let's say
Speaker 1: that you're driving through the Midwest, You're in Indiana, Ohio,
Speaker 1: somewhere in there, and uh, you know, maybe two yards
Speaker 1: ahead of you you see an airplane buzz through that's
Speaker 1: low enough that it would strike a semi if there
Speaker 1: was a semi on the road. It's that low. It's
Speaker 1: going underwires. It's it's amazing. Uh. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: very dangerous profession. In fact, it often falls into the
Speaker 1: top ten dangerous professions list every year. Usually it's it's
Speaker 1: two or you know, number two, three, four somewhere in
Speaker 1: there behind UH, fishers, you know, anybody who's fishing Alaskan
Speaker 1: fishermen or whatever. Yeah, that's why they call it deadliest catch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and loggers. Loggers I think are usually like number one
Speaker 1: and two between fishers and loggers. And then UH, aircraft pilots.
Speaker 1: I think they kind of lumped them in with airline pilots,
Speaker 1: you know, like UM passenger airlines and uh like bush pilots.
Speaker 1: Bush pilots and crop dusters likely account for most of
Speaker 1: the deaths in that because of the terrain that they
Speaker 1: fly and how low they fly, right, the conditions are
Speaker 1: inherently more risk exactly right. And wind farms, now we
Speaker 1: haven't even talked about from it, but wind farming, Uh,
Speaker 1: that is a huge danger for crop dusters, for human
Speaker 1: crop dusters, because they often strike those poles or strike
Speaker 1: the the rotors of course, you know, because they're flying
Speaker 1: in these extremely fast, low vehicles, and their their focused,
Speaker 1: to be honest, is on the crops. It's not necessarily
Speaker 1: on that new wind turbine post that's just putting put
Speaker 1: up by within the last month or so, or the
Speaker 1: fifty others that are in that field. So it can
Speaker 1: be very dangerous and and I'm glad that you know
Speaker 1: some of these some of these drones are able to
Speaker 1: cancel out the need for crop dusting pilots in some cases.
Speaker 1: Although it would be a pretty good adrenaline rush to
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, I don't know that I would need
Speaker 1: that much adrenaline rushed in me, but yes, I agree
Speaker 1: that it certainly would be. I think it'd be fun,
Speaker 1: it could be I imagine, Uh, you know, other things
Speaker 1: to consider with this precision agriculture. I mean, there's tons
Speaker 1: more we could talk about. For example, Uh, they often
Speaker 1: will even explain what sort of crops would grow best
Speaker 1: in different types of soil. And keep in mind these
Speaker 1: crops all. You know, if there's one particular crop you're
Speaker 1: you're planning on growing in part of your land, the
Speaker 1: timing might be totally different to plant, Like for for
Speaker 1: the ideal setting might be totally different to plant those
Speaker 1: seeds than the next one, which means that you have
Speaker 1: to start taking other complicated planning into account, like how
Speaker 1: do you plant crops for one crop? Then let's say
Speaker 1: three more weeks would go by before you have to
Speaker 1: plant the next section would be a totally different crop.
Speaker 1: How do you do that in a way that's not
Speaker 1: going to damage the crops you first plant it. I
Speaker 1: have also seen where farmers have planted soybeans in between
Speaker 1: other crops. Now I don't remember if it was if
Speaker 1: it was cotton and soybeans or what it happened to be,
Speaker 1: but it's like mixed crops in the same field. That
Speaker 1: was unusual. So so that's one way around it. And
Speaker 1: there's also um I know from Indiana again, I know
Speaker 1: that there's a there's winter wheat you can grow in
Speaker 1: the downtime. So like let's say you've got a summer
Speaker 1: crop of corn or whatever it happens to be, you
Speaker 1: can also plant a crop of winter wheat that that
Speaker 1: takes up the time the rest of the year when
Speaker 1: you can't grow corn. Yeah, And so this will tell
Speaker 1: you exactly when to plant each one of those crops
Speaker 1: and when to when to bring it in fertilizer levels
Speaker 1: that I mean, I guess soil levels that you need
Speaker 1: to to watch for each crop. You know, whether it
Speaker 1: would let you know when you would need to add
Speaker 1: fertilizer to those those fields as well, including telling you, hey,
Speaker 1: don't do it next week, when when it would be
Speaker 1: ideal because there's going to be a storm the following day,
Speaker 1: which would just wash the fertilizer away. You're going to
Speaker 1: want to wait until that weather front moves through and
Speaker 1: then do it. Like this is really valuable. So it
Speaker 1: even goes to the transportation of food. I mean we
Speaker 1: when we're talking about making sure you maximize your yield,
Speaker 1: that includes the time of after harvesting, but before you
Speaker 1: get it to wherever it's going to be sold. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the transportation can result in crop loss as well, especially
Speaker 1: in areas that might not have a lot of developed roads,
Speaker 1: like in Brazil. Brazil has a lot of roads that
Speaker 1: are dirt roads. So knowing that it's going to rain
Speaker 1: in a certain region, you might say, well, we're going
Speaker 1: to route all of our traffic. We're gonna be proactive
Speaker 1: about this and take these other routes because otherwise trucks
Speaker 1: might get stuck in the mud and we might lose
Speaker 1: our crops because it may take a day or two longer,
Speaker 1: and it may cost a little bit more, but you're
Speaker 1: going to have a higher yield from that field. And
Speaker 1: if it works that way, Yeah, I think that's why
Speaker 1: I'm piecing this all together. I think that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that every dollar that the farmer spends getting the crop
Speaker 1: or getting the crop to the market to be sold
Speaker 1: is just a dollar out of his pocket essentially at
Speaker 1: that point. I mean, he's trying to maximize profits as
Speaker 1: well as maximize the the yield of that product. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's I mean, it's it's a really interesting and
Speaker 1: complicated picture. Like the more you look at the more
Speaker 1: you realize, Wow, I didn't appreciate how complex this is.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know, keeping in mind things like
Speaker 1: you want to be able to rotate crops through your
Speaker 1: various fields in order to keep the soil healthy. If
Speaker 1: you just continuously grow the same crops on the same land, uh,
Speaker 1: that can start depleting nutrients in the soil, and so
Speaker 1: rotating that is really important. So this is the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that gives the people who are cultivating the
Speaker 1: land way more information like that so that they can
Speaker 1: they can do the best to have uh great yields.
Speaker 1: They are minimizing the environmental impact of what they're doing,
Speaker 1: which is in their best interest in the long run
Speaker 1: as well. So it's it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: the big data, the sensors, the automation, all of this
Speaker 1: stuff is coming together to really uh uh maximize their
Speaker 1: effectiveness while minimizing their impact, and it benefits all of us.
Speaker 1: What if you take soil out of the mix, though,
Speaker 1: What if you do uh? What if hydroponics? Hydroponics? I
Speaker 1: mean that's been around since sixteen twenty seven I found out. Wow,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. You know, it's funny. The first time
Speaker 1: I encountered hydroponics was at um Epcots. Yeah. I was
Speaker 1: just about to say it had to be Epcot Center
Speaker 1: at the land. Yeah, that's right. The land is that
Speaker 1: you were driving through, a riding through, I guess on
Speaker 1: the on the boat, um, and it's all you know,
Speaker 1: hanging plants and they're watering them with a mist every
Speaker 1: that's very particularly or specifically timed for that specific plant.
Speaker 1: You're just seeing the roots of the plants, no soil
Speaker 1: at all. Um. There's also another kind of twist on
Speaker 1: this whole thing, and that's aquaponics. Aquaponics is where they grow. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess it's not just one thing. They can grow
Speaker 1: a number of different things, but it's plants and animals
Speaker 1: that grow in an ecosystem that is balanced, so there's
Speaker 1: no waste like um, I read where they're growing plants
Speaker 1: and fish in the same place, and the result is
Speaker 1: that there's no wastewater, there's no um insecticides used anything
Speaker 1: like that. Um, it's it's all um one system that
Speaker 1: works together symbiotically nice. And the thing is that at
Speaker 1: the the end result is that you get organic produce
Speaker 1: and fresh toxin free fish from the same from the
Speaker 1: same the same sort of same building. You know, it's
Speaker 1: an interior thing that happen indoor thing. Um. But it's
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty smart in the way they put it together.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure that takes years of planning. Oh sure, Yeah.
Speaker 1: None of the solutions we're talking about are particularly simple
Speaker 1: to implement, right. They require a huge investment of both
Speaker 1: time and money. But you know, everyone's gotta eat so
Speaker 1: so ultimately it's one of those things where you say, well,
Speaker 1: we have to do this. I mean, it's not like
Speaker 1: we have the option, so we just have to find
Speaker 1: the best way to do it in a smart way.
Speaker 1: And what about the the idea of shared knowledge? Now,
Speaker 1: because that is something that this is so important. I
Speaker 1: mean that the high tech angle, I guess a soportant
Speaker 1: for farmers now because they can use they can use forms,
Speaker 1: they can use just simple text messages to other farmers
Speaker 1: down the road. I mean, it could be that easy.
Speaker 1: It's usually a little bit more complex than it's groups
Speaker 1: or forums as I mentioned, but um shared knowledge, you know,
Speaker 1: they can share best practices. They can they can say
Speaker 1: you know what, I've never heard of that before. But
Speaker 1: you know, we've got five people on this site. We
Speaker 1: can together, we can come up with a solution prior
Speaker 1: to what ten years ago that was unheard of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you might have a local gathering occasionally, but
Speaker 1: even that would be of mostly small farm operators. And
Speaker 1: can I just say this that I have never ever
Speaker 1: met a farmer or rancher that I haven't found to
Speaker 1: be incredibly intelligent. Oh yeah, I mean they all seem
Speaker 1: just so smart and it's and it's it's it's like
Speaker 1: real world smart. You know, they just know so much
Speaker 1: about what they do, and it seems like they're just
Speaker 1: so in touch with with everything that they have to
Speaker 1: h have to deal with. I mean, the whether it's
Speaker 1: the animals, the plants, um just in with people. It
Speaker 1: just seems like I've never ever met any farmer or
Speaker 1: rancher that isn't just just top match intelligence well, and
Speaker 1: and to put them all together in one place, that's
Speaker 1: a that's a great place to solve problems. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think of them very much like engineers. They they act
Speaker 1: as engineers, it's just they their training is through a different,
Speaker 1: you know, branch than traditional engineering happens to be. But
Speaker 1: they are all about looking at problems and solving them.
Speaker 1: And the tools we've talked about are all about giving
Speaker 1: them even more agency to do that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: One other thing I wanted to to mention is that,
Speaker 1: you know, I talked about how mechanization really started to
Speaker 1: cut down on the number as far as the percentage
Speaker 1: of population of farmers. We're going to see that continue, obviously,
Speaker 1: especially now that we are in an age of automation.
Speaker 1: We have gone beyond mechanization to automation, to the point
Speaker 1: where sometimes we're talking about autonomous automation. It's not just
Speaker 1: that it's an automated system, it's one that is working
Speaker 1: without direct human guidance. We're starting to see that being
Speaker 1: introduced in various parts of agriculture. So one of the
Speaker 1: things I was looking at, I looked at some robot harvesters,
Speaker 1: which are pretty awesome. There was one in particular that
Speaker 1: was designed to automatically trim lettuce. It's a lettuce trimming robots. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It used digital imaging to measure exactly where to trim,
Speaker 1: and it could trim one hundred times faster than a
Speaker 1: human fat. Yeah, so you wouldn't think it's fascinating, but
Speaker 1: when you really think about what that is doing, what
Speaker 1: that what that is, what that machine is is capable
Speaker 1: of and from what I understand, they were able with
Speaker 1: that kind of technology to increase yield by as much
Speaker 1: as ten percent. Now you're going a hundred times faster
Speaker 1: and you're thinking, how can you only do ten percent
Speaker 1: yield increase, Well, you still have to wait for the
Speaker 1: plants to grow, Okay, So yeah, I guess the the
Speaker 1: awaiting time would just be longer than it would be
Speaker 1: done with the up and you're just waiting waiting for
Speaker 1: the harvest. Right, So you could end up having waves
Speaker 1: of of yields coming across because obviously you want to
Speaker 1: be able to provide produce as as frequently throughout the
Speaker 1: year as possible. And you know, here in the United
Speaker 1: States we are incredibly fortunate to live in a in
Speaker 1: a country that is affluent and has relationships with other
Speaker 1: parts of the world where we can import a lot
Speaker 1: of vegetables, so that even in the dead of winter,
Speaker 1: we can get access to stuff because it's being grown
Speaker 1: somewhere in the world. We can get access to stuff
Speaker 1: that probably is not growing in most of the United
Speaker 1: States at that time. And I know that there are
Speaker 1: ways that they're increasing the speed that these uh the
Speaker 1: plants come to maturity as well. So yeah, so I
Speaker 1: mean they're they're they're quickly developing that as well, so
Speaker 1: that instead of being able to grow two to three
Speaker 1: crops a year, you might be able to grow, you know,
Speaker 1: five to six crops a year. Yeah, and and you're
Speaker 1: able to maximize your your fields use so that it's
Speaker 1: not laying fallow for long times of the year. It's
Speaker 1: it's pretty incredible. Other automated devices. I have looked into
Speaker 1: our automated planters, so these are planting vehicles. That actually
Speaker 1: saw one in action on a video and it was
Speaker 1: really interesting. So the video I watched had um engineering students,
Speaker 1: agricultural engineering students who were working with various manufacturers who
Speaker 1: would provide them the stuff that they would need to
Speaker 1: build out these automated devices. The automated planter, there's a
Speaker 1: guy behind the wheel. He starts driving it and he says,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna push this button, and he pushes
Speaker 1: the button inside the vehicle and then he takes his
Speaker 1: hands off the wheel and you see the wheel operating itself.
Speaker 1: And what was happening was the automated planter was working
Speaker 1: with a GPS device and a pregenerated satellite map of
Speaker 1: where the crops needed to go, located by GPS coordinates,
Speaker 1: and it is literally following. It's like like if you'd
Speaker 1: used Google Maps to give yourself driving directions. It was
Speaker 1: essentially following driving directions, except in this case, it's planting
Speaker 1: directions precise yeah, which is incredible because it knows how
Speaker 1: many seeds to put down per inch, It knows exactly
Speaker 1: where to go, exactly how many rows there should be.
Speaker 1: Amazing stuff I have. I've seen a few of these
Speaker 1: things and it does just blow your mind when you
Speaker 1: realize how accurate they are and what they're in, the
Speaker 1: technology that they're using, the you know, what they're using
Speaker 1: to be able to be that accurate. It's almost like
Speaker 1: it's more accurate than the farmer could be sitting in
Speaker 1: the vehicle. Really yeah, and it really is. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you're talking about the capability of measuring down
Speaker 1: to fractions of an inch, and you know we as humans,
Speaker 1: we can do that, but it takes us, granted, a
Speaker 1: lot more time. And this this speeds things up considerably.
Speaker 1: I also saw weeding robots because I could use that
Speaker 1: at home. Oh yeah, me too. One of the best
Speaker 1: things about weeding robots is that obvious sleep It would
Speaker 1: mean that you could cut down on herbicides. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: need to use as much herbicide to kill off weeds
Speaker 1: and preserve your crops. You could use a weeding robot
Speaker 1: to do it. Now, if you're if you're looking at
Speaker 1: a way of growing your crops and you don't want
Speaker 1: to use herbicides for whatever reason, maybe it affects your
Speaker 1: crops negatively. Hand weeding is pretty much your your big bet,
Speaker 1: and that means either you're literally pulling the weeds out
Speaker 1: by hand or you're using a hoe. Either way, it's
Speaker 1: backbreaking work. It's slow, and it's not efficient. It's not
Speaker 1: efficient use of time, and it requires a lot of labor.
Speaker 1: So weeding robots tend to be something that you you
Speaker 1: tow behind another vehicle, so they are just automatically looking
Speaker 1: for weeds. And by looking, I mean they're using cameras
Speaker 1: or infrared sensors and they're using digital image recognition software
Speaker 1: to tell the difference between a weed and a crop
Speaker 1: and anything that's weeds gotta go. But they're even engineers
Speaker 1: working on building at honomous ones like the Hordabot project
Speaker 1: in Denmark that's an autonomous weeding robot. Now right now,
Speaker 1: they're more popular in Europe than they are in the
Speaker 1: United States because in Europe there are much stricter regulations
Speaker 1: as far as the use of herbicides and pesticides are concerned.
Speaker 1: In the United States, those restrictions haven't reached that same level,
Speaker 1: so there's less incentive to invest in this other technology
Speaker 1: because we already have an infrastructure for pesticides and herbicides.
Speaker 1: But assuming that that eventually changes, will probably see that
Speaker 1: migrate over here to the United States as well. And
Speaker 1: just the thought of having a robot out there taking
Speaker 1: care of all that without having to actually do it
Speaker 1: yourself is pretty pretty awesome. Yeah, So, you know, the
Speaker 1: technology stands to really benefit us in lots of ways.
Speaker 1: Any others that you want to talk about before we
Speaker 1: transition to our our other kind of the dark side
Speaker 1: of technology and agriculture version of what you were just
Speaker 1: talking about. That weeding machine, it's gonna come up. How
Speaker 1: about at the end of the podcast, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: some farm hacks. That sounds great and again low tech,
Speaker 1: but it's a it's an interesting development, yeah, because part
Speaker 1: of the thing, like, like we were saying, farmers, ranchers,
Speaker 1: they are the problem solvers. Sometimes that means they come
Speaker 1: up with creative ways to use pre existing technology in
Speaker 1: perhaps methods that weren't originally intended small scale, large scale,
Speaker 1: all scales really. Yeah, but before we get into that,
Speaker 1: let's talk about tractors. I'm excited about this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Now I know you would be, Scott because it deals
Speaker 1: a lot with not just agriculture, but there is a
Speaker 1: lot of crossover to the automotive world and what we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about. So the great side of of
Speaker 1: this ag tech we've been talking about is that it
Speaker 1: can potentially very much increase uh, the efficiency of farms.
Speaker 1: It can end up decreasing the amount of work needed
Speaker 1: to do. However, there is a flip side to this.
Speaker 1: The flip side is as technology increases in sophistication, it
Speaker 1: becomes much more difficult to do any d I Y maintenance, repair, tweaking,
Speaker 1: any of that. It gets harder and hard to do.
Speaker 1: And we're seeing that now, not just in these giant
Speaker 1: like cloud based services we were talking about, but in tractors.
Speaker 1: This is a great source of frustration among farmers today
Speaker 1: is that the modern tractor is much like the automobile,
Speaker 1: nearly impossible to diagnose and repair on your own, you know,
Speaker 1: in the in the barn, in the field wherever. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, days of you know, being able to use,
Speaker 1: as they said in this article from Wired, using you know,
Speaker 1: making a duct tape and baling wire repair. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's becoming, you know, less and less possible for stuff
Speaker 1: like that to happen, because now we're dealing with much
Speaker 1: more or many more UM electronic components, you know, modules
Speaker 1: that that talk each other on a can bus system
Speaker 1: UM that you know is controlled by one central computer,
Speaker 1: and in order to access that computer you have to
Speaker 1: have very specific diagnostic tools and connectors and UM factory
Speaker 1: passwords that you know, you just have no idea what
Speaker 1: those passwords are because they vary between make and model
Speaker 1: in different years. And um, it's becoming very very complex
Speaker 1: for the common uh, modern farmer to be able to
Speaker 1: and I don't mean common by the sure the average farmer,
Speaker 1: the average farmer to be able to make his machinery
Speaker 1: work in an optimal way as he could in the past.
Speaker 1: I mean whether it's adjusting the timing on the tractor,
Speaker 1: or something's just out of calibration. You need to reset that. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's becoming virtually impossible to do that without the proper tools.
Speaker 1: And these tools are very expensive. Or there's a flip
Speaker 1: side of this, some of them even require a technician
Speaker 1: to be brought to the tractor because you can't just
Speaker 1: you can't drive it down to the dealership. You can't
Speaker 1: throw it on the on a trailer and haul it
Speaker 1: into town. Um. It's much more complexness because we're talking
Speaker 1: about machines that are two stories high have twelve wheels. Uh,
Speaker 1: they are. There are half a million dollar machines now
Speaker 1: there and I'm no joke, there are half a million
Speaker 1: dollars in some cases. Uh. In this article we read
Speaker 1: on Wired again, I think you're talking about a mid
Speaker 1: rains tractor, and the mid rains tractors were you know,
Speaker 1: somewhere above one hundred thousand dollars. So these are very
Speaker 1: very expensive machines and it could be incredibly frustrating for
Speaker 1: farmers to to realize that. Well, you know, we just
Speaker 1: talked about how important it is that you know, you
Speaker 1: plant this this uh this crop on noon or at
Speaker 1: noon on Wednesday. Well, what happens when that machine goes
Speaker 1: down and you have to fly on a technician in
Speaker 1: order to repair that machine, right, and it's and then
Speaker 1: three days have gone by and you still haven't planted
Speaker 1: any Yeah, and your and your tractor is still stuck
Speaker 1: in the middle of the field because you know, some
Speaker 1: modules not communicating to another module. But you can't do
Speaker 1: anything about that until you get the technician there. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you're watching the estimations of your yield drops steadily, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're getting those stupid smartphone alert Oh man, you're
Speaker 1: you're really messing up this crap. What hey, buddy, you
Speaker 1: get off your button. Start planning. Can't becoming more and
Speaker 1: more you know, insulting as the day goes on. Right, So,
Speaker 1: so just like like cars have their own little control units.
Speaker 1: Tractors like you mentioned have them that they tend to
Speaker 1: be called tractor engine control units or or t e
Speaker 1: c use tech wus and yeah, they're they're They're also
Speaker 1: often proprietary, kind of like we've talked about proprietary connectors
Speaker 1: here on on tech stuff before. This is where you
Speaker 1: don't use a universal connector. You have very specific ones
Speaker 1: that work with that particular technology. And if you don't
Speaker 1: own that, and generally speaking, these are things that are
Speaker 1: not sold to the public, then you cannot get access.
Speaker 1: You cannot easily access the the the computer that's aboard
Speaker 1: the tractor. I talked about this all the time, like
Speaker 1: I remember, I hate to shame any company, but I'm
Speaker 1: want to do it in this case. Uh well, I
Speaker 1: mean Apple is a great example. Apple's connectors are all
Speaker 1: proprietary to Apple. But Sony was very much the same way.
Speaker 1: I remember having a Sony camera and it had a
Speaker 1: USB connector, but the end connector was proprietary. You couldn't
Speaker 1: just go out and buy a mini USB or micro
Speaker 1: USB and use that pair that with your Sony camera.
Speaker 1: You had to go out and buy a very expensive
Speaker 1: Sony one or try and find some off brand knockoff
Speaker 1: that may or may not work with your camera. Well,
Speaker 1: imagine that frustration magnified to a hundred thousand dollar or
Speaker 1: more machine, an investment, a significant investment that not only
Speaker 1: wasn't a significant investment, but you're the success of your
Speaker 1: business depends upon it working, and you can't even find
Speaker 1: out why it's no longer working. So the article talks
Speaker 1: about how there was The author talks about a farmer
Speaker 1: friend who had called the author out to check on
Speaker 1: the tractor. Right, the tractor was no longer working. There
Speaker 1: was a sensor that was burning out, and what they
Speaker 1: were trying to do is find a way to route
Speaker 1: the tractors systems around the sensor so that the tractor
Speaker 1: could at least be operational until the sensor could be replaced.
Speaker 1: So there's a proper repairs, right. And the issue that
Speaker 1: the author found was that the system was completely inaccessible. Uh,
Speaker 1: not that it was physically inaccessible in the sense that
Speaker 1: there was no way to get to the computer, but
Speaker 1: there was no way to connect to it. So I
Speaker 1: guess in that sense it's physically inaccessible and it's all
Speaker 1: running on proprietary software. So there was no way to
Speaker 1: even see how the system works, let alone reroute anything. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a little different than cars because cars recently
Speaker 1: and since I think, have had the same diagnostic port
Speaker 1: underneath the steering right now, you can you can reach
Speaker 1: around under your car and feel it there. You've probably had,
Speaker 1: you know, somebody at the local oil change place plug
Speaker 1: into that just to get stats of your vehicle, you know,
Speaker 1: like the last time you're there and you're going for
Speaker 1: an emissions test or exactly right. Yeah, So there are
Speaker 1: standards in automobiles and and that's not the case with
Speaker 1: these tractors. And and I have a feeling that you
Speaker 1: in the next decade or so, some of that's going
Speaker 1: to be ironed out that you know, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: some some some type of uniformity among the tracker manufacturers.
Speaker 1: That's going to help out just a little bit. But
Speaker 1: still that doesn't really, that doesn't help a whole lot
Speaker 1: because unless they conform to a standard um UM software
Speaker 1: package I guess that that operates all these it's not
Speaker 1: gonna do much good unless you have you know that
Speaker 1: as well, and they can still hang onto that unless
Speaker 1: part of this whole legislation thing includes that they have
Speaker 1: to use these a certain like like a standardized approach
Speaker 1: across the board. Yeah, and I don't see that happening.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. Maybe maybe I'm off base here.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not going to be controlled the way the
Speaker 1: automobile industry is. Maybe it's going to be a little different,
Speaker 1: maybe it'll be a little tougher. But I also kind
Speaker 1: of think that I don't know, maybe this is not
Speaker 1: true that you tell me. It seems like some of
Speaker 1: these systems are becoming so complex that the farmers are
Speaker 1: beginning to kind of buck the system. They're saying, I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily want that five dollar John Deer tractor. I'm
Speaker 1: going to get this nineteen seventy version of the same
Speaker 1: thing that it really does everything that I need. But
Speaker 1: it's all mechanical, it's not electronics. That's absolutely happening. We're
Speaker 1: seeing the market for brand new tractors start to suffer
Speaker 1: while the market for pre computerized tractors is blossoming. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, this limited supply because you know that
Speaker 1: time's past though they're not really people making those anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think they're gonna go totally back to that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just mean, maybe they need to back
Speaker 1: it down a little bit, but youre right there there's
Speaker 1: a now a market for the older equipment. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it may even be that uh, that could end up
Speaker 1: inspiring a change anyway, where the questions come in, like
Speaker 1: how how much of this new technology that's being incorporated
Speaker 1: into tractors is of of real demonstrable benefit to the
Speaker 1: farmer or the rancher, Like how can can you show
Speaker 1: that the stuff that's supposed to make the tractor more
Speaker 1: efficient is it measurably more efficient because of these features?
Speaker 1: All right? But you know what, because the features you
Speaker 1: mentioned features and I gotta say this, but but they're
Speaker 1: they are just like driving like a luxury yacht or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, maybe a luxury RV in a field.
Speaker 1: They're incredible. Have you seen the interiors of these things?
Speaker 1: I have not. There there again, like a story and
Speaker 1: a half high, so you've got a great view of
Speaker 1: your field. You've got leather rep steering wheels. Of course,
Speaker 1: the seats are super cushy, and they're on a suspension
Speaker 1: system almost like you'd find in a semi truck something
Speaker 1: like that. Very soft. Um, they've got air conditioning, of
Speaker 1: course they've got CD players, DVD players, of course, media
Speaker 1: inputs now not you know, the CDs. I know they're
Speaker 1: gone right right. They've given me the scale from you know,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking more of Bluetooth, sure whatever, Well
Speaker 1: they have that too. Yeah. But of course all the
Speaker 1: screens for the GPS systems and everything. They've got autonomous features.
Speaker 1: You can go autopilot, you can go semi autonomous, you
Speaker 1: can go fully autonomous in some cases. Um, oh, this
Speaker 1: is when one cool feature. I don't know if they
Speaker 1: can give this up. This would be tough to give up.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're driving a grain harvester and we can
Speaker 1: all picture with this looks like I mean, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people call them combines, but grain harvester
Speaker 1: combines the same idea. They have that huge shoot at
Speaker 1: the back that it just pours out corn or whatever
Speaker 1: it happens to be wheat. Um, there's another vehicle that
Speaker 1: follows behind. It's usually a truck, but it's got a
Speaker 1: giant bin on it. It looks like a just a
Speaker 1: big box and it pours everything that it's harvesting into
Speaker 1: that box as it drives along. They drive along in tandem.
Speaker 1: There is a technology that they call follow me technology,
Speaker 1: and what it does is it it completely automates the
Speaker 1: following vehicle, so no one has to drive that second vehicle.
Speaker 1: There's someone in there manning the harvester, the the you know,
Speaker 1: the the vehicle that's that's gathering the material, but there's
Speaker 1: nobody in the box and the one that just carries
Speaker 1: the box. So that way, it's always following it precise
Speaker 1: the right distance, at the precisely the right speed. Eat
Speaker 1: whether the you know, the operator adjust that speed up
Speaker 1: or down doesn't matter. That is always going to be
Speaker 1: exactly where it is. It's never It's called following technology.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. Yeah, it eliminates at least one other
Speaker 1: person has to do that. They can do something else
Speaker 1: on the farm and then I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is possible or not, but it wouldn't be cool if, like,
Speaker 1: when it's full, it could it could signal that, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: we stopped right for now, and they do that and
Speaker 1: then another one takes this place. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's possible yet or not, it seems like it would be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: swap out technology, I would imagine that you could do that.
Speaker 1: You would just have essentially uh you know, designating Clone
Speaker 1: one and Clone two, and then you just Clone one
Speaker 1: return home clone to take its place Clone two or
Speaker 1: Clone one, you know, drop off the load and return
Speaker 1: to the flight. That kind of thing. It seems like
Speaker 1: it would be so cool if you had like the
Speaker 1: system of like three vehicles that were just continually operating,
Speaker 1: because then you have minimum downtime. Yeah, very cool. I mean,
Speaker 1: so there's some really interesting stuff that goes along with it.
Speaker 1: But I gotta say that, you know, m of this
Speaker 1: is really kind of rubbing me the wrong way, and
Speaker 1: that you know, I think as it would because I mean,
Speaker 1: I I have I felt the frustration of the you know,
Speaker 1: opening the hood and not being able to do anything
Speaker 1: with my own car. I can't imagine what it's like
Speaker 1: if you've got a five thousand dollar machine that you
Speaker 1: have to have running by Wednesday at noon, specifically to
Speaker 1: plant that field, and it's not operating and there's nothing
Speaker 1: you can do about it except fly a guy in
Speaker 1: from Utah to to fix it in the field. And
Speaker 1: even then, you know, you gotta pay for his ticket
Speaker 1: to come there. You gotta for the repair itself, which
Speaker 1: is not going to be cheap. You've got to hope
Speaker 1: that whatever the repair is works and that it's sustained,
Speaker 1: because I've read stories about guys who would fly out
Speaker 1: mechanics to come and or actually, I guess technicians, it
Speaker 1: goes beyond mechanic because you're actually having to use the
Speaker 1: the authorized proprietary approach to even access the systems on
Speaker 1: board the vehicle. And you end up doing some work
Speaker 1: and then the person leaves and your vehicle works for
Speaker 1: a little while and then breaks down again, and then
Speaker 1: you think, well, I can't this. This isn't something sustainable.
Speaker 1: I can't keep doing this. You can keep that cycle going.
Speaker 1: So what are you gonna do? Are you gonna just
Speaker 1: let that thing sit in the barn and collect dust,
Speaker 1: or you're gonna get a tractor from twenty five years
Speaker 1: ago that works every day and you know how to
Speaker 1: repair right. It may not have it certainly doesn't have
Speaker 1: all the bells and whistles, but if it works and
Speaker 1: you can keep it in working condition, that's a very
Speaker 1: powerful story. Yeah, we talk about in in the text sphere,
Speaker 1: we talk about this approach, this uh, this trend really
Speaker 1: and it's across all areas of electronics as the black
Speaker 1: box trend, and a black box essentially means any system
Speaker 1: or group of systems that is either sufficiently complex enough
Speaker 1: or is protected against you accessing it. So meaning that,
Speaker 1: you know, in the old days, the really like the
Speaker 1: birth of the personal computer age, people were hacking, like
Speaker 1: physically packing machines to make them do all sorts of
Speaker 1: stuff right um, And as they get more and more sophisticated,
Speaker 1: it's harder to do that either because it's just so
Speaker 1: complicated that it's rare for any one person to understand
Speaker 1: all the systems that are involved, or companies have gone
Speaker 1: to great links to keep certain components completely shielded from
Speaker 1: you tweaking them. So you own the physical machine itself,
Speaker 1: you want the engine, you on the transmission, You on
Speaker 1: the wheels, the axles, all that, the chassis. However, the company,
Speaker 1: the you know, the parent company, owns the software that
Speaker 1: makes your machine operates. So you're you're really stuck there.
Speaker 1: You're you're essentially driving a black box. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: means that you have to if you if you ever
Speaker 1: have to do any maintenance or repair UH, you pretty
Speaker 1: much have very few options open to you other than
Speaker 1: contacting an official UH person from that company to come
Speaker 1: and perform the maintenance and repair. This has actually led
Speaker 1: to UH a lot of people kind of lumping in
Speaker 1: agricultural technology under the Right to Repair Act, which really
Speaker 1: is not a single act. It's actually lots of different
Speaker 1: legislation introduced in many different states, and not just singly
Speaker 1: focused on agriculture. In fact, the main focus was automotive.
Speaker 1: The idea being that a person who purchases a vehicle
Speaker 1: should have the expectation that they could do repairs themselves
Speaker 1: or take that vehicle to an independent mechanic who also
Speaker 1: could do those repairs other instead of having to be
Speaker 1: forced to take them to the source the manufacturer. That's
Speaker 1: the that's the point behind it. If you do want
Speaker 1: to do repairs yourself, if you are absolutely determined that
Speaker 1: you're going to do those repairs that maintenance yourself, you're
Speaker 1: going to go to whatever links necessary in order to
Speaker 1: do that. What you would have to do is get
Speaker 1: hold of a computer and some software and a connector
Speaker 1: that works with that particular make and model of that vehicle,
Speaker 1: and you'd have to be doing it essentially illegally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's also because this is a piracy issue, right,
Speaker 1: and there's also the the issue of the password. The
Speaker 1: manufacturer provided password. Now that's something that they hold pretty
Speaker 1: close to their chest. I mean, that's something that But
Speaker 1: of course, if you've already got the software loaded onto
Speaker 1: a laptop, you've likely already got the pat you know,
Speaker 1: somebody with the password as well. We're talking about a
Speaker 1: gray market here, aren't Yeah, yeah, there's a gray market
Speaker 1: for machines that have that software loaded onto it already.
Speaker 1: So that if you if you want to try and
Speaker 1: do these kind of uh, you know, at least diagnose
Speaker 1: what's wrong with you know, you might not even know yet,
Speaker 1: you know, and it may be something very simple. And
Speaker 1: lack of knowledge is terrible, right for anybody, because you
Speaker 1: are completely dependent upon what someone else says, yeah, and
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily know. If you're someone like I'm not
Speaker 1: car guy Scott. If I take my wife's vehicle into
Speaker 1: a mechanic and he says, oh, problem is your hobbit
Speaker 1: fell off your unicorn, I'd be like, I don't think
Speaker 1: that sounds right, but I don't know, so I guess
Speaker 1: I gotta pay you this. I understand. I feel a
Speaker 1: lot of people are in that position. If you just
Speaker 1: if you don't have the the the knowledge ahead of time.
Speaker 1: When you come in what it possibly could be, you
Speaker 1: feel like you might be taken And and that is
Speaker 1: another source of frustration, is that you're at the mercy
Speaker 1: of the manufacturer at that point, because they can tell
Speaker 1: you anything. And you'd say, well, okay, here's the manufacturer
Speaker 1: telling me that's what it is. It has to be that,
Speaker 1: and and a lot of people are just like, well,
Speaker 1: I'd rather I'd rather know that, find that out for myself,
Speaker 1: you know, or maybe narrow it down to three possible things.
Speaker 1: And if they tell me one of those three things,
Speaker 1: I'll believe it. If they say something, you know, from
Speaker 1: out and left field, then I'm gonna question that. I
Speaker 1: asked them why I'm gonna follow up with him. But
Speaker 1: it's just easier to accept if you do that research
Speaker 1: ahead of time. And the problem is that if you
Speaker 1: want to access the tractor's computer, you are essentially breaking
Speaker 1: the law, because the Digital Millennial Copyright Act specifically makes
Speaker 1: it illegal to try to get around or break protection
Speaker 1: around any sort of DRM. Now, typically we think of
Speaker 1: dr M as something that happens to be attached to
Speaker 1: a music file or a computer file, not attractor, but
Speaker 1: the principle is the same. And while I'm not necessarily
Speaker 1: I don't know that we're going to live in a
Speaker 1: world where John Deere is going to sue a farmer
Speaker 1: because the farmer chose to get around. The point is
Speaker 1: under the law, they would be completely within their right
Speaker 1: to do that because the d m c A allows
Speaker 1: for it. And that's why the Right to Repair Act
Speaker 1: this this group, these various elements of legislation that are
Speaker 1: in different stages. Only Massachusetts, I think, actually passed a
Speaker 1: Right to Repair Act into law. But what that says
Speaker 1: is that it should they should get an exception essentially
Speaker 1: to d m c A that that in order to
Speaker 1: do repairs on something, uh, it should not be considered
Speaker 1: illegal to bypass this protection because it means that you
Speaker 1: have created kind of almost like a monopoly. Like you
Speaker 1: you have created only one means of addressing the problem.
Speaker 1: And it also means that people who are like you know,
Speaker 1: independent mechanics who do not work for any specific manufacturer
Speaker 1: or dealership or whatever, they're seeing their business decline because
Speaker 1: if more and more of the vehicles have to be
Speaker 1: taken to those dealerships or individual or manufacturers, then the mechanics, don't.
Speaker 1: They don't. They aren't getting as much work less and
Speaker 1: less need for the older equipment to be repaired, right
Speaker 1: unless they start to turn towards using that. Can I
Speaker 1: can I just say that we're we're not picking on
Speaker 1: John Dear. It's just an easy example for us to
Speaker 1: make that everybody is familiar with. But all of the
Speaker 1: modern tractor manufacturers are doing similar things. Yes, So it's
Speaker 1: not like, you know, John DearS, you know some evil
Speaker 1: corporation doing this on their own, and that's the only
Speaker 1: one that's like that, And to get their equipment, you
Speaker 1: have to submit to this. It's it's everybody, and and
Speaker 1: these companies have, you know, very understandable reasons for pursuing
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff too. It's not like their motives are.
Speaker 1: They're not all slightly whiplash. They're not twirling their mustaches
Speaker 1: as the trains coming down. Tis. But don't you agree though,
Speaker 1: that if they wanted to make it easier on the
Speaker 1: on the ordinary farmer that they were on the on
Speaker 1: the average farmer, that they would maybe not make it
Speaker 1: password encrypted. You I think, I think what my own
Speaker 1: personal opinion is that they could throw in a simple
Speaker 1: device that hooks up to the tractor and gives a
Speaker 1: readout of exactly what's wrong. Maybe just a diagnostic tool,
Speaker 1: but maybe it's something that's uh boy, that know, what
Speaker 1: level do you allow it to go to? Though? Because
Speaker 1: you start allowing everybody to recalibrate your machines, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be problems and they're going to blame the manufacturers. So
Speaker 1: how would you how would you ever determine what level
Speaker 1: you would allow them to fix or repair their own machine.
Speaker 1: This is a factory repair. This is something that we
Speaker 1: have to do right, and and when you are getting
Speaker 1: into this level of sophistication and complexity, it is not
Speaker 1: an easy questioned answer, right because, uh, some people, you know,
Speaker 1: you might say, all right, well, here are all the
Speaker 1: basic mechanical systems that we think people should reasonably be
Speaker 1: expected to be able to address. Here are some of
Speaker 1: the ones that we think are beyond the pale when
Speaker 1: it comes to the average person's ability to access it
Speaker 1: and change it. The problem is then make sure that
Speaker 1: the ones that you can't touch, essentially aren't also going
Speaker 1: to completely shut down the vehicle should they go bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's incredibly difficult there's there's so many
Speaker 1: possibilities here that I don't know what the answer is.
Speaker 1: I really don't but it. But it does seem to
Speaker 1: me that if they would at least allow them access
Speaker 1: to to look into the T C T E C
Speaker 1: U and figure out what's going on, at least at
Speaker 1: least to understand, all right, the problem is with this
Speaker 1: hydralic sensor over here on this on my number eight
Speaker 1: wheel or however they designate that. UM, then they would
Speaker 1: at least know, Okay, that's where I'm gonna look and
Speaker 1: that's where the problem is gonna be. They had no UM,
Speaker 1: it just gives you a better a better sense of
Speaker 1: what's going on. Well no, no, I I agree. I
Speaker 1: think I think being ignorant of the situation just adds
Speaker 1: to stress. Instead of just calling the manufacturer and saying, well,
Speaker 1: my tractor doesn't work, I mean, then you would at
Speaker 1: least say, like, well, I'm having a problem with my
Speaker 1: my number eight wheel. The hydralic sensor is doing this.
Speaker 1: But you can't even do that now, and that's the problem.
Speaker 1: So super frustrating on both sides. Now, one thing that's
Speaker 1: not frustrating, the thing that we wanted to kind of
Speaker 1: conclude with is that some farmers have found really cre
Speaker 1: it of means to boosting their efficiency by taking matters
Speaker 1: into their own hands, by actually hacking either systems or
Speaker 1: are tools in order to get more efficient. Scott, you
Speaker 1: looked into this source of yes, I did. There's a
Speaker 1: site called farm hacks. Now. Farmhas kind of came about
Speaker 1: when I was reading about the gray market and um,
Speaker 1: you know some of the software proprietary stuff you're talking about,
Speaker 1: like maybe a friend of a friend as a laptop
Speaker 1: that you could use the software in the passwords. Well,
Speaker 1: they said, well, there there are sites out there that
Speaker 1: can help you with some problems, not all problems like that,
Speaker 1: but look into farm hacks and there's a site called
Speaker 1: farm hacked dot org. And I can just give you
Speaker 1: a few examples, just quick examples, but there's probably I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe two hundred examples on this site so
Speaker 1: far of just really simple things. And it's exactly what
Speaker 1: it sounds like. It's it's they're not all high tech either. Um,
Speaker 1: some of them are are you know, large grand scale projects,
Speaker 1: and others are very very small, like made in a
Speaker 1: five gallon bucket type small. So it really really small like,
Speaker 1: let's say they got a problem of I don't know,
Speaker 1: the the the metal pan that you put the chickens
Speaker 1: water in on your small farm, it keeps freezing in
Speaker 1: the wintertime. But the solutions that are out there, you know,
Speaker 1: in a I guess in the consumer realm, are you
Speaker 1: know a two heater for this thing? And you don't
Speaker 1: want to pay two bucks for that? You just got
Speaker 1: a small farm. You've got ten chickens to take care over,
Speaker 1: twenty chickens? What do you do you want to you
Speaker 1: want the five dollar solutions, So you know, you go
Speaker 1: to this farm haack site and they've got a solution
Speaker 1: there for you. And it's things like that. So um.
Speaker 1: One thing that we mentioned earlier was the the automatic
Speaker 1: weating machine, the robotic wheating machine. Well, here's an idea
Speaker 1: that this one at farm farm Hacks had and they're
Speaker 1: called farm bikes, and there's a bunch of different types
Speaker 1: of farm bikes, but one of them that really caught
Speaker 1: my eye was the type that writers live face down
Speaker 1: just above the ground, so you're you're kind of on
Speaker 1: a almost like in a sling, just above the ground,
Speaker 1: kind of maybe a little less than arms length and
Speaker 1: big wheels that go on the rose you know where
Speaker 1: there aren't plants, and you peddle this with your feet
Speaker 1: behind you, so it's like a reverse recumbent bike almost.
Speaker 1: You're you're laying head first, so you're like you're like
Speaker 1: flying over the weeds like Superman. Yes, picking weeds. Yes,
Speaker 1: And there's buckets hanging next to you and you can
Speaker 1: pick them. And it's very very simple, and you can
Speaker 1: have two people, three people, however big you want to
Speaker 1: make this device, you know, this this thing and again
Speaker 1: it's foot powered, you know, it's pedal powered. It's just
Speaker 1: like a bicycle. It's just a rework bike really. So
Speaker 1: it's a very low tech version of the automated weeding
Speaker 1: machine that you talked about. It's only it's not automated.
Speaker 1: It's human powered and and humans are are suspended they're
Speaker 1: doing that. But it's it's a weird thing to look at,
Speaker 1: but it's it is so smart. When you look at it,
Speaker 1: you realize, like that that's the way to pick wheeds.
Speaker 1: I kind of want to try that, just to try
Speaker 1: it now. It's sounds funny. I'd almost like to ride
Speaker 1: it fast on the street. Only thing is that you
Speaker 1: would you would imagine that their ability to maneuver is
Speaker 1: probably somewhat limited, seeing is how it was designed to
Speaker 1: go straight. It's mostly straight. The turning is a little subject,
Speaker 1: all right. So there's a few and well just kind
Speaker 1: of let's quickly go through these. We're near in the
Speaker 1: end here. But um, of course there's a lot of
Speaker 1: three D printed parts on the site. And that's interesting
Speaker 1: because you know, I know you've talked about them many times.
Speaker 1: We've talked about them on car stuff. Um, we're talking
Speaker 1: about things like seed rollers or spray nozzles. Any any
Speaker 1: non electric tractor part maybe far you know, any any
Speaker 1: implement part that you can think of, you could you
Speaker 1: could do a three D printed part for that. Um,
Speaker 1: how about this homemade livestock scales for about a third
Speaker 1: of the price. It's something you don't really think about.
Speaker 1: You have to weigh those cattle before they go on
Speaker 1: the truck to the to the market. How do you
Speaker 1: do that? Well, you have to buy a scale, and
Speaker 1: the scale can be you know, thousands of dollars, maybe
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars for one. If you could do the
Speaker 1: same thing, if you can create your own for about
Speaker 1: a third of the price of course you're going to
Speaker 1: do that, so why not and it's just as effective. Um,
Speaker 1: how about let's see quick attachments. Uh, you know ideas
Speaker 1: for quick attachment. UM, for things that require like maybe
Speaker 1: a three point hitch, very difficult to lie up and
Speaker 1: get it get correct, but just simple ways around that.
Speaker 1: You know, things that that speed up your time, that
Speaker 1: that maximize efficiency. It's like a plug in play approach. Well,
Speaker 1: it's very very similar. You're exactly right. Um, Okay, So
Speaker 1: we talked about mobile temperature alarms and things like that. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of program or apps out there I
Speaker 1: guess that are not advertising the site, but people are saying,
Speaker 1: I use this one. It really works, so you can
Speaker 1: go there and kind of Again, this is back to
Speaker 1: the the shared ideas, the community aspect of the collective expertise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that way, you know, if your greenhouse gets
Speaker 1: above or below temperature, you're alerted no matter where you are.
Speaker 1: If you're in town buying feed for the livestock or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know that the greenhouse is getting a little too hot.
Speaker 1: I gotta get back there and set that, or you
Speaker 1: can manage or you know, maybe it could be an
Speaker 1: automated system. Yeah, So what about if UM Again I
Speaker 1: mentioned the five gallon bucket thing, but UM humidifiers for
Speaker 1: small buildings in barns or whatever, you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: a simple thing to do. There's UH bucket based humidifiers
Speaker 1: that you can make that are continually refilled themselves. So
Speaker 1: it's a self sustaining system. That's really cool. It's very smart,
Speaker 1: and it's there on that site. UM also compost sensors
Speaker 1: again for recording temperatures inside the compost piles. And you
Speaker 1: wouldn't think that's important, but some of those compost piles
Speaker 1: can self combust. They can spontaneously combust because they get
Speaker 1: too incredible temperatures. I've seen piles of mulch and dirt
Speaker 1: and things that that are steaming in the winter because
Speaker 1: they get so high. You have to go out and
Speaker 1: turn them. They keep them cooler, they'll they'll just burn up.
Speaker 1: Compost is the exact same way. What about biodesel biodiesel
Speaker 1: processing trailers. Oh, we talked about biodiesel quite a few
Speaker 1: times on text, so also on forward thinking biodiesel is
Speaker 1: pretty cool stuff. You you can essentially use that in
Speaker 1: place of diesel. Some diesel engines take it like you
Speaker 1: could have pure biodiesel. Some diesel engines will process it
Speaker 1: just fine. There are other ones where you've got to
Speaker 1: have more of a mix between diesel and biodiesel. But
Speaker 1: so this is this is something that you could use
Speaker 1: like like a self can paying trailers. So you've got
Speaker 1: a biodiesel processing um I'll call it a plant, but
Speaker 1: it's smaller than that. It's a it's about diesel processing
Speaker 1: um UH system, and it's it's a way to house
Speaker 1: that in a trailer safely and to be able to
Speaker 1: use your product, your your waste products, whatever that happens
Speaker 1: to be. So whatever you farm, you're able to use
Speaker 1: the corn husks or whatever to create or algae or
Speaker 1: whatever you have access to to be able to create
Speaker 1: your own fuel for your own farm. So it's a
Speaker 1: very smart thing to do. Yeah, I mean, otherwise you've
Speaker 1: got the stuff that would just be waste that you know,
Speaker 1: you might be able to find one or two other
Speaker 1: uses for it. But reuse of the stuff, making use
Speaker 1: of as much of the crop as possible is another
Speaker 1: means of reducing environmental impact and increasing efficiency cutting your
Speaker 1: fuel costs at the same time, very very important for farmers.
Speaker 1: So things like pedal powered root washers for like things
Speaker 1: like carrots and and potatoes, you know, just small stuff
Speaker 1: like this that you wouldn't think of, but you know,
Speaker 1: for somebody who is just going to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe harvest a small area that's you know, a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred feet and they want to take it into
Speaker 1: a local farmers market or something. They gotta find some
Speaker 1: way to watch that before they bring it into town,
Speaker 1: and that can be a very time consuming process. So
Speaker 1: these pedal powered route washers that are very effective, very efficient,
Speaker 1: um smart design. You just use an old bicycle in
Speaker 1: a tub of some kind. Yeah, I've actually I've actually
Speaker 1: seen an entire uh nonprofit startup that does this very thing.
Speaker 1: They take bicycles and they repurpose the bicycles into pedal
Speaker 1: powered machinery much many of many of them are dedicated
Speaker 1: toward farming, and they end up bringing them to places
Speaker 1: where electricity isn't even always a part of life. So
Speaker 1: you're seeing this in developing nations where it's really improving
Speaker 1: people's ability to do more work with less effort even
Speaker 1: in the absence of electricity. So agriculture, they could use
Speaker 1: it to power radio. They use it to just just
Speaker 1: about anything, right, I mean, power something that cooks. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just amazing. I saw one that was
Speaker 1: a pedal powered blender. I think you'd go ahead and
Speaker 1: make your mixed drinks right there. That's pretty good. I
Speaker 1: could use that this weekend. Yeah. Oh man, So let's
Speaker 1: just talk for a second about how hot it is
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. Yes, no kidding. The farmers have got to
Speaker 1: be really feeling the heat right now. Yeah. And you
Speaker 1: know that affects them because it's not every day that
Speaker 1: when you know, the temperatures are in the one hundred
Speaker 1: degree range and humid like this, It's got its own
Speaker 1: heat and is around some days. It's got its own
Speaker 1: set of circumstances to go along with it. And and
Speaker 1: I don't I don't have any idea what that does
Speaker 1: to farmers, but I'm sure that it just drives them
Speaker 1: crazy because you never know when it's coming. It's coming
Speaker 1: if you don't know what week that's going to hit. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this has been a really fun topic to talk about. This.
Speaker 1: This is again one of those things where I hadn't
Speaker 1: really lent it much thought I really should. I've got
Speaker 1: a cousin who is very much in this world. He
Speaker 1: and IT does incredible work. He flies all over the
Speaker 1: world working with farmers to help increase crop yields. I
Speaker 1: should talk with him and see what other interesting technologies
Speaker 1: are on the horizon because he's awesome. What am I
Speaker 1: doing on the other side, Well, he's in Tokyo. It's
Speaker 1: hard to touch base with it. I know a little bit,
Speaker 1: but he knows a lot. Yeah, yeah, yea, he knows
Speaker 1: better than to come onto a podcast with me because
Speaker 1: because we're related. So at any rate, this thanks Scott,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming onto the show to
Speaker 1: talk to me about this, and thank for having me again.
Speaker 1: I I appreciate it. It's always fun to do a
Speaker 1: guest But yeah, and it was just great to to
Speaker 1: really look into, you know, the ways that this world
Speaker 1: overlaps with the automotive world as well as the frustrations
Speaker 1: as well as not just the frustrations, but the incredible
Speaker 1: potential this technology has to to help farmers in the future.
Speaker 1: So really exciting stuff. I mean, uh, time we can
Speaker 1: talk about drones, uh in a way that is positive,
Speaker 1: I am happy to do it. So guys, if you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions out there for a future episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. You can write in the email addresses tech
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me
Speaker 1: a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler. The handle is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff h s W. You can catch Scott on
Speaker 1: Car Stuff along with Ben Boland, who is also a
Speaker 1: frequent guest host here on tech Stuff. You guys cover
Speaker 1: all things cars and vehicle related. Really any interesting shows
Speaker 1: coming up in the near future, oh Man, anything and
Speaker 1: everything we do. We cover anything and so we talked
Speaker 1: about Elvis is Hurts recently. Wow, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about a local auto manufacturer that more people don't really
Speaker 1: know about, the Hanaf Okay, just a lot of different things,
Speaker 1: and we do a lot of history on our show too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's awesome. You can really learn a lot about some
Speaker 1: of the brands that have become either either have come
Speaker 1: and gone or our mainstays on the road now and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about them. Just check out car Stops.
Speaker 1: Great show and uh I will talk to you guys
Speaker 1: again really soon for more on this embassens another pathics
Speaker 1: because it has to have work dot Com