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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio

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Speaker 1: and hold the tech are you? It's time for a

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Speaker 1: tech Stuff classic episode. This episode originally published July six,

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Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen. This titled High Tech Farming and Scott

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Speaker 1: Benjamin joined me for this show. I hope you're doing well, Scott,

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Speaker 1: miss your buddy, and yeah, let's sit back and listen

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Speaker 1: to this classic episode. I was amazed at how technology

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Speaker 1: is rapidly changing the face of agriculture because in my mind,

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Speaker 1: it's one of those things that's been kind of set

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Speaker 1: technologically speaking for decades, and it just shows how how

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Speaker 1: ignorant I was of the whole thing. I had just

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Speaker 1: a tiny bit of insight on this UM Our listener,

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Speaker 1: our listening audience UM back in two thousand and ten.

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Speaker 1: I think we did an episode about some of the

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Speaker 1: some of the stuff that was happening back then. But

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Speaker 1: even since two thousand ten, there's been a lot of advances.

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Speaker 1: But we have a few listeners in our audience that, UM,

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Speaker 1: you know, where their their ranch hands or the work

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Speaker 1: on the farm and they listen to the podcast as

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Speaker 1: they you know, or killing the fields or whatever they're

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Speaker 1: doing tending to the herd. And um, they said, you

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Speaker 1: know what would be really interesting I don't think a

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Speaker 1: lot of people know about this is just how advanced

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Speaker 1: tractors are becoming, Just how advanced, um, you know, barnes

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Speaker 1: themselves are becoming. It's not just the machinery, it's also

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Speaker 1: you know, everything that goes around around growing or or

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Speaker 1: umvest harvesting and like maximum potential yields. All that has

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Speaker 1: to do with with modern technology more or less now,

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Speaker 1: I guess, um, it's all becoming pushed far more into

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Speaker 1: the future than you would ever think. Yeah, And and

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Speaker 1: it's interesting because we're at a time where we're seeing

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Speaker 1: a decreasingly small percentage of the population being dedicated to

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Speaker 1: the roles of ranching and farming. Right if you look

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Speaker 1: at United States history, this is particularly true in the

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Speaker 1: U S, but you can see it in other places

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Speaker 1: as well. If you look at the beginning of the

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Speaker 1: twentieth century, so around nineteen hundred or so, about half

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Speaker 1: of the population of the United States were farmers. And

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Speaker 1: then you get to and before that was even larger numbers.

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Speaker 1: Um the percentage wise, you know, obviously the population itself

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Speaker 1: was smaller, but percentage wise it was there were many

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Speaker 1: more farmers. And what happened was this little thing called

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Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution. You've probably heard that term, Scott, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I figured you might. So the Industrial Revolution actually meant

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Speaker 1: the mechanization of lots of different industries, including agriculture. And

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Speaker 1: so around nineteen hundred, your chief means of operating the

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Speaker 1: various machines in agriculture were it was horsepower, literal horsepower,

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Speaker 1: actually using horses. Yeah, it wasn't until the nineteen twenties

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirties the tractors really started to get traction in agriculture.

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Speaker 1: And then, oh boy, I'm gonna have to leave. I know,

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's I've lost somebody co hosts this way. Actually,

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Speaker 1: to be fair, Chris, Chris was way worse about puns

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Speaker 1: than I was. He was punk. Yeah, but at any rate. Yeah, So,

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Speaker 1: so you get to the nineteen fifties nineteen sixties, those

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Speaker 1: numbers start increasing, but as the mechanization increases, the number

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Speaker 1: or the percentage of population that needs to be farmers

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Speaker 1: or ranchers decreased, because you didn't need that much labor, right,

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Speaker 1: you were able to offload the labor to to mechanization

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Speaker 1: to some extent. Sure. Well, how many times have we

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Speaker 1: heard in the past, I mean, in the past decade

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Speaker 1: even that very soon the world population is going to

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Speaker 1: outpace the capability that we have to produce food for

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Speaker 1: that population. Sure, And it's always I mean, I've I've

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Speaker 1: heard this for a long long time. It's not just

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Speaker 1: ten years, maybe of years or even even longer than that.

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Speaker 1: Probably I just haven't been privy to that information. But

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Speaker 1: it always seems like they say the world's population will

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Speaker 1: exceed the world's capacity to produce food by the year X,

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Speaker 1: and the year X is always about twenty years out,

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Speaker 1: ten or twenty years out, and and it always seems

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Speaker 1: like we always overcome then some way. So and this

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Speaker 1: is I found this interesting. I found an article um

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Speaker 1: in the Guardian fromen that was talking about developing nations

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Speaker 1: and uh some innovations, some revolutionary farming innovations, and they

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Speaker 1: said that in the last fifty years agricultural production has

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Speaker 1: actually tripled in the last fifty years. Azing. Well, the

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Speaker 1: thing is you're saying that the number of farmers has

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Speaker 1: gone down the number. The amount of production has tripled

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Speaker 1: in the last fifty years. So they're becoming more efficient

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Speaker 1: and every year that's a challenge for them to become

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Speaker 1: more and more efficient with less and less people, less

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Speaker 1: and less property to do so, because you know, the

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Speaker 1: the farmland is at a premium right now in a

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Speaker 1: lot of countries, a lot of places that um, they're

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Speaker 1: they're severe government restrictions on the amount of space that

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Speaker 1: you're allowed to use for a farm. They're they're building structures,

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Speaker 1: you know, so that they're building up instead of out. Um.

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Speaker 1: And that's a way to increase efficiency and and it

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Speaker 1: really a productivity and yields from their crops no matter

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Speaker 1: what it is, it's tomatoes, cucumbers, whatever happens to be. Uh,

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Speaker 1: some of these things that they're even finding that building um,

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Speaker 1: you know, here's the difference. Like instead of building a

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Speaker 1: six ft roof or an eight foot roof on a greenhouse,

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Speaker 1: if they put a twelve foot roof on a greenhouse,

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Speaker 1: they can double production. And I think it was tomatoes

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Speaker 1: and cucumbers. That's pretty incredible. Yeah, So things like that,

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Speaker 1: small things like that can make a big, big difference.

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Speaker 1: And you know, you're talking about the increase in population.

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Speaker 1: The number you're going to find if you do some

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Speaker 1: searches on this on Google. I think the number that's

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Speaker 1: most frequently cited is about by twenty fifty, we're looking

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Speaker 1: at nine point two billion people on Earth. I have

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Speaker 1: today's number, by the way, Okay, I looked at it

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Speaker 1: just this morning, so as of today, it's about seven

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Speaker 1: point three billion people. And I watched the counter for

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Speaker 1: a short amount of time. There's a pretty interesting site

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Speaker 1: called um it's called world ometers dot info, and it's

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Speaker 1: just a world population clock really, but you can watch

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Speaker 1: all kinds of numbers as they go up and down

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Speaker 1: depending on what you're looking at. But pretty fascinating. Seven

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Speaker 1: point three billion as of now. But it's steadily clicking up.

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Speaker 1: That's pretty yeah, I mean, it's it's amazing. It's also

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Speaker 1: a little sobering because once we hit nine point two

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Speaker 1: billion people, the other estimations say that at that point

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Speaker 1: by we will need to have increased food production from

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Speaker 1: today's standards by another seventy okay question here though, all right,

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Speaker 1: here's here's now. They know the numbers are staggering, and

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Speaker 1: if you look back at that way, you look at

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Speaker 1: that site that I was just talking about today, and

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Speaker 1: I didn't write down all these numbers because it was

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Speaker 1: just way too much. There's a lot of information there,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's all stats. It's a pretty fascinating site.

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Speaker 1: But they said that in this is just to give

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Speaker 1: you an idea of in the seventy there were roughly

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Speaker 1: half as many people in the world as there are today.

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Speaker 1: That means we've doubled since nineteen seventy that short amount

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Speaker 1: of time. Now they say that due to growth rate decreases,

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Speaker 1: it'll take about two hundred years that population to double again.

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Speaker 1: But then I look at that number and I think, well,

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Speaker 1: how many people were there in nineteen seventy There must

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Speaker 1: have been um, roughly three and a half billion people. Ballpark. Well,

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Speaker 1: they're talking about going from you know, seven and a

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Speaker 1: half billion up to fifteen billion people. That's why, because

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Speaker 1: it's an additional seven and a half billion people instead

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Speaker 1: of four billion people. So maybe that's the reason. But still, uh,

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Speaker 1: the disparity between the number of you know, what is

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Speaker 1: that forty five years and you know, um, two hundred years.

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Speaker 1: That's that's an incredible amount of time. I mean, so

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Speaker 1: how does all that factor into I mean, there's so

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Speaker 1: many numbers here at play that had a hard time

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Speaker 1: figuring out where we stand as far as when the

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Speaker 1: food's going to run out. Well, I think it's even

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Speaker 1: more complicated than that, Scott, because also we're seeing more

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Speaker 1: countries kind of emerge from developing to getting to developed status,

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Speaker 1: as people become more affluent, as they as middle classes

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Speaker 1: begin to emerge in various populations. One of the first

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Speaker 1: markers of that is that people want access to a

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Speaker 1: better diet that includes more variety of foods and a

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Speaker 1: higher quality of those foods. So not only are we

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Speaker 1: going to need to increase production in order to meet

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Speaker 1: the needs of a growing population, but we need to

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Speaker 1: make sure that that is a varied approach, not like

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Speaker 1: well we'll just we'll just grow more rice or more

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Speaker 1: grains of some sort. It has to actually be a

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Speaker 1: variety of foods, which means that we have to start

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Speaker 1: really looking at strategies um for multiple reasons. And so

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Speaker 1: I'm wondering, when you were doing your research here we're

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Speaker 1: going into ag tech, did you come across the term

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Speaker 1: precision agriculture. This is exciting stuff. I think it is.

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Speaker 1: I mean it really comes down to what you would call,

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Speaker 1: I guess a smart farm. Yeah, And I don't know

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Speaker 1: that's a term or if that's something I came up

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Speaker 1: with her, I came across it somewhere, but but it

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Speaker 1: does seem to me like it's smart farming. And exactly

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Speaker 1: that's exactly right. I mean, it's just in the same

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Speaker 1: way that you would think of a smart home. This

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Speaker 1: is very apt. But precision farming. I mean that that's

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Speaker 1: it seems so odd because that's something that we never

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Speaker 1: would have heard of maybe ten years ago, fifteen years ago.

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Speaker 1: It just wasn't that way it was, and it wasn't

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Speaker 1: haphazard by any means, right, It was just that it

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Speaker 1: wasn't to the to the inch precise as it is today.

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Speaker 1: I mean, sure that the farmer would see until his

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Speaker 1: road um in his road, his field in straight rows,

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Speaker 1: and he would know that I can get roughly this

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Speaker 1: amount of seeds in this row and etcetera. But now

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Speaker 1: we're down to planning to the very inch to get

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Speaker 1: that maximum yield and to the very second, like not

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Speaker 1: just not just in in distance, but in time as well.

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Speaker 1: So in ages past, you knew you planted in the

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Speaker 1: spring and you would harvest in the fall. But with

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Speaker 1: precision agriculture, it is not a joke to say you're

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Speaker 1: going to want to plant on Wednesday. Like you can

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Speaker 1: end up getting data that is so precise and it's

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Speaker 1: dependent upon multiple factors. Right, So we're talking about a

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Speaker 1: lot of different technologies and processes that have to work

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Speaker 1: for precision agriculture to work. So I'm just gonna run

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Speaker 1: down some of them. You need sensors. Those sensors are

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Speaker 1: going to detect things like humidity, the moisture level in

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Speaker 1: the in the soil, the actual acidity of the soil,

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Speaker 1: the chemical composition. You want to have other sensors that

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Speaker 1: can detect when plants need water. There's actually a sensor

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Speaker 1: that is a leaf sensor. It attaches to a leaf

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Speaker 1: and it measures the change in voltage that happens when

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Speaker 1: the leaf contracts. Now, a contracting leaf is an indicator

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Speaker 1: that the plant needs water. Yeah, so you get imagine

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Speaker 1: you are a farmer and you get alert on your

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Speaker 1: smartphone that says you need to water the fields today

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Speaker 1: because this is an early indicator that the plants are

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Speaker 1: in are quote unquote thirsty, which is pretty incredible. I

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Speaker 1: hate to work in a nursery and uh, like a

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Speaker 1: tree nursery, not not a baby nursery, but a tree nursery.

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Speaker 1: And uh, you know some of these hot summer days

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Speaker 1: in July and August. I'll he how we knew when

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Speaker 1: we had to water is what we looked at the

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Speaker 1: field of trees, you know, the entire nursery and said,

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Speaker 1: it looks like they're a little wilted with better throw

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Speaker 1: some water on the plants. Right, That's what we did.

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Speaker 1: I mean it was it was just kind of seat

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Speaker 1: of the pants stuff. And and there's less and less

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Speaker 1: seat of the pants farming going on now. It's more precise,

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Speaker 1: as you said. And those sensors I mean that you mentioned.

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Speaker 1: It's not just that there's sensors and you have to

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Speaker 1: go to a central location even to to read or

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Speaker 1: monitor those. You don't have to can Some of them

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Speaker 1: will send mobile alerts to the farmer via smartphone. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're all these these systems now that you can put

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Speaker 1: in place at your farm that allows these sensors to

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Speaker 1: interact with a network and alert you to minute changes

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Speaker 1: so that you can make big decisions with the best technology,

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Speaker 1: the best information available. Other tech that you will see.

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Speaker 1: In precision agriculture include satellites or drones, and these are

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Speaker 1: specifically to monitor the status of crops throughout the year

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Speaker 1: so that you can determine what the maturity level of

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Speaker 1: the crops happens to be at any given point. You know,

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Speaker 1: you want to harvest the crops at the right maturity

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Speaker 1: level so that you minimize crop loss because obviously if

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Speaker 1: you if you go too early, then stuff isn't right yet.

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Speaker 1: You're not gonna be able to sell all the crops

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Speaker 1: that you harvest if you go too late. Same sort

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Speaker 1: of problem, except of course on the other side of it,

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Speaker 1: so you want to be able to get the crops.

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Speaker 1: You want to harvest them when it's absolutely at their peak,

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Speaker 1: and that way you maximize the yield, you minimize the loss.

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Speaker 1: These are all different factors that go into the idea

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Speaker 1: of precision agriculture. Meanwhile, on the on the software side,

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Speaker 1: you have to have computer algorithms that are incredibly sophisticated

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Speaker 1: so that they can crunch these numbers and make it

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Speaker 1: meaningful information that farmers can act on. In other words,

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Speaker 1: they provide information that can can build maps visual visual

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Speaker 1: representations of what your field looks like what what the

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Speaker 1: terrain you're talking about looks like, Um, you know, where

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Speaker 1: their hot spots are, where the plants are growing and

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Speaker 1: their best where they're not growing quite so well? What

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Speaker 1: the reasons could be behind that? They may analyze, Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, why this this one sector of the field

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Speaker 1: isn't maybe producing as much as it possibly could versus

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Speaker 1: this sector that's just one yards away yet is is overproducing.

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Speaker 1: It's producing more than they expected. And why is that?

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Speaker 1: Maybe they can you know, learn something from that section

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Speaker 1: or sector and uh and incorporate that into the next

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Speaker 1: year's crop. We'll be back with more of this classic

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Speaker 1: episode of tech stuff after this quick break. If you're

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Speaker 1: looking at farms, the overwhelming majority of farms in the

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Speaker 1: US are family owned and operated, right ninety Like in

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Speaker 1: the nine upper ninety percentile. Only less than five percent

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Speaker 1: of farms in the United States are owned by non

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Speaker 1: family operated corporations. So even though they're they're huge, we're

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Speaker 1: talking about like craft would own a giant farm or

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Speaker 1: something like, right, you know that they would they would

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Speaker 1: grow their own products, yes, or monsanto or you know

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Speaker 1: there's tons of them, right, but at any rate, Uh,

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Speaker 1: that only that only accounts for less than five percent

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Speaker 1: of all the farms in the United States. However, the

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Speaker 1: midsized farms are slowly getting edged out. In the US.

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Speaker 1: You've got a lot of small farms that are doing

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Speaker 1: all right, particularly in markets where there's a high value

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Speaker 1: placed on organic farming that kind of thing, and local

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Speaker 1: is localized farming, um, but it's mostly turning into really

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Speaker 1: big farms and small farms in the midsize farms are

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Speaker 1: starting to get weeded out. But with those big farms,

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Speaker 1: you can have such a huge farm that it is

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Speaker 1: completely possible that one part of your land is getting

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Speaker 1: adequate moisture from a weather system moving through and another

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Speaker 1: part isn't. And this is the kind of technology. These sensors,

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Speaker 1: the the drones, and the satellite imagery are the kind

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Speaker 1: of things that tell you, oh, the southern part of

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Speaker 1: my farm is fine, that's the weather system came through

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Speaker 1: provide enough water, but the northern part is in need

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Speaker 1: of irrigating, So then you can irrigate just the parts

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Speaker 1: of your farm that needed saving water. It also means

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Speaker 1: that one of the important technologies with precision agriculture is

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Speaker 1: incredibly accurate weather forecasting. It's incredibly important. And you can

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Speaker 1: extrapolate this to ranching as well livestock and herds, because

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Speaker 1: you know, they're they're enormous ranches in Texas and California, Montana,

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Speaker 1: Montana that are are the exact same thing you're talking about,

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Speaker 1: where weather systems moved through and only affect maybe the

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Speaker 1: southern era southeast eatern corner of that of that ranch.

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Speaker 1: And it's very possible that you know, the ranchers might

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Speaker 1: decide I'm gonna move my my flock, my herd out

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Speaker 1: of that region in time to avoid that blizzard or

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Speaker 1: that that that horrific thunderstorm that's going to come through

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Speaker 1: on Wednesday, or you know, whatever it happened to be.

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Speaker 1: So ranchers deal with a lot of the same things.

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Speaker 1: And of course we're talking about food production still, so

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Speaker 1: all kind of ties in. Can I say one more

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Speaker 1: thing about drones before we move on? In fact, maybe

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Speaker 1: a little bit more than one thing, But of course

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Speaker 1: there's the obvious uses for them monitoring crops um you know,

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Speaker 1: looking at you know, distant or remote locations that um

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Speaker 1: or are difficult to get to for a farmer, so

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Speaker 1: that you know, you can daily fly a drone up

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Speaker 1: the hillside and look at your your coffee crop or

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Speaker 1: whatever it happens to be. UM. You know people that

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Speaker 1: use terraced farms, you know for space and and UM

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Speaker 1: you know, just irrigation capabilities I guess, or you know whatever,

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Speaker 1: so that it's the most optimal way to grow crops.

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Speaker 1: It might be the most difficult to also reach by

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Speaker 1: foot so or by vehicle. UH, drones kind of eliminate

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Speaker 1: all that. And the other thing that is really really

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Speaker 1: important is that UM drones are capable of delivering fertilizer

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Speaker 1: and insecticide at precise locations. So you know, the maps

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Speaker 1: that we just talked about. With the software programs that

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Speaker 1: create maps and and show you exactly how crops are

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Speaker 1: growing in certain regions or sectors, you can precisely accurately

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Speaker 1: deliver the right amount of insecticides or or pesticides or

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Speaker 1: whatever happens to be that you need in that area

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Speaker 1: to that just that one sector via a drone you know,

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Speaker 1: as a sprayer underneath. And whether we're talking about you know,

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Speaker 1: small helicopters or UM. You know the quad copters that

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Speaker 1: we see often kind of eight eight one of the octicopters.

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Speaker 1: UM they replace. Uh, you know the guys that would

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Speaker 1: fly in those crop dusters. Have you ever seen a

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Speaker 1: crop duster in action? Okay, they're they are fascinating, aren't they.

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Speaker 1: I mean you see there, those guys are like daredevils.

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Speaker 1: I mean it's like the best um um air show

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Speaker 1: stunt you've ever seen when you see them going really

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Speaker 1: i mean remarkably low elt street. What's it's startling if

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Speaker 1: you're in let's say that you're driving through the Midwest.

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Speaker 1: You're in Indiana, Ohio, somewhere in there, and uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: maybe two yards ahead of you you see an airplane

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Speaker 1: buzz through that's low enough that it would strike a

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Speaker 1: semi if there was a semi on the road. It's

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Speaker 1: that low. It's going underwires. It's it's amazing. Uh. It's

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Speaker 1: a it's a very dangerous profession. In fact, it often

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Speaker 1: falls in the top ten Dangerous professions list every year.

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Speaker 1: Usually it's it's two or you know, number two, three,

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Speaker 1: four somewhere in there behind. Uh. Fishers, you know, anybody

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Speaker 1: who's fishing Alaskan fishermen or whatever. Yeah, that's why they

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Speaker 1: call it deadlyest catch yea, and loggers. Loggers I think

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Speaker 1: are usually like number one and two between fishers and laggers,

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Speaker 1: and then uh, aircraft pilots. I think they kind of

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Speaker 1: lumped them in with airline pilots, you know, like um

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Speaker 1: passenger airlines and uh like bush pilots. Bush pilots and

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Speaker 1: crop dusters likely account for most of the deaths in

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Speaker 1: that field because of the terrain that they fly in,

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Speaker 1: how low they fly, the conditions are inherently more risk

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Speaker 1: exactly right. And wind farms, now we haven't even talked

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Speaker 1: about from it, but wind farming, uh, that is a

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Speaker 1: huge danger for crop dusters, for human crop dusters, because

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Speaker 1: they often strike those poles or strike the the rotors

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Speaker 1: of course, you know, because they're flying in these extremely

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Speaker 1: fast low vehicles, and their their focused, to be honest,

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Speaker 1: is on the crops. It's not necessarily on that new

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Speaker 1: wind turbine post that's just putting put up by within

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Speaker 1: the last month or so, or the fifty others that

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Speaker 1: are in that field. So it can be very dangerous.

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Speaker 1: And and I'm glad that you know some of these

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Speaker 1: some of these drones are able to cancel out the

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Speaker 1: need for crop dusting pilots in some cases, although it

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Speaker 1: would be a pretty good adrenaline rush to do that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't know that I would need that much adrenaline

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Speaker 1: rushed in me, but yes, I agree that it certainly

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Speaker 1: would be I think it'd be fun. It could be.

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Speaker 1: I imagine, Uh, you know the other things to consider

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Speaker 1: with this precision act your culture. I mean, there's tons

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Speaker 1: more we could talk about. For example, Uh, they often

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Speaker 1: will even explain what sort of crops would grow best

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Speaker 1: in different types of soil, and keep in mind these

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Speaker 1: crops all. You know, if there's one particular crop you're

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Speaker 1: you're planning on growing in part of your land, the

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Speaker 1: timing might be totally different to plant, Like for for

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Speaker 1: the ideal setting, it might be totally different to plant

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Speaker 1: those seeds than the next one, which means that you

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Speaker 1: have to start taking other complicated planning into account, like

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Speaker 1: how do you plant crops for one crop, then let's

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Speaker 1: say three more weeks would go by before you have

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Speaker 1: to plant the next section that would be a totally

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Speaker 1: different crop. How do you do that in a way

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Speaker 1: that's not going to damage the crops you first plant it.

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Speaker 1: I have also seen where farmers have planted soybeans in

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Speaker 1: between other crops. Now I don't remember if it was

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Speaker 1: if it was cotton and soybeans or what it happened

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Speaker 1: to be, but it's like mixed crops in the same field. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that was unusual. So so that's one way around it.

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Speaker 1: And there's also, um I know from Indiana again, I

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Speaker 1: know that there's a there's winter wheat you can grow

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Speaker 1: in the downtime. So like, let's see, you've got a

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Speaker 1: summer crop of corn or whatever it happens to be,

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Speaker 1: you can also plant a crop of winter wheat that

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Speaker 1: that takes up the time the rest of the year

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Speaker 1: when you can't grow corn. Yeah, And so this will

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Speaker 1: tell you exactly when to plant each one of those

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Speaker 1: crops and when to when to bring it in right

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Speaker 1: fertilizer levels that I mean, I guess soil levels that

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Speaker 1: you need to to watch for each crop. You know,

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Speaker 1: whether it would let you know when you would need

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Speaker 1: to add fertilizer to those those fields as well, including

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Speaker 1: telling you, hey, don't do it next week, when when

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Speaker 1: it would be ideal because there's going to be a

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Speaker 1: storm the following day which would just wash the fertilizer away.

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Speaker 1: You're going to want to wait until that weather front

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Speaker 1: moves through and then do it like this is really valuable.

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Speaker 1: So it even goes to the transportation of food. I

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Speaker 1: mean we when we're talking about making sure you maximize

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Speaker 1: your yield, that includes the time of after hard a sting,

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Speaker 1: but before you get it to wherever it's going to

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Speaker 1: be sold. Obviously, the transportation can result in crop loss

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Speaker 1: as well, especially in areas that might not have a

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Speaker 1: lot of developed roads, like in Brazil. Brazil has a

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Speaker 1: lot of roads that are dirt roads. So knowing that

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Speaker 1: it's going to rain in a certain region, you might say, well,

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Speaker 1: we're going to route all of our traffic. We're gonna

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Speaker 1: be proactive about this and take these other routes because

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Speaker 1: otherwise trucks might get stuck in the mud and we

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Speaker 1: might lose our crops because it may take a day

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Speaker 1: or two longer, and it may cost a little bit more,

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Speaker 1: but you're going to have a higher yield from that

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Speaker 1: field and if it works that way, Yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: that's why I'm I'm piecing this all together. I think

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Speaker 1: that's right that every dollar that the farmer spends getting

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Speaker 1: the crop or getting the crop to the market to

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Speaker 1: be sold, is just a dollar out of his pocket.

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Speaker 1: Essentially at that point. I mean he's trying to maximize

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Speaker 1: profits as well as maximize the the yield of that product. Yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: so there's I mean, it's a really interesting and complicated picture.

429
00:23:03,600 --> 00:23:06,600
Speaker 1: Like the more you look at the more you realize, Wow,

430
00:23:06,800 --> 00:23:11,200
Speaker 1: I didn't appreciate how complex this is. And of course,

431
00:23:11,240 --> 00:23:13,520
Speaker 1: you know, keeping in mind things like you want to

432
00:23:13,560 --> 00:23:16,280
Speaker 1: be able to rotate crops through your various fields in

433
00:23:16,359 --> 00:23:18,920
Speaker 1: order to keep the soil healthy. If you just continuously

434
00:23:18,960 --> 00:23:21,800
Speaker 1: grow the same crops on the same land, uh, that

435
00:23:21,840 --> 00:23:26,360
Speaker 1: can start depleting nutrients in the soil and so rotating

436
00:23:26,400 --> 00:23:28,159
Speaker 1: that is really important. So this is the kind of

437
00:23:28,160 --> 00:23:31,480
Speaker 1: stuff that gives the people who are cultivating the land

438
00:23:32,280 --> 00:23:35,520
Speaker 1: way more information like that so that they can they

439
00:23:35,520 --> 00:23:40,680
Speaker 1: can do the best to have uh gray yields. They

440
00:23:40,760 --> 00:23:44,280
Speaker 1: are minimizing the environmental impact of what they're doing, which

441
00:23:44,359 --> 00:23:47,359
Speaker 1: is in their best interest in the long run as well.

442
00:23:47,720 --> 00:23:52,080
Speaker 1: So it's it's one of those things where the big data,

443
00:23:52,520 --> 00:23:55,960
Speaker 1: the sensors, the automation, all of this stuff is coming

444
00:23:55,960 --> 00:24:02,520
Speaker 1: together to really uh maximum mise their effectiveness while minimizing

445
00:24:02,520 --> 00:24:04,600
Speaker 1: their impact and it benefits all of us. What if

446
00:24:04,600 --> 00:24:06,400
Speaker 1: you take soil out of the mix, though, what if

447
00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:09,640
Speaker 1: you do uh, what if hydroponics? Hydroponics, I mean that's

448
00:24:09,640 --> 00:24:12,600
Speaker 1: been around since sixteen twenty seven I found out. Wow,

449
00:24:12,600 --> 00:24:15,960
Speaker 1: I didn't know. You know, it's funny. The first time

450
00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:19,200
Speaker 1: I encountered hydroponics was at um Epcots. Yeah. I was

451
00:24:19,240 --> 00:24:20,960
Speaker 1: just about to say it had to be Epcot Center

452
00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:22,840
Speaker 1: at the land. Yeah, that's right. The land is that

453
00:24:22,960 --> 00:24:25,440
Speaker 1: you were driving through on a riding through I guess

454
00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:28,040
Speaker 1: on the on the boat, um, and it's all you know,

455
00:24:28,080 --> 00:24:31,320
Speaker 1: hanging plants and they're watering them with a mist every

456
00:24:31,359 --> 00:24:36,600
Speaker 1: that's very particularly or specifically timed for that specific plant.

457
00:24:36,600 --> 00:24:38,760
Speaker 1: You're just seeing the roots of the plants, no soil

458
00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:41,720
Speaker 1: at all. Um. There's also another kind of twist on

459
00:24:41,760 --> 00:24:44,919
Speaker 1: this whole thing, and that's aquaponics. Ponics is where they

460
00:24:44,960 --> 00:24:47,879
Speaker 1: grow UM. Well, I guess it's not just one thing.

461
00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:50,520
Speaker 1: They grow a number of different things, but it's plants

462
00:24:50,560 --> 00:24:54,240
Speaker 1: and animals that grow in an ecosystem that is balanced,

463
00:24:54,520 --> 00:24:57,160
Speaker 1: so there's no waste like um I read where they're

464
00:24:57,160 --> 00:24:59,840
Speaker 1: growing plants and fish in the same place, and there

465
00:24:59,880 --> 00:25:03,200
Speaker 1: is elt is that there's no wastewater, there's no um insecticides,

466
00:25:03,320 --> 00:25:06,520
Speaker 1: used anything like that. Um, it's it's all um one

467
00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:10,720
Speaker 1: system that works together symbiotically nice. And the thing is

468
00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:12,640
Speaker 1: that at the the end result is that you get

469
00:25:12,760 --> 00:25:17,359
Speaker 1: organic produce and fresh toxin free fish from the same

470
00:25:17,520 --> 00:25:21,000
Speaker 1: from the same the same sorce, same building. You know,

471
00:25:21,040 --> 00:25:23,959
Speaker 1: it's an interior thing that happen indoor thing. Um, but

472
00:25:24,080 --> 00:25:26,159
Speaker 1: it's it's it's pretty smart in the way they put

473
00:25:26,200 --> 00:25:28,399
Speaker 1: it together. But I'm sure that takes years of planning.

474
00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:31,520
Speaker 1: Oh sure, Yeah. None of the solutions we're talking about

475
00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:36,000
Speaker 1: are particularly simple to implement, right. They require a huge

476
00:25:36,119 --> 00:25:40,360
Speaker 1: investment of both time and money. But you know, everyone's

477
00:25:40,359 --> 00:25:43,560
Speaker 1: gonna eat so so ultimately it's one of those things

478
00:25:43,640 --> 00:25:46,520
Speaker 1: where you say, well, we have to do this. I mean,

479
00:25:46,520 --> 00:25:48,760
Speaker 1: it's not like we have the option, so we just

480
00:25:48,800 --> 00:25:50,320
Speaker 1: have to find the best way to do it in

481
00:25:50,359 --> 00:25:52,879
Speaker 1: a smart way. And what about the the idea of

482
00:25:52,920 --> 00:25:55,680
Speaker 1: shared knowledge now, because that is something that this is

483
00:25:55,960 --> 00:25:58,320
Speaker 1: so important. I mean that the high tech angle. I

484
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:00,760
Speaker 1: guess it's so important for farmers now because as they

485
00:26:00,760 --> 00:26:04,239
Speaker 1: can use they can use forms, they can use just

486
00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:06,760
Speaker 1: simple text messages to other farmers down the road. I mean,

487
00:26:06,800 --> 00:26:09,040
Speaker 1: it could be that easy. It's usually a little bit

488
00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:11,840
Speaker 1: more complex than it's groups or forums as I mentioned,

489
00:26:11,840 --> 00:26:15,159
Speaker 1: but um shared knowledge, you know, they can share best practices.

490
00:26:15,240 --> 00:26:18,080
Speaker 1: They can they can say you know what, I've never

491
00:26:18,119 --> 00:26:20,480
Speaker 1: heard of that before. But you know, we've got five

492
00:26:20,920 --> 00:26:22,840
Speaker 1: people on this site. We can together, we can come

493
00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:26,440
Speaker 1: up with a solution prior to what ten years ago

494
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:29,480
Speaker 1: that was unheard of. Yeah. I mean you might have

495
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:34,040
Speaker 1: a local gathering occasionally, but even that would be of

496
00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:37,679
Speaker 1: mostly small farm operators. And can I just say this

497
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:40,679
Speaker 1: that I have never ever met a farmer or rancher

498
00:26:40,720 --> 00:26:43,760
Speaker 1: that I haven't found to be incredibly intelligent. Oh yeah,

499
00:26:43,840 --> 00:26:46,080
Speaker 1: I mean they all seem just so smart and it's

500
00:26:46,080 --> 00:26:48,760
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's like real world smart. You know,

501
00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:51,320
Speaker 1: they just know so much about what they do, and

502
00:26:51,400 --> 00:26:53,440
Speaker 1: it seems like they're just so in touch with with

503
00:26:53,760 --> 00:26:56,239
Speaker 1: everything that they have to uh have to deal with

504
00:26:56,280 --> 00:26:58,480
Speaker 1: I mean, the whether it's the animals to plants, um,

505
00:26:58,520 --> 00:27:01,600
Speaker 1: just dealing with people. Um, it just seems like I've

506
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:04,600
Speaker 1: never ever met any farmer or rancher that isn't just

507
00:27:05,320 --> 00:27:08,080
Speaker 1: top match intelligence. Well, and to put them all together

508
00:27:08,080 --> 00:27:10,439
Speaker 1: in one place, that's a that's a great place to

509
00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:14,320
Speaker 1: solve problems. Yeah, I think of them very much like engineers.

510
00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:18,080
Speaker 1: They they act as engineers, it's just they their training

511
00:27:18,720 --> 00:27:22,879
Speaker 1: is through a different, you know, branch than traditional engineering

512
00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:26,360
Speaker 1: happens to be. But they are all about looking at

513
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:29,760
Speaker 1: problems and solving them, and the tools we've talked about

514
00:27:29,840 --> 00:27:33,119
Speaker 1: are all about giving them even more agency to do

515
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:35,960
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. We've got more to say in

516
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:39,280
Speaker 1: this classic episode of tech Stuff after these quick messages.

517
00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:50,040
Speaker 1: One other thing I wanted to to mention is that,

518
00:27:50,440 --> 00:27:53,119
Speaker 1: you know, I talked about how mechanization really started to

519
00:27:53,760 --> 00:27:56,000
Speaker 1: cut down on the number as far as the percentage

520
00:27:56,040 --> 00:27:59,280
Speaker 1: of population of farmers. We're going to see that continue,

521
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:02,600
Speaker 1: obviously a specially now that we are in an age

522
00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:07,280
Speaker 1: of automation. We have gone beyond mechanization to automation, to

523
00:28:07,320 --> 00:28:11,320
Speaker 1: the point where sometimes we're talking about autonomous automation. It's

524
00:28:11,359 --> 00:28:14,359
Speaker 1: not just that it's an automated system, it's one that

525
00:28:14,520 --> 00:28:18,359
Speaker 1: is working without direct human guidance. We're starting to see

526
00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:21,840
Speaker 1: that being introduced in various parts of agriculture. So one

527
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:23,359
Speaker 1: of the things I was looking at I looked at

528
00:28:23,359 --> 00:28:27,640
Speaker 1: some robot harvesters, which are pretty awesome. There was one

529
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:31,960
Speaker 1: in particular that was designed to automatically trim lettuce. It's

530
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:36,600
Speaker 1: a lettuce trimming robots. Yeah. It used digital imaging to

531
00:28:36,640 --> 00:28:40,320
Speaker 1: measure exactly where to trim, and it could trim one

532
00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:44,440
Speaker 1: hundred times faster than a human. Yeah, so you wouldn't

533
00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:47,160
Speaker 1: think it's fascinating, but when you really think about what

534
00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 1: that is doing, what that what that is, what that

535
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:53,920
Speaker 1: machine is is capable of and from what I understand,

536
00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:56,560
Speaker 1: they were able with that kind of technology to increase

537
00:28:56,680 --> 00:28:59,560
Speaker 1: yield by as much as ten percent. Now you're going

538
00:28:59,600 --> 00:29:01,280
Speaker 1: a hundred times faster, and you think, how can you

539
00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:04,880
Speaker 1: only do tem percent yield increase, Well, you still have

540
00:29:04,960 --> 00:29:07,840
Speaker 1: to wave for the plants to grow. So yeah, I

541
00:29:07,840 --> 00:29:10,200
Speaker 1: guess the the awaiting time would just be longer than

542
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:11,880
Speaker 1: it would be done with the job, and you're just

543
00:29:11,960 --> 00:29:14,400
Speaker 1: waiting waiting for the harvest, right, So you could end

544
00:29:14,480 --> 00:29:18,600
Speaker 1: up having waves of of yields coming across because obviously

545
00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:23,040
Speaker 1: you want to be able to provide produce as as

546
00:29:23,080 --> 00:29:25,160
Speaker 1: frequently throughout the year as possible. And you know, here

547
00:29:25,200 --> 00:29:29,000
Speaker 1: in the United States, we are incredibly fortunate to live

548
00:29:29,080 --> 00:29:31,960
Speaker 1: in a in a country that is affluent and has

549
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:34,520
Speaker 1: relationships with other parts of the world where we can

550
00:29:34,560 --> 00:29:38,080
Speaker 1: import a lot of vegetables so that even in the

551
00:29:38,120 --> 00:29:40,920
Speaker 1: dead of winter, we can get access to stuff because

552
00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:43,440
Speaker 1: it's being grown somewhere in the world. We can get

553
00:29:43,480 --> 00:29:46,760
Speaker 1: access to stuff that probably is not growing in most

554
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:48,720
Speaker 1: of the United States at that time. And I know

555
00:29:48,840 --> 00:29:51,600
Speaker 1: that there are ways that they're increasing to speed that

556
00:29:51,680 --> 00:29:56,320
Speaker 1: these uh the plants come to maturity as well. So yeah,

557
00:29:56,320 --> 00:29:58,760
Speaker 1: so I mean they're they're they're quickly developing that as well,

558
00:29:58,760 --> 00:30:01,400
Speaker 1: so that instead of being able to grow two to

559
00:30:01,440 --> 00:30:03,040
Speaker 1: three crops a year, you might be able to grow,

560
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:06,080
Speaker 1: you know, five to six crops a year. Yeah. Yeah,

561
00:30:06,160 --> 00:30:09,920
Speaker 1: and then you're able to maximize your your fields use

562
00:30:10,160 --> 00:30:12,880
Speaker 1: so that it's not laying fallow for long times of

563
00:30:12,880 --> 00:30:16,600
Speaker 1: the year. It's it's pretty incredible. Other automated devices I've

564
00:30:16,640 --> 00:30:20,880
Speaker 1: looked into our automated planters, so these are planting vehicles

565
00:30:20,880 --> 00:30:24,280
Speaker 1: that I actually saw one in action on a video

566
00:30:24,280 --> 00:30:27,200
Speaker 1: and it was really interesting. So the video I watched

567
00:30:27,240 --> 00:30:33,880
Speaker 1: had um engineering students, agricultural engineering students who were working

568
00:30:33,960 --> 00:30:39,040
Speaker 1: with various manufacturers who would provide them the stuff that

569
00:30:39,080 --> 00:30:43,440
Speaker 1: they would need to build out these automated devices. The

570
00:30:43,440 --> 00:30:46,280
Speaker 1: automated planter. There's a guy behind the wheel. He starts

571
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:48,560
Speaker 1: driving it and he says, all right, I'm gonna push

572
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:51,360
Speaker 1: this button, and he pushes the button inside the vehicle

573
00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:53,320
Speaker 1: and then he takes his hands off the wheel and

574
00:30:53,360 --> 00:30:55,800
Speaker 1: you see the wheel operating itself. And what was happening

575
00:30:55,920 --> 00:31:02,320
Speaker 1: was the automated planter was working with a GPS device

576
00:31:03,200 --> 00:31:07,400
Speaker 1: and a pregenerated satellite map of where the crops needed

577
00:31:07,440 --> 00:31:12,120
Speaker 1: to go, located by GPS coordinates, and it was literally

578
00:31:12,680 --> 00:31:15,600
Speaker 1: following It's like like if you'd used Google Maps to

579
00:31:15,800 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 1: give yourself driving directions, it was essentially following driving directions,

580
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:23,400
Speaker 1: except in this case it's planting directions. It's in precise yeah,

581
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:25,440
Speaker 1: which is incredible because it knows how many seeds to

582
00:31:25,440 --> 00:31:27,480
Speaker 1: put down per inch, It knows exactly where to go,

583
00:31:27,560 --> 00:31:31,040
Speaker 1: exactly how many rows there should be. Amazing stuff I have.

584
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:33,200
Speaker 1: I've seen a few of these things and it does

585
00:31:33,320 --> 00:31:35,600
Speaker 1: just blow your mind when you realize how accurate they

586
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:38,240
Speaker 1: are and what they're in, the technology that they're using,

587
00:31:38,280 --> 00:31:40,200
Speaker 1: the you know what they're using to be able to

588
00:31:40,280 --> 00:31:42,440
Speaker 1: be that accurate. It's almost like it's more accurate than

589
00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:44,880
Speaker 1: the farmer could be sitting in the vehicle. Really, Yeah,

590
00:31:44,920 --> 00:31:46,720
Speaker 1: and it really is. Yeah. I mean, you know, you're

591
00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:52,320
Speaker 1: talking about the capability of measuring down to fractions of

592
00:31:52,320 --> 00:31:56,920
Speaker 1: an inch, and you know we as humans, we can

593
00:31:57,000 --> 00:31:59,800
Speaker 1: do that, but it takes us, granted, a lot more time.

594
00:32:00,360 --> 00:32:03,320
Speaker 1: And this this speeds things up considerably. I also saw

595
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:08,120
Speaker 1: weeding robots because I could use that at home. Oh yeah,

596
00:32:08,160 --> 00:32:10,760
Speaker 1: me too. One of the best things about weeding robots

597
00:32:10,800 --> 00:32:12,960
Speaker 1: is that, obviously it would mean that you could cut

598
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 1: down on herbicides. You wouldn't need to use as much

599
00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:18,680
Speaker 1: herbicide to kill off weeds and preserve your crops. You

600
00:32:18,720 --> 00:32:21,720
Speaker 1: could use a weeding robot to do it. Now, if

601
00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:24,800
Speaker 1: you're if you're looking at a way of growing your

602
00:32:24,800 --> 00:32:27,720
Speaker 1: crops and you don't want to use herbicides for whatever reason,

603
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:31,600
Speaker 1: maybe it affects your crops negatively. Hand weeding is pretty

604
00:32:31,680 --> 00:32:35,120
Speaker 1: much your your big bet, and that means either you're

605
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:37,560
Speaker 1: literally pulling the weeds out by hand or you're using

606
00:32:37,560 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 1: a hoe. Either way, it's backbreaking work. It's slow, and

607
00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:44,360
Speaker 1: it's not efficient. It's not efficient use of time, and

608
00:32:44,400 --> 00:32:48,240
Speaker 1: it requires a lot of labor. So weeding robots tend

609
00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:52,600
Speaker 1: to be something that you you tow behind another vehicle.

610
00:32:52,760 --> 00:32:57,280
Speaker 1: So they are just automatically looking for weeds, and by looking,

611
00:32:57,320 --> 00:33:00,240
Speaker 1: I mean they're using cameras or infrared sensors and they're

612
00:33:00,320 --> 00:33:04,360
Speaker 1: using digital image recognition software to tell the difference between

613
00:33:04,360 --> 00:33:07,680
Speaker 1: a weed and a crop and anything that's weeds gotta go.

614
00:33:08,440 --> 00:33:12,440
Speaker 1: But they're even engineers working on building autonomous ones, like

615
00:33:12,480 --> 00:33:17,920
Speaker 1: the Hordabot project in Denmark that's an autonomous weeding robot. Now.

616
00:33:18,040 --> 00:33:20,280
Speaker 1: Right now, they're more popular in Europe than they are

617
00:33:20,280 --> 00:33:22,480
Speaker 1: in the United States because in Europe there are much

618
00:33:22,600 --> 00:33:25,880
Speaker 1: stricter regulations as far as the use of herbicides and

619
00:33:25,880 --> 00:33:29,520
Speaker 1: pesticides are concerned. In the United States, those restrictions haven't

620
00:33:29,520 --> 00:33:34,480
Speaker 1: reached that same level, so there's less incentive to invest

621
00:33:34,560 --> 00:33:38,280
Speaker 1: in this other technology because we already have an infrastructure

622
00:33:38,400 --> 00:33:42,800
Speaker 1: for pesticides and herbicides. But assuming that that eventually changes,

623
00:33:43,080 --> 00:33:45,280
Speaker 1: will probably see that migrate over here to the United

624
00:33:45,280 --> 00:33:48,280
Speaker 1: States as well. And just the thought of having a

625
00:33:48,360 --> 00:33:51,000
Speaker 1: robot out there taking care of all that without having

626
00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:55,960
Speaker 1: to actually do it yourself is pretty pretty awesome. Yeah, So,

627
00:33:56,600 --> 00:34:00,400
Speaker 1: you know, the technology stands to really benefit us in

628
00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:02,440
Speaker 1: lots of ways. Any others that you want to talk

629
00:34:02,440 --> 00:34:05,560
Speaker 1: about before we transition to our our other kind of

630
00:34:05,560 --> 00:34:08,239
Speaker 1: the dark side of technology and agriculture. I've got a

631
00:34:08,239 --> 00:34:10,360
Speaker 1: low tech version of what you were just talking about,

632
00:34:10,360 --> 00:34:13,040
Speaker 1: that weeding machine. It's gonna come up. How about at

633
00:34:13,080 --> 00:34:15,440
Speaker 1: the end of the podcast we'll talk about some farm hacks.

634
00:34:15,600 --> 00:34:18,319
Speaker 1: That sounds great and again low tech, but it's a

635
00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:21,600
Speaker 1: it's an interesting development, yeah, because part of the thing,

636
00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:24,480
Speaker 1: like like we were saying, farmers, ranchers, they are the

637
00:34:24,520 --> 00:34:28,360
Speaker 1: problem solvers. Sometimes that means they come up with creative

638
00:34:28,400 --> 00:34:32,640
Speaker 1: ways to use pre existing technology in perhaps methods that

639
00:34:32,719 --> 00:34:36,839
Speaker 1: weren't originally intended small scale, large scale, all scales really. Yeah,

640
00:34:36,920 --> 00:34:40,719
Speaker 1: but before we get into that, let's talk about tractors.

641
00:34:41,440 --> 00:34:43,880
Speaker 1: I'm excited about this. Yeah, yeah, Now, I know you

642
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:47,239
Speaker 1: would be, Scott because it deals a lot with not

643
00:34:47,320 --> 00:34:51,279
Speaker 1: just agriculture, but there is a lot of crossover to

644
00:34:51,480 --> 00:34:54,000
Speaker 1: the automotive world and what we're going to talk about.

645
00:34:54,080 --> 00:34:58,200
Speaker 1: So the great side of this ag tech we've been

646
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:03,239
Speaker 1: talking about is that it can potentially very much increase uh,

647
00:35:03,320 --> 00:35:06,880
Speaker 1: the efficiency of farms. It can end up decreasing the

648
00:35:06,880 --> 00:35:10,239
Speaker 1: amount of work needed to do. However, there is a

649
00:35:10,239 --> 00:35:14,359
Speaker 1: flip side to this. The flip side is As technology

650
00:35:14,400 --> 00:35:19,440
Speaker 1: increases in sophistication, it becomes much more difficult to do

651
00:35:19,600 --> 00:35:24,399
Speaker 1: any d I Y maintenance, repair, tweaking, any of that.

652
00:35:24,520 --> 00:35:26,640
Speaker 1: It gets harder and hard to do. And we're seeing

653
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:30,760
Speaker 1: that now, not just in these giant like cloud based

654
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:34,120
Speaker 1: services we were talking about, but in tractors. This is

655
00:35:34,200 --> 00:35:38,200
Speaker 1: a great source of frustration among farmers today is that

656
00:35:38,239 --> 00:35:42,560
Speaker 1: the modern tractor is much like the automobile, nearly impossible

657
00:35:42,600 --> 00:35:45,520
Speaker 1: to diagnose and repair on your own, you know, in

658
00:35:45,560 --> 00:35:48,080
Speaker 1: the in the barn, in the field wherever. Um you know,

659
00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:50,319
Speaker 1: days of you know, being able to use, as they

660
00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:53,279
Speaker 1: said in this article from Wired, using you know, making

661
00:35:53,280 --> 00:35:57,000
Speaker 1: a duct tape and baling wire repair. Uh, it's it's becoming,

662
00:35:57,520 --> 00:35:59,960
Speaker 1: you know, less and less possible for stuff like that

663
00:36:00,120 --> 00:36:02,680
Speaker 1: to happen, because now we're dealing with much more are

664
00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:05,960
Speaker 1: many more UM electronic components, you know, modules that that

665
00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:09,359
Speaker 1: talked each other on a can bus system UM that

666
00:36:09,440 --> 00:36:12,759
Speaker 1: you know is controlled by one central computer, and in

667
00:36:12,840 --> 00:36:15,560
Speaker 1: order to access that computer you have to have very

668
00:36:15,600 --> 00:36:22,080
Speaker 1: specific diagnostic tools and connectors and UM factory passwords that

669
00:36:22,120 --> 00:36:24,040
Speaker 1: you know, you just have no idea what those passwords

670
00:36:24,040 --> 00:36:27,200
Speaker 1: are because they vary between make and model in different years.

671
00:36:27,239 --> 00:36:31,640
Speaker 1: And UM, it's becoming very very complex for the common uh,

672
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:34,080
Speaker 1: modern farmer to be able to and I don't mean

673
00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:38,440
Speaker 1: common by the driver, the average farmer, the average farmer

674
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:41,359
Speaker 1: to be able to make his machinery work in an

675
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:43,560
Speaker 1: optimal way as he could in the past. I mean

676
00:36:43,600 --> 00:36:46,640
Speaker 1: whether it's adjusting the timing on the tractor or something

677
00:36:46,680 --> 00:36:50,000
Speaker 1: that's just out of calibration. You need to reset that. Uh,

678
00:36:50,040 --> 00:36:53,680
Speaker 1: it's becoming virtually impossible to do that without the proper tools.

679
00:36:53,680 --> 00:36:56,080
Speaker 1: And these tools are very expensive. Or there's a flip

680
00:36:56,120 --> 00:36:59,600
Speaker 1: side of this, some of them even require a technician

681
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:02,680
Speaker 1: to be brought to the tractor because you can't just

682
00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:05,520
Speaker 1: you can't drive it down to the dealership. You can't

683
00:37:05,520 --> 00:37:07,600
Speaker 1: throw it on the on a trailer and haul it

684
00:37:07,680 --> 00:37:11,399
Speaker 1: into town. Um, it's much more complexness because we're talking

685
00:37:11,400 --> 00:37:16,239
Speaker 1: about machines that are two stories high have twelve wheels. Uh,

686
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:19,120
Speaker 1: they are. There are half a million dollar machines now

687
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:20,880
Speaker 1: there and I'm no joke, there are half a million

688
00:37:20,880 --> 00:37:23,839
Speaker 1: dollars in some cases. Uh. In this article we read

689
00:37:24,560 --> 00:37:26,839
Speaker 1: on Wired again, I think they're talking about a mid

690
00:37:26,920 --> 00:37:29,840
Speaker 1: range tractor and the mid rains tractors were you know,

691
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:32,920
Speaker 1: somewhere above one hundred thousand dollars. So these are very

692
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:37,400
Speaker 1: very expensive machines and it could be incredibly frustrating for

693
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:40,840
Speaker 1: farmers to to realize that. Well, you know, we just

694
00:37:40,880 --> 00:37:43,000
Speaker 1: talked about how important it is that you know, you

695
00:37:43,080 --> 00:37:46,680
Speaker 1: plant this this uh this crop on noon or at

696
00:37:46,719 --> 00:37:49,960
Speaker 1: noon on Wednesday. Well, what happens when that machine goes

697
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:51,680
Speaker 1: down and you have to fly on a technician in

698
00:37:51,760 --> 00:37:54,080
Speaker 1: order to repair that machine, right, and it's and then

699
00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:56,400
Speaker 1: three days have gone by and you still haven't planted

700
00:37:56,440 --> 00:37:58,600
Speaker 1: any Yeah, and your and your tractor is still stuck

701
00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:00,520
Speaker 1: in the middle of the field because you know, some

702
00:38:00,760 --> 00:38:03,440
Speaker 1: modules not communicating to another module. But you can't do

703
00:38:03,520 --> 00:38:06,960
Speaker 1: anything about that until you get the technician there. And meanwhile,

704
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:10,880
Speaker 1: you're watching the estimations of your yield drops steadily, yeah,

705
00:38:10,960 --> 00:38:15,040
Speaker 1: because you're getting those stupid smartphone alert Now, man, you're

706
00:38:15,040 --> 00:38:17,560
Speaker 1: you're really messing up this crap what you're doing, Hey, buddy,

707
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:21,279
Speaker 1: you get off your buttons. They're planning becoming more and

708
00:38:21,360 --> 00:38:24,440
Speaker 1: more you know, insulting as the day goes on. Right. So, so,

709
00:38:24,560 --> 00:38:28,280
Speaker 1: just like like cars have their own little control units,

710
00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:30,759
Speaker 1: tractors like you mentioned have them that they tend to

711
00:38:30,800 --> 00:38:33,560
Speaker 1: be called tractor engine control units or or t e

712
00:38:33,600 --> 00:38:37,600
Speaker 1: c use tech coos, and yeah, they're they're They're also

713
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:42,160
Speaker 1: often proprietary, kind of like we've talked about proprietary connectors

714
00:38:42,200 --> 00:38:45,000
Speaker 1: here on on tech stuff before. This is where you

715
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:49,160
Speaker 1: don't use a universal connector. You have very specific ones

716
00:38:49,200 --> 00:38:51,880
Speaker 1: that work with that particular technology, and if you don't

717
00:38:52,360 --> 00:38:55,520
Speaker 1: own that, and generally speaking, these are things that are

718
00:38:55,560 --> 00:38:59,160
Speaker 1: not sold to the public, then you cannot get access.

719
00:38:59,200 --> 00:39:03,760
Speaker 1: You cannot easily access the the the computer that's aboard

720
00:39:03,760 --> 00:39:06,560
Speaker 1: the tractor. I talked about this all the time, like

721
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:11,080
Speaker 1: I remember, Uh, I hate to shame any company, but

722
00:39:11,120 --> 00:39:13,759
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it in this case. Uh. Well, the

723
00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:17,680
Speaker 1: Apple is a great example. Apple's connectors are all proprietary

724
00:39:17,719 --> 00:39:20,200
Speaker 1: to Apple. But Sony was very much the same way.

725
00:39:20,239 --> 00:39:22,640
Speaker 1: I remember having a Sony camera and it had a

726
00:39:22,760 --> 00:39:26,640
Speaker 1: USB connector, but the end connector was proprietary. You couldn't

727
00:39:26,680 --> 00:39:29,040
Speaker 1: just go out and buy a mini USB or micro

728
00:39:29,239 --> 00:39:32,880
Speaker 1: USB and use that pair that with your Sony camera.

729
00:39:33,280 --> 00:39:36,000
Speaker 1: You had to go out and buy a very expensive

730
00:39:36,040 --> 00:39:39,120
Speaker 1: Sony one or try and find some off brand knockoff

731
00:39:39,160 --> 00:39:41,560
Speaker 1: that may or may not work with your camera. Well,

732
00:39:41,920 --> 00:39:46,600
Speaker 1: imagine that frustration magnified to a hundred thousand dollar or

733
00:39:46,719 --> 00:39:52,080
Speaker 1: more machine, an investment, a significant investment that not only

734
00:39:52,200 --> 00:39:55,279
Speaker 1: wasn't a significant investment, but you're the success of your

735
00:39:55,320 --> 00:39:59,399
Speaker 1: business depends upon it working, and you can't even find

736
00:39:59,440 --> 00:40:02,319
Speaker 1: out why it's no longer working. So the article talks

737
00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:06,160
Speaker 1: about how there was The author talks about a farmer

738
00:40:06,200 --> 00:40:10,080
Speaker 1: friend who had called the author out to check on

739
00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:14,120
Speaker 1: the tractor. Right, the tractor was no longer working. There

740
00:40:14,200 --> 00:40:17,799
Speaker 1: was a sensor that was burning out, and what they

741
00:40:17,800 --> 00:40:19,600
Speaker 1: were trying to do is find a way to route

742
00:40:19,840 --> 00:40:23,360
Speaker 1: the tractor systems around the sensor so that the tractor

743
00:40:23,400 --> 00:40:26,600
Speaker 1: could at least be operational until the sensor could be

744
00:40:26,640 --> 00:40:31,760
Speaker 1: replaced repair right. And the issue that the author found

745
00:40:31,840 --> 00:40:36,000
Speaker 1: was that the system was completely inaccessible, not that it

746
00:40:36,080 --> 00:40:38,680
Speaker 1: was physically inaccessible in the sense that there was no

747
00:40:38,719 --> 00:40:40,200
Speaker 1: way to get to the computer, but there was no

748
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:42,040
Speaker 1: way to connect to it. So I guess in that sense,

749
00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:45,759
Speaker 1: it's physically inaccessible and it's all running on proprietary software,

750
00:40:46,160 --> 00:40:49,000
Speaker 1: so there was no way to even see how the

751
00:40:49,080 --> 00:40:51,960
Speaker 1: system works, let alone reroute anything. Now, this is a

752
00:40:51,960 --> 00:40:55,600
Speaker 1: little different than cars, because cars recently and in since

753
00:40:55,640 --> 00:40:59,400
Speaker 1: I think, have had the same diagnostic port underneath the

754
00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:01,919
Speaker 1: steering you know, you can you can reach around under

755
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:03,960
Speaker 1: your car and feel it there. You've probably had, you know,

756
00:41:03,960 --> 00:41:06,319
Speaker 1: somebody at the local oil change place plug into that

757
00:41:06,400 --> 00:41:08,239
Speaker 1: just to get stats of your vehicle, you know, like

758
00:41:08,239 --> 00:41:12,759
Speaker 1: the last time you're there and test or something exactly right. Yeah,

759
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:15,520
Speaker 1: So there are standards in automobiles and that's not the

760
00:41:15,520 --> 00:41:18,719
Speaker 1: case with these tractors. And and I have a feeling that,

761
00:41:19,040 --> 00:41:21,399
Speaker 1: you know, the next decade or so, some of that's

762
00:41:21,400 --> 00:41:23,319
Speaker 1: going to be ironed out, that you know, there's gonna

763
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:27,400
Speaker 1: be some some some type of uniformity among tracker manufacturers

764
00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:30,160
Speaker 1: that's going to help out just a little bit. But

765
00:41:30,200 --> 00:41:32,600
Speaker 1: still that doesn't really, that doesn't help a whole lot

766
00:41:32,680 --> 00:41:36,759
Speaker 1: because unless they conform to a standard um UM software

767
00:41:37,800 --> 00:41:40,400
Speaker 1: package I guess that that operates all these it's not

768
00:41:40,440 --> 00:41:42,680
Speaker 1: gonna do much good unless you have you know that

769
00:41:42,840 --> 00:41:44,880
Speaker 1: as well. And they can still hang onto that unless

770
00:41:45,360 --> 00:41:48,239
Speaker 1: part of this whole legislation thing includes that they have

771
00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:53,640
Speaker 1: to use these a certain like like a standardized approach

772
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:56,120
Speaker 1: across the board. Yeah, and I don't see that happening

773
00:41:56,160 --> 00:41:57,960
Speaker 1: so I don't know. Maybe maybe I'm off base here.

774
00:41:57,960 --> 00:41:59,520
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not going to be controlled the way the

775
00:41:59,560 --> 00:42:01,799
Speaker 1: automo deal industry is. Maybe it's going to be a

776
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:04,640
Speaker 1: little different, maybe it'll be a little tougher. But I

777
00:42:04,760 --> 00:42:07,560
Speaker 1: also kind of think that I don't know, maybe this

778
00:42:07,640 --> 00:42:10,560
Speaker 1: is not true that you tell me. It seems like

779
00:42:10,600 --> 00:42:13,120
Speaker 1: some of these systems are being becoming so complex that

780
00:42:13,520 --> 00:42:16,160
Speaker 1: farmers are beginning to kind of buck the system. They're saying,

781
00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:20,160
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily want that five dollar John Deer tractor.

782
00:42:20,640 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 1: I'm going to get this nineteen seventy version of the

783
00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:25,799
Speaker 1: same thing that it really does everything that I need,

784
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:29,480
Speaker 1: but it's all mechanical, it's not electronic. That is absolutely happening.

785
00:42:29,600 --> 00:42:33,719
Speaker 1: We're seeing the market for brand new tractors start to

786
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:39,600
Speaker 1: suffer while the market for pre computerized tractors is blossoming. So,

787
00:42:39,640 --> 00:42:44,960
Speaker 1: in other words, this limited supply because you know that

788
00:42:45,080 --> 00:42:48,480
Speaker 1: time's past though they're not really people making those anymore. Yeah,

789
00:42:48,560 --> 00:42:50,520
Speaker 1: I don't think they're gonna go totally back to that.

790
00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:52,319
Speaker 1: I mean, I just mean maybe they need to back

791
00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:54,360
Speaker 1: it down a little bit bigger. Right there. There's a

792
00:42:54,520 --> 00:42:57,440
Speaker 1: now a market for the older equipment. Yeah, and it

793
00:42:57,520 --> 00:43:01,480
Speaker 1: may even be that, uh, that could end up inspiring

794
00:43:01,520 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: a change anyway, where the questions come in, like how

795
00:43:05,760 --> 00:43:08,439
Speaker 1: how much of this new technology that's being incorporated into

796
00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:15,280
Speaker 1: tractors is of of real demonstrable benefit to the farmer

797
00:43:15,560 --> 00:43:19,160
Speaker 1: or the rancher, Like how can you show that this

798
00:43:19,320 --> 00:43:22,480
Speaker 1: stuff that's supposed to make the tractor more efficient? Is

799
00:43:22,520 --> 00:43:26,160
Speaker 1: it measurably more efficient because of these features? All right?

800
00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:28,520
Speaker 1: But you know what, because the features you mentioned features,

801
00:43:28,560 --> 00:43:30,640
Speaker 1: and I gotta say this, but but there they are

802
00:43:30,719 --> 00:43:34,600
Speaker 1: just like driving like a luxury yacht or something. I

803
00:43:34,600 --> 00:43:38,080
Speaker 1: don't know, yeah, maybe a luxury RVU in a field.

804
00:43:38,080 --> 00:43:40,120
Speaker 1: They're incredible. Have you seen the interiors of these things?

805
00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:42,600
Speaker 1: I have not. There there again, like a story and

806
00:43:42,640 --> 00:43:44,040
Speaker 1: a half high, so you've got a great view of

807
00:43:44,040 --> 00:43:47,000
Speaker 1: your field. You've got leather rep steering wheels, of course,

808
00:43:47,040 --> 00:43:49,920
Speaker 1: the seats are super cushy, and they're on a suspension

809
00:43:49,920 --> 00:43:52,640
Speaker 1: system almost like you'd find in a semi truck something

810
00:43:52,680 --> 00:43:56,160
Speaker 1: like that. Very soft. Um. They've got air conditioning, of course,

811
00:43:56,200 --> 00:43:59,840
Speaker 1: they've got CD players, DVD players of course, media inputs

812
00:43:59,840 --> 00:44:02,160
Speaker 1: and out not you know, the CDs, I know, they're gone, right,

813
00:44:02,560 --> 00:44:06,800
Speaker 1: they're giving me the scal from you know andoth whatever.

814
00:44:07,000 --> 00:44:08,960
Speaker 1: Well they have that too, Yeah, but of course all

815
00:44:08,960 --> 00:44:11,719
Speaker 1: the screens for the GPS systems and everything. They've got

816
00:44:11,800 --> 00:44:15,160
Speaker 1: autonomous features. You can go autopilot, you can go semi autonomous,

817
00:44:15,160 --> 00:44:18,280
Speaker 1: you can go fully autonomous in some cases. Um oh,

818
00:44:18,320 --> 00:44:20,600
Speaker 1: this is when one cool feature. I don't know if

819
00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:22,239
Speaker 1: they can give this up. This would be tough to

820
00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:25,279
Speaker 1: give up. Let's say you're driving a grain harvester and

821
00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:26,920
Speaker 1: we can all picture what that looks like. I mean,

822
00:44:26,960 --> 00:44:28,960
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people call them combines, but

823
00:44:29,040 --> 00:44:31,960
Speaker 1: grain harvester combines the same idea. They have that huge

824
00:44:31,960 --> 00:44:34,200
Speaker 1: shoot at the back that it just pours out corn

825
00:44:34,280 --> 00:44:37,560
Speaker 1: or whatever it happens to be wheat. Um. There's another

826
00:44:37,640 --> 00:44:39,960
Speaker 1: vehicle that follows behind. It's usually a truck, but it's

827
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:41,600
Speaker 1: got a giant bin on it. It It looks like a

828
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:45,279
Speaker 1: just a big box and it pours everything that it's

829
00:44:45,320 --> 00:44:47,680
Speaker 1: harvesting into that box as it drives along. They drive

830
00:44:47,719 --> 00:44:51,239
Speaker 1: along in tandem. There is a technology that they call

831
00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:54,680
Speaker 1: follow me technology, and what it does is it it

832
00:44:54,719 --> 00:44:58,239
Speaker 1: completely automates the following vehicle, so no one has to

833
00:44:58,320 --> 00:45:01,800
Speaker 1: drive that second vehicle. There's someone in there manning the harvester,

834
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:05,040
Speaker 1: the the you know, the vehicle that's that's gathering the material,

835
00:45:05,480 --> 00:45:07,520
Speaker 1: but there's nobody in the box and the one that

836
00:45:07,560 --> 00:45:10,680
Speaker 1: just carries the box. So that way it's always following

837
00:45:10,680 --> 00:45:14,160
Speaker 1: it precisely the right distance at the precisely little right speed.

838
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:17,279
Speaker 1: I eat, whether the you know, the operator adjust that

839
00:45:17,320 --> 00:45:20,040
Speaker 1: speed up or down doesn't matter. That is always going

840
00:45:20,120 --> 00:45:22,120
Speaker 1: to be exactly where it is. It's never It's called

841
00:45:22,160 --> 00:45:25,080
Speaker 1: following technology. That's pretty cool. It eliminates at least one

842
00:45:25,080 --> 00:45:27,000
Speaker 1: other person has to do that. They can do something

843
00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:29,239
Speaker 1: else on the farm. And then I don't know if

844
00:45:29,239 --> 00:45:31,000
Speaker 1: this is possible or not, but wouldn't be cool if, like,

845
00:45:31,040 --> 00:45:33,959
Speaker 1: when it's full it could it could signal that, you know, okay,

846
00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:35,960
Speaker 1: we stopped for right for now, and they do that

847
00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:38,200
Speaker 1: and then another one takes his place. I don't know

848
00:45:38,239 --> 00:45:39,920
Speaker 1: if that's possible yet or not. It seems like it

849
00:45:39,960 --> 00:45:42,600
Speaker 1: would be. Yeah, swap out technology. I would imagine that

850
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:45,840
Speaker 1: you could do that. You would just have essentially, uh,

851
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:50,319
Speaker 1: you know, designating Clone one and Clone two, and then

852
00:45:50,320 --> 00:45:53,480
Speaker 1: you just Clone one return home clone to take its

853
00:45:53,480 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 1: place Clone two or Clone one, you know, drop off

854
00:45:56,440 --> 00:45:58,279
Speaker 1: the load and return to the feed that kind of thing.

855
00:45:58,680 --> 00:46:00,520
Speaker 1: It seems like it would be oh cool if you

856
00:46:00,560 --> 00:46:02,680
Speaker 1: had like the system of like three vehicles that were

857
00:46:02,680 --> 00:46:06,000
Speaker 1: just continually operating, because then you have minimum downtime. Yeah,

858
00:46:06,120 --> 00:46:08,320
Speaker 1: very cool. I mean, so there's some really interesting stuff

859
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:10,359
Speaker 1: that goes along with it. But I gotta say that,

860
00:46:10,400 --> 00:46:13,720
Speaker 1: you know, some of this is really kind of rubbing

861
00:46:13,719 --> 00:46:15,680
Speaker 1: me the wrong way, and that you know, I think

862
00:46:15,800 --> 00:46:18,040
Speaker 1: it would because I mean, I I have I felt

863
00:46:18,080 --> 00:46:20,279
Speaker 1: the frustration of the you know, opening the hood and

864
00:46:20,280 --> 00:46:22,600
Speaker 1: not being able to do anything with my own car.

865
00:46:23,160 --> 00:46:25,000
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what it's like if you've got a

866
00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:27,360
Speaker 1: five thousand dollar machine that you have to have running

867
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:32,040
Speaker 1: by Wednesday at noon, specifically to plant that field, and

868
00:46:32,080 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 1: it's not operating and there's nothing you can do about

869
00:46:34,160 --> 00:46:36,880
Speaker 1: it except fly a guy in from Utah to to

870
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:39,200
Speaker 1: fix it in the field. And even then, you know,

871
00:46:39,239 --> 00:46:40,840
Speaker 1: you gotta pay for his ticket to come there. You

872
00:46:40,840 --> 00:46:42,680
Speaker 1: gotta for the repair itself, which is not going to

873
00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:45,520
Speaker 1: be cheap. You've gotta hope that whatever the repair is

874
00:46:46,080 --> 00:46:49,800
Speaker 1: works and that it's sustained. Because I've read stories about

875
00:46:50,200 --> 00:46:53,920
Speaker 1: guys who would fly out mechanics to come and or actually,

876
00:46:53,960 --> 00:46:56,760
Speaker 1: I guess technicians, it goes beyond mechanic because you're actually

877
00:46:57,080 --> 00:47:02,080
Speaker 1: having to use the the authorized proprietary approach to even

878
00:47:02,120 --> 00:47:07,080
Speaker 1: access the systems on board the vehicle. And you end

879
00:47:07,160 --> 00:47:10,400
Speaker 1: up doing some work and then the person leaves and

880
00:47:10,719 --> 00:47:12,919
Speaker 1: your vehicle works for a little while and then breaks

881
00:47:12,960 --> 00:47:15,840
Speaker 1: down again, and then you think, well, I can't this.

882
00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:18,239
Speaker 1: This isn't something sustainable. I can't keep doing this. You

883
00:47:18,280 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 1: can't keep that cycle going. So what are you gonna do.

884
00:47:20,160 --> 00:47:22,120
Speaker 1: You're gonna just let that thing sit in the barn

885
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:24,919
Speaker 1: and collect dust, or you're gonna get a tractor from

886
00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:28,080
Speaker 1: twenty five years ago that works every day and you

887
00:47:28,120 --> 00:47:30,360
Speaker 1: know how to repair right. It may not have it

888
00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:33,160
Speaker 1: certainly doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but if

889
00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:35,160
Speaker 1: it works and you can keep it in working condition,

890
00:47:35,239 --> 00:47:39,400
Speaker 1: that's a very powerful story. Yeah. We talk about in

891
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:43,080
Speaker 1: in the text sphere, we talk about this approach, this uh,

892
00:47:43,160 --> 00:47:47,120
Speaker 1: this trend really and it's across all areas of electronics

893
00:47:47,560 --> 00:47:51,239
Speaker 1: as the black box trend. And a black box essentially

894
00:47:51,280 --> 00:47:55,799
Speaker 1: means any system or group of systems that is either

895
00:47:55,880 --> 00:48:01,279
Speaker 1: sufficiently complex enough or is protected against you accessing it,

896
00:48:01,719 --> 00:48:05,239
Speaker 1: so meaning that you know, in the old days, the

897
00:48:05,440 --> 00:48:09,240
Speaker 1: really like the birth of the personal computer age, people

898
00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:12,719
Speaker 1: were hacking, like physically hacking machines to make them do

899
00:48:12,760 --> 00:48:16,439
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff right, Um, And as they get

900
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:19,720
Speaker 1: more and more sophisticated, it's harder to do that, either

901
00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:23,520
Speaker 1: because it's just so complicated that it's rare for any

902
00:48:23,640 --> 00:48:26,680
Speaker 1: one person to understand all the systems that are involved,

903
00:48:27,320 --> 00:48:30,520
Speaker 1: or companies have gone to great links to keep certain

904
00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:34,919
Speaker 1: components completely shielded from you tweaking them. So you own

905
00:48:34,960 --> 00:48:37,680
Speaker 1: the physical machine itself, you want the engine, you want

906
00:48:37,680 --> 00:48:41,520
Speaker 1: the transmission on the wheels, the axles, all that, the chassis. However,

907
00:48:41,880 --> 00:48:45,520
Speaker 1: the company, the you know, the parent company, owns the

908
00:48:45,560 --> 00:48:48,600
Speaker 1: software that makes your machine operates. So you're you're really

909
00:48:48,640 --> 00:48:51,759
Speaker 1: stuck there. You're essentially driving a black box. Yeah, and

910
00:48:51,800 --> 00:48:53,880
Speaker 1: it means that you have to if you if you

911
00:48:53,920 --> 00:48:56,440
Speaker 1: ever have to do any maintenance or repair, UH, you

912
00:48:56,520 --> 00:48:59,480
Speaker 1: pretty much have very few options open to you other

913
00:48:59,520 --> 00:49:05,680
Speaker 1: than contacting an official person from that company to come

914
00:49:05,680 --> 00:49:09,080
Speaker 1: and perform the maintenance and repair. This has actually led

915
00:49:09,200 --> 00:49:13,960
Speaker 1: to UH a lot of people kind of lumping in

916
00:49:14,040 --> 00:49:19,280
Speaker 1: agricultural technology under the Right to Repair Act, which really

917
00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:21,760
Speaker 1: is not a single act. It's actually lots of different

918
00:49:21,800 --> 00:49:26,200
Speaker 1: legislation introduced in many different states, and not just singly

919
00:49:26,280 --> 00:49:29,480
Speaker 1: focused on agriculture. In fact, the main focus was automotive.

920
00:49:29,880 --> 00:49:33,600
Speaker 1: The idea being that a person who purchases a vehicle

921
00:49:33,719 --> 00:49:38,919
Speaker 1: should have the expectation that they could do repairs themselves

922
00:49:39,120 --> 00:49:44,200
Speaker 1: or take that vehicle to an independent mechanic who also

923
00:49:44,360 --> 00:49:48,840
Speaker 1: could do those repairs other instead of having to be

924
00:49:49,040 --> 00:49:53,560
Speaker 1: forced to take them to the source the manufacturer. That's

925
00:49:53,600 --> 00:49:57,160
Speaker 1: the that's the point behind it. Stay tuned for the

926
00:49:57,200 --> 00:50:00,759
Speaker 1: exciting conclusion of this tex Stuff Classic ep pisode right

927
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:11,239
Speaker 1: after we take this break. If you do want to

928
00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:15,080
Speaker 1: do repairs yourself, if you are absolutely determined that you're

929
00:50:15,120 --> 00:50:18,319
Speaker 1: going to do those repairs that maintenance yourself, you're going

930
00:50:18,360 --> 00:50:21,200
Speaker 1: to go to whatever links necessary in order to do that.

931
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:23,239
Speaker 1: What you would have to do is get hold of

932
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:26,840
Speaker 1: a computer and some software and a connector that works

933
00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:31,080
Speaker 1: with that particular make and model of that vehicle. And

934
00:50:31,160 --> 00:50:35,080
Speaker 1: you'd have to be doing it essentially illegally. Yeah, and

935
00:50:35,080 --> 00:50:37,680
Speaker 1: there's also because this is a piracy issue, right, and

936
00:50:37,719 --> 00:50:41,080
Speaker 1: there's also the the issue of the password, the manufacturer

937
00:50:41,160 --> 00:50:44,799
Speaker 1: provided password. Now that's something that they hold pretty close

938
00:50:44,840 --> 00:50:47,239
Speaker 1: to their chest. I mean, that's something that but of course,

939
00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:49,400
Speaker 1: if you've already got the software loaded onto a laptop,

940
00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:52,080
Speaker 1: you've likely already got the pat you know, somebody with

941
00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:55,680
Speaker 1: the password as well. We're talking about a gray market here, aren't. Yeah. Yeah,

942
00:50:55,719 --> 00:50:59,480
Speaker 1: there's a gray market for machines that have that software

943
00:50:59,520 --> 00:51:03,000
Speaker 1: loaded onto it already. So that if you, if you

944
00:51:03,080 --> 00:51:06,000
Speaker 1: want to try and do these kind of uh, you know,

945
00:51:06,080 --> 00:51:09,480
Speaker 1: at least diagnose what's wrong with you know, you might

946
00:51:09,520 --> 00:51:11,480
Speaker 1: not even know yet, you know, and it may be

947
00:51:11,600 --> 00:51:16,399
Speaker 1: something very simple. And lack of knowledge is terrible right

948
00:51:16,520 --> 00:51:20,000
Speaker 1: for anybody, because you are completely dependent upon what someone

949
00:51:20,080 --> 00:51:24,279
Speaker 1: else says, yeah, and you don't necessarily know. If you're

950
00:51:24,280 --> 00:51:27,120
Speaker 1: someone like I'm not a car guy, Scott. If I

951
00:51:27,160 --> 00:51:31,760
Speaker 1: take my wife's vehicle into a mechanic and he says, oh,

952
00:51:31,920 --> 00:51:34,000
Speaker 1: problem is your hobbit fell off your unicorn, I'd be like,

953
00:51:34,040 --> 00:51:35,920
Speaker 1: I don't think that sounds right, but I don't know,

954
00:51:36,120 --> 00:51:39,359
Speaker 1: so I guess I gotta pay you this ten dollars. Yeah,

955
00:51:39,320 --> 00:51:40,920
Speaker 1: I understand. I feel a lot of people are in

956
00:51:40,960 --> 00:51:43,560
Speaker 1: that position. If you just if you don't have the

957
00:51:43,560 --> 00:51:46,000
Speaker 1: the the knowledge ahead of time when you come in

958
00:51:46,120 --> 00:51:48,880
Speaker 1: and what it possibly could be, you feel like you

959
00:51:48,960 --> 00:51:53,040
Speaker 1: might be taken and and that is another source of frustration,

960
00:51:53,120 --> 00:51:55,560
Speaker 1: is that you're at the mercy of the manufacturer at

961
00:51:55,600 --> 00:51:58,959
Speaker 1: that point, because they can tell you anything, and you'd say, well, okay,

962
00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:01,000
Speaker 1: here's the manufacturer telling me that's what it is. It

963
00:52:01,120 --> 00:52:03,319
Speaker 1: has to be that, and and a lot of people

964
00:52:03,320 --> 00:52:05,160
Speaker 1: are just like, well, I'd rather I'd rather know that,

965
00:52:05,239 --> 00:52:07,439
Speaker 1: find that out for myself, you know, or maybe narrow

966
00:52:07,560 --> 00:52:09,520
Speaker 1: down to three possible things. And if they tell me

967
00:52:09,560 --> 00:52:11,480
Speaker 1: one of the three things, I'll believe it. If they

968
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:14,400
Speaker 1: say something, you know, from out and left field, then

969
00:52:14,440 --> 00:52:16,719
Speaker 1: I'm gonna question that rist them why I'm gonna follow

970
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:20,000
Speaker 1: up with him. But it's just easier to accept if

971
00:52:20,040 --> 00:52:22,640
Speaker 1: you do that research ahead of time. And the problem

972
00:52:22,719 --> 00:52:28,600
Speaker 1: is that if you want to access the tractor's computer,

973
00:52:29,760 --> 00:52:34,520
Speaker 1: you are essentially breaking the law, because the Digital Millennial

974
00:52:34,600 --> 00:52:41,479
Speaker 1: Copyright Act specifically makes it illegal to try to get

975
00:52:41,520 --> 00:52:46,959
Speaker 1: around or break protection around any sort of DRM. Now,

976
00:52:47,000 --> 00:52:49,160
Speaker 1: typically we think of d r M as something that

977
00:52:49,200 --> 00:52:51,600
Speaker 1: happens to be attached to a music file or a

978
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:57,000
Speaker 1: computer file, not a tractor, but the principle is the same.

979
00:52:57,040 --> 00:53:00,000
Speaker 1: And while I'm not necessarily. I don't know that we're

980
00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:02,560
Speaker 1: going to live in a world where John Deere is

981
00:53:02,600 --> 00:53:05,400
Speaker 1: going to sue a farmer because the farmer chose to

982
00:53:06,080 --> 00:53:09,600
Speaker 1: get around. The point is, under the law, they would

983
00:53:09,600 --> 00:53:12,360
Speaker 1: be completely within their right to do that because the

984
00:53:12,560 --> 00:53:15,919
Speaker 1: d m c A allows for it. And that's why

985
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:19,000
Speaker 1: the Right to Repair Act this this group, these various

986
00:53:19,840 --> 00:53:24,520
Speaker 1: elements of legislation that are in different stages. Only Massachusetts

987
00:53:24,560 --> 00:53:27,920
Speaker 1: I think, has actually passed a Right to Repair Act

988
00:53:28,040 --> 00:53:33,200
Speaker 1: into law. But what that says is that it should

989
00:53:33,680 --> 00:53:36,000
Speaker 1: they should get an exception essentially to d m c

990
00:53:36,200 --> 00:53:40,120
Speaker 1: A that that in order to do repairs on something, uh,

991
00:53:40,160 --> 00:53:43,799
Speaker 1: it should not be considered illegal to bypass this protection

992
00:53:44,440 --> 00:53:48,040
Speaker 1: because it means that you have created kind of almost

993
00:53:48,080 --> 00:53:50,520
Speaker 1: like a monopoly. Like you you have created only one

994
00:53:50,680 --> 00:53:54,160
Speaker 1: means of addressing the problem. And it also means that

995
00:53:54,200 --> 00:53:57,600
Speaker 1: people who are like you know, independent mechanics who do

996
00:53:57,719 --> 00:54:01,680
Speaker 1: not work for any specific manufacture or dealership or whatever,

997
00:54:02,960 --> 00:54:07,160
Speaker 1: they're seeing their business decline because if more and more

998
00:54:07,160 --> 00:54:10,360
Speaker 1: of the vehicles have to be taken to those dealerships

999
00:54:10,440 --> 00:54:15,080
Speaker 1: or individual or manufacturers, then the mechanics don't they don't

1000
00:54:15,080 --> 00:54:16,960
Speaker 1: they aren't getting as much work or less and less

1001
00:54:17,000 --> 00:54:20,279
Speaker 1: need for the older equipment to be repaired. Unless they

1002
00:54:20,280 --> 00:54:23,279
Speaker 1: start to turn towards using that old is going to

1003
00:54:23,320 --> 00:54:25,160
Speaker 1: flourish again. And can I can I just say that

1004
00:54:25,160 --> 00:54:27,799
Speaker 1: we're we're not picking on John Dear. It's just an

1005
00:54:27,800 --> 00:54:30,239
Speaker 1: easy example for us to make that everybody is familiar with.

1006
00:54:30,280 --> 00:54:35,960
Speaker 1: But all of the modern tractor manufacturers are doing similar things. Yes,

1007
00:54:36,080 --> 00:54:37,560
Speaker 1: So it's not like, you know, John DearS, you know

1008
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:40,319
Speaker 1: some evil corporation doing this on their own, and that's

1009
00:54:40,360 --> 00:54:42,400
Speaker 1: the only one that's like that. And to get their equipment,

1010
00:54:42,400 --> 00:54:45,600
Speaker 1: you have to submit to this. It's it's everybody, and

1011
00:54:45,600 --> 00:54:50,400
Speaker 1: and these companies have, you know, very understandable reasons for

1012
00:54:50,600 --> 00:54:53,760
Speaker 1: pursuing this sort of stuff too. It's not like their

1013
00:54:53,800 --> 00:54:56,800
Speaker 1: motives are. They're not all slightly whiplash. They're not twirling

1014
00:54:56,840 --> 00:54:59,400
Speaker 1: their mustaches as the train is coming down the triplis that.

1015
00:54:59,560 --> 00:55:02,160
Speaker 1: Don't you agree though, that if they wanted to make

1016
00:55:02,160 --> 00:55:04,480
Speaker 1: it easier on the on the ordinary farmer that they

1017
00:55:04,480 --> 00:55:07,600
Speaker 1: were on the on the average farmer, that they would

1018
00:55:07,600 --> 00:55:10,120
Speaker 1: maybe not make it password encrypted. You I think, I

1019
00:55:10,160 --> 00:55:13,840
Speaker 1: think what my own personal opinion is that they could

1020
00:55:13,880 --> 00:55:17,440
Speaker 1: throw in a simple device that hooks up to the

1021
00:55:17,560 --> 00:55:20,840
Speaker 1: tractor and gives a readout of exactly what's wrong. Maybe

1022
00:55:20,880 --> 00:55:23,600
Speaker 1: just a diagnostic tool, but maybe it's something that's uh

1023
00:55:24,400 --> 00:55:26,640
Speaker 1: boy that you know, what level do you allow it

1024
00:55:26,680 --> 00:55:29,360
Speaker 1: to go to? Though? Because you start allowing everybody to

1025
00:55:29,400 --> 00:55:31,920
Speaker 1: recalibrate your machines, there's gonna be problems and they're going

1026
00:55:31,960 --> 00:55:35,200
Speaker 1: to blame the manufacturers to So how would you how

1027
00:55:35,239 --> 00:55:37,799
Speaker 1: would you ever determine what level you would allow them

1028
00:55:37,840 --> 00:55:40,719
Speaker 1: to fix or repair their own machine versus this is

1029
00:55:40,760 --> 00:55:42,799
Speaker 1: a factory repair. This is something that we have to

1030
00:55:42,840 --> 00:55:45,640
Speaker 1: do right, and and when you are getting into this

1031
00:55:45,760 --> 00:55:48,960
Speaker 1: level of sophistication and complexity, it is not an easy

1032
00:55:49,320 --> 00:55:53,320
Speaker 1: questioned answer, right because, uh, some people, you know, you

1033
00:55:53,400 --> 00:55:55,000
Speaker 1: might say, all right, well, here are all the basic

1034
00:55:55,080 --> 00:55:59,680
Speaker 1: mechanical systems that we think people should reasonably be expected

1035
00:55:59,719 --> 00:56:02,040
Speaker 1: to be able to address. Here are some of the

1036
00:56:02,080 --> 00:56:05,200
Speaker 1: ones that we think are beyond the pale when it

1037
00:56:05,280 --> 00:56:08,680
Speaker 1: comes to the average person's ability to access it and

1038
00:56:09,640 --> 00:56:12,960
Speaker 1: change it. The problem is then make sure that the

1039
00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:19,600
Speaker 1: ones that you can't touch essentially aren't also going to

1040
00:56:19,719 --> 00:56:23,239
Speaker 1: completely shut down the vehicle should they go bad. Yeah,

1041
00:56:23,640 --> 00:56:27,120
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's incredibly difficult. There's there's so many

1042
00:56:27,239 --> 00:56:30,719
Speaker 1: possibilities here that I don't know what the answer is.

1043
00:56:30,719 --> 00:56:32,319
Speaker 1: I really don't but it. But it does seem to

1044
00:56:32,360 --> 00:56:34,680
Speaker 1: me that if they would at least allow them access

1045
00:56:34,680 --> 00:56:37,000
Speaker 1: to to look into the T C T E C

1046
00:56:37,200 --> 00:56:40,239
Speaker 1: U and figure out what's going on, at least at

1047
00:56:40,280 --> 00:56:43,120
Speaker 1: least to understand, all right, the problem is with this

1048
00:56:43,200 --> 00:56:46,120
Speaker 1: hydraulic sensor over here on this on my number eight

1049
00:56:46,120 --> 00:56:50,040
Speaker 1: wheel or however they designate that. Um, then they would

1050
00:56:50,040 --> 00:56:51,880
Speaker 1: at least know, Okay, that's where I'm gonna look, and

1051
00:56:51,880 --> 00:56:54,120
Speaker 1: that's where the problem is gonna be. Then know, um,

1052
00:56:54,360 --> 00:56:57,279
Speaker 1: it just gives you a better better sense of what's

1053
00:56:57,320 --> 00:57:00,319
Speaker 1: going on. No, no, no, I I agree. I think

1054
00:57:00,520 --> 00:57:03,880
Speaker 1: I think being ignorant of the situation just adds to stress.

1055
00:57:04,000 --> 00:57:05,960
Speaker 1: Instead of just calling the manufacturer and saying, well, my

1056
00:57:06,000 --> 00:57:08,120
Speaker 1: tractor doesn't work. Yeah, I mean, then you would at

1057
00:57:08,160 --> 00:57:10,400
Speaker 1: least say, like, well, I'm having a problem with my

1058
00:57:10,400 --> 00:57:13,120
Speaker 1: my number eight wheel by hydrock sensors doing this. But

1059
00:57:13,200 --> 00:57:15,240
Speaker 1: you can't even do that now, and that's the problem.

1060
00:57:15,320 --> 00:57:19,840
Speaker 1: So super frustrating on both sides. Now, one thing that's

1061
00:57:19,880 --> 00:57:21,600
Speaker 1: not frustrating, the thing that we wanted to kind of

1062
00:57:21,640 --> 00:57:25,280
Speaker 1: conclude with is that some farmers have found really creative

1063
00:57:25,360 --> 00:57:30,480
Speaker 1: means to boosting their efficiency by taking matters into their

1064
00:57:30,480 --> 00:57:36,440
Speaker 1: own hands, by actually hacking either systems or are tools

1065
00:57:36,960 --> 00:57:39,680
Speaker 1: in order to get more efficient. Scott, you looked into

1066
00:57:39,680 --> 00:57:41,280
Speaker 1: this source of stuff, Yes, I did. There's a site

1067
00:57:41,280 --> 00:57:43,920
Speaker 1: called farmhacks. Now. Farmhas kind of came about when I

1068
00:57:43,920 --> 00:57:46,080
Speaker 1: was reading about the gray market and um, you know

1069
00:57:46,240 --> 00:57:49,760
Speaker 1: some of the software proprietary stuff you're talking about, like

1070
00:57:49,760 --> 00:57:52,040
Speaker 1: maybe a friend of a friend as a laptop that

1071
00:57:52,080 --> 00:57:54,960
Speaker 1: you could use the software in the passwords. Well, they said, well,

1072
00:57:55,080 --> 00:57:56,920
Speaker 1: there there's sites out there that can help you with

1073
00:57:57,040 --> 00:58:00,640
Speaker 1: some problems, not all problems like that, but looking farm hacks,

1074
00:58:00,640 --> 00:58:03,760
Speaker 1: and there's a site called farmhack dot org. And I

1075
00:58:03,800 --> 00:58:06,080
Speaker 1: can just give you a few examples, just quick examples,

1076
00:58:06,360 --> 00:58:09,640
Speaker 1: but there's probably I don't know, maybe two hundred examples

1077
00:58:09,640 --> 00:58:12,840
Speaker 1: on this site so far of just really simple things.

1078
00:58:12,840 --> 00:58:15,000
Speaker 1: And it's exactly what it sounds like. It's it's they're

1079
00:58:15,040 --> 00:58:17,520
Speaker 1: not all high tech either. Um, some of them are

1080
00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:21,200
Speaker 1: are you know, large grand scale projects, and others are

1081
00:58:21,280 --> 00:58:23,400
Speaker 1: very very small, like made in a five gallon bucket

1082
00:58:23,400 --> 00:58:26,240
Speaker 1: type small. So really really small like let's say they

1083
00:58:26,280 --> 00:58:29,480
Speaker 1: got a problem of I don't know, the the the

1084
00:58:29,520 --> 00:58:33,000
Speaker 1: metal pan that you put the chickens water in on

1085
00:58:33,080 --> 00:58:36,000
Speaker 1: your small farm, it keeps freezing in the wintertime. But

1086
00:58:36,160 --> 00:58:38,440
Speaker 1: the solutions that are out there, you know, in a

1087
00:58:39,440 --> 00:58:42,720
Speaker 1: I guess in the consumer realm, are you know a

1088
00:58:42,760 --> 00:58:45,040
Speaker 1: two heater for this thing? And you don't want to

1089
00:58:45,040 --> 00:58:46,959
Speaker 1: pay two bucks for that? You just got a small farm.

1090
00:58:46,960 --> 00:58:49,080
Speaker 1: You got ten chickens to take care of her? Twenty chickens?

1091
00:58:49,520 --> 00:58:50,720
Speaker 1: What do you do you want to you want the

1092
00:58:50,760 --> 00:58:52,520
Speaker 1: five dollar solutions? So you know, you go to this

1093
00:58:52,600 --> 00:58:55,760
Speaker 1: farm haack site and they've got a solution there for you,

1094
00:58:55,800 --> 00:58:58,800
Speaker 1: and it's things like that. So um. One thing that

1095
00:58:58,840 --> 00:59:01,440
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier was the the automatic weating machine, the

1096
00:59:01,520 --> 00:59:04,560
Speaker 1: robotic weating machine. Yeah, well here's an idea that This

1097
00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:07,960
Speaker 1: one at farm Farm hacks Head and they're called farm bikes,

1098
00:59:08,000 --> 00:59:10,080
Speaker 1: and there's a bunch of different types of farm bikes,

1099
00:59:10,120 --> 00:59:11,800
Speaker 1: but one of them that really caught my eye was

1100
00:59:11,840 --> 00:59:15,840
Speaker 1: the type that writers live face down just above the ground.

1101
00:59:15,880 --> 00:59:18,480
Speaker 1: So you're you're kind of on a almost like in

1102
00:59:18,480 --> 00:59:21,240
Speaker 1: a sling, just above the ground, kind of maybe a

1103
00:59:21,240 --> 00:59:24,800
Speaker 1: little less than arms length and big wheels that go

1104
00:59:24,880 --> 00:59:28,200
Speaker 1: down the rose you know where there aren't plants, and

1105
00:59:28,400 --> 00:59:30,480
Speaker 1: you pedal this with your feet behind you, so it's

1106
00:59:30,480 --> 00:59:33,680
Speaker 1: like a reverse recumbent bike almost. You're you're laying head first,

1107
00:59:33,720 --> 00:59:38,040
Speaker 1: so you're like you're like flying over the weeds like Superman. Yes,

1108
00:59:38,120 --> 00:59:40,480
Speaker 1: picking weeds. Yes. And there's buckets hanging next to you

1109
00:59:40,520 --> 00:59:42,200
Speaker 1: and you can pick them. And it's very very simple,

1110
00:59:42,240 --> 00:59:44,960
Speaker 1: and you can have two people, three people, however big

1111
00:59:45,000 --> 00:59:46,680
Speaker 1: you want to make this device, you know, this this

1112
00:59:46,760 --> 00:59:49,440
Speaker 1: thing and again it's foot power, you know, it's pedal powered.

1113
00:59:49,480 --> 00:59:52,280
Speaker 1: It's just like a bicycle. It's just a rework bike really.

1114
00:59:52,560 --> 00:59:55,280
Speaker 1: So it's a very low tech version of the automated

1115
00:59:55,280 --> 00:59:57,640
Speaker 1: wating machine that you talked about. It's only it's not automated.

1116
00:59:57,680 --> 01:00:01,080
Speaker 1: It's human powered and and humans are are suspended they're

1117
01:00:01,120 --> 01:00:03,000
Speaker 1: doing that. But it's it's a weird thing to look at,

1118
01:00:03,080 --> 01:00:05,400
Speaker 1: but it's it is so smart. When you look at it,

1119
01:00:05,440 --> 01:00:07,760
Speaker 1: you realize, like that that's the way to pick wheats.

1120
01:00:07,920 --> 01:00:09,920
Speaker 1: I kind of want to try that, just to try

1121
01:00:09,960 --> 01:00:12,680
Speaker 1: it now. It's fun. I'd almost like to ride it

1122
01:00:12,760 --> 01:00:15,760
Speaker 1: fast on the street. The only thing is that you

1123
01:00:15,440 --> 01:00:18,680
Speaker 1: would you would imagine that their ability to maneuver is

1124
01:00:18,680 --> 01:00:21,280
Speaker 1: probably somewhat limited, seeing is how it was designed to

1125
01:00:21,280 --> 01:00:25,080
Speaker 1: go straight down. It's mostly straight. The turning is a

1126
01:00:25,080 --> 01:00:27,880
Speaker 1: little subject. Right, So there's a few and well just

1127
01:00:28,000 --> 01:00:30,160
Speaker 1: kind of let's quickly go through these ships. We're nearing

1128
01:00:30,200 --> 01:00:32,280
Speaker 1: the end here. But um, of course there's a lot

1129
01:00:32,320 --> 01:00:35,520
Speaker 1: of three D printed parts on the site. And that's

1130
01:00:35,520 --> 01:00:37,360
Speaker 1: interesting because you know, I knew you've talked about them

1131
01:00:37,360 --> 01:00:39,800
Speaker 1: many times. We've talked about them on car stuff. Um,

1132
01:00:39,960 --> 01:00:42,880
Speaker 1: we're talking about things like seed rollers or spray nozzles.

1133
01:00:42,920 --> 01:00:47,200
Speaker 1: Any any non electric tractor part maybere far, you know,

1134
01:00:47,240 --> 01:00:49,080
Speaker 1: any any implement part that you can think of, you

1135
01:00:49,080 --> 01:00:52,840
Speaker 1: could you could do a three D printed part for that. Um,

1136
01:00:52,880 --> 01:00:55,720
Speaker 1: how about this homemade livestock scales for about a third

1137
01:00:55,760 --> 01:00:57,720
Speaker 1: of the price. It's something you don't really think about.

1138
01:00:57,760 --> 01:00:59,400
Speaker 1: You have to weigh those cattle before they go on

1139
01:00:59,400 --> 01:01:01,640
Speaker 1: the truck to the to the market. How do you

1140
01:01:01,680 --> 01:01:03,280
Speaker 1: do that? Well, you have to buy a scale, and

1141
01:01:03,320 --> 01:01:05,640
Speaker 1: the scale can be you know, thousands of dollars, maybe

1142
01:01:05,640 --> 01:01:08,240
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars for one. If you could do the

1143
01:01:08,280 --> 01:01:10,280
Speaker 1: same thing, if you can create your own for about

1144
01:01:10,320 --> 01:01:11,720
Speaker 1: a third of the price. Of course you're going to

1145
01:01:11,840 --> 01:01:15,080
Speaker 1: do that, so why not and it's just as effective. Um,

1146
01:01:15,280 --> 01:01:18,840
Speaker 1: how about let's see quick attachments. Uh, you know ideas

1147
01:01:18,880 --> 01:01:22,520
Speaker 1: for quick attachment. Um, for things that require like maybe

1148
01:01:22,560 --> 01:01:25,320
Speaker 1: a three point hitch, very difficult to line up and

1149
01:01:25,320 --> 01:01:27,880
Speaker 1: get it get correct. But just simple ways around that.

1150
01:01:27,920 --> 01:01:30,520
Speaker 1: You know, things that that speed up your time, that

1151
01:01:30,520 --> 01:01:33,240
Speaker 1: that maximize efficiency. It's like a plug in play approach. Well,

1152
01:01:33,240 --> 01:01:36,880
Speaker 1: it's very very similar. You're exactly right. Um. Okay, So

1153
01:01:36,920 --> 01:01:39,960
Speaker 1: we talked about mobile temperature alarms and things like that.

1154
01:01:40,520 --> 01:01:43,680
Speaker 1: There's a lot of pro rr apps out there. I

1155
01:01:43,720 --> 01:01:46,480
Speaker 1: guess that are not advertising the site, but people are saying,

1156
01:01:46,760 --> 01:01:49,000
Speaker 1: I use this one. It really works, So you can

1157
01:01:49,040 --> 01:01:50,800
Speaker 1: go there and kind of Again, this is back to

1158
01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:57,080
Speaker 1: the the shared ideas, the community aspect of the collective expertise. Yeah,

1159
01:01:57,080 --> 01:01:58,919
Speaker 1: I mean that way, you know, if your greenhouse gets

1160
01:01:58,920 --> 01:02:01,960
Speaker 1: above or below temperature, you're alerted no matter where you are.

1161
01:02:01,960 --> 01:02:04,240
Speaker 1: If you're in town buying feed for the livestock or whatever,

1162
01:02:04,520 --> 01:02:06,360
Speaker 1: you know that the greenhouse is getting a little too hot.

1163
01:02:06,400 --> 01:02:07,920
Speaker 1: I gotta get back there and set that or you

1164
01:02:07,920 --> 01:02:10,160
Speaker 1: can manage or you know, maybe it could be an

1165
01:02:10,160 --> 01:02:14,320
Speaker 1: automated system. Yeah, so what about if UM Again I

1166
01:02:14,320 --> 01:02:17,360
Speaker 1: mentioned the five gallon bucket thing, but UM humidifiers for

1167
01:02:17,480 --> 01:02:20,240
Speaker 1: small buildings in barns or whatever, you know, that's that's

1168
01:02:20,280 --> 01:02:24,000
Speaker 1: a simple thing to do. There's UH bucket based humidifiers

1169
01:02:24,000 --> 01:02:26,680
Speaker 1: that you can make that that are continually refilled themselves.

1170
01:02:26,720 --> 01:02:30,320
Speaker 1: So it's a self sustaining system that it's very smart

1171
01:02:30,520 --> 01:02:34,240
Speaker 1: and it's there on that site. UM also compost sensors

1172
01:02:34,280 --> 01:02:36,920
Speaker 1: again for recording temperatures inside the compost piles. And you

1173
01:02:36,920 --> 01:02:39,800
Speaker 1: wouldn't think that's important, but some of those compost piles

1174
01:02:39,840 --> 01:02:43,040
Speaker 1: can self combust. They can spontaneously combust because they get

1175
01:02:43,080 --> 01:02:46,520
Speaker 1: too incredible temperatures. I've seen piles of mulch and dirt

1176
01:02:46,560 --> 01:02:49,120
Speaker 1: and things that that are steaming in the winter because

1177
01:02:49,160 --> 01:02:50,160
Speaker 1: they get so high. You have to go out and

1178
01:02:50,520 --> 01:02:53,480
Speaker 1: turn them. They keep them cooler, they'll they'll just burn up.

1179
01:02:53,960 --> 01:02:57,880
Speaker 1: Compost is the exact same way. What about biodesel biodiesel

1180
01:02:58,000 --> 01:03:02,520
Speaker 1: processing trailers. Oh, we talked about biodiesel quite a few

1181
01:03:02,560 --> 01:03:05,320
Speaker 1: times on text, so also on forward thinking biodiesel is

1182
01:03:05,360 --> 01:03:09,720
Speaker 1: pretty cool stuff. You uh, you can essentially use that

1183
01:03:09,800 --> 01:03:13,240
Speaker 1: in place of diesel. Some diesel engines take it like

1184
01:03:13,280 --> 01:03:17,000
Speaker 1: you could have pure biodiesel. Some diesel engines will process

1185
01:03:17,040 --> 01:03:19,280
Speaker 1: it just fine. Are other ones where you've got to

1186
01:03:19,320 --> 01:03:21,440
Speaker 1: have more of a mix between diesel and bio diesel.

1187
01:03:21,480 --> 01:03:23,120
Speaker 1: But so this is this is something that you could

1188
01:03:23,160 --> 01:03:26,080
Speaker 1: use like like a self contained trailer. So you've got

1189
01:03:26,080 --> 01:03:30,320
Speaker 1: a biodiesel processing um I'll call it a plant, but

1190
01:03:30,360 --> 01:03:32,800
Speaker 1: it's smaller than that. It's a it's about diesel processing

1191
01:03:33,440 --> 01:03:36,800
Speaker 1: um uh system, and it's it's a way to house

1192
01:03:36,840 --> 01:03:39,360
Speaker 1: that in a trailer safely and to be able to

1193
01:03:39,440 --> 01:03:42,240
Speaker 1: use your product, your your waste products, whatever that happens

1194
01:03:42,280 --> 01:03:45,520
Speaker 1: to be. So whatever you farm, you're able to use

1195
01:03:45,560 --> 01:03:49,640
Speaker 1: the corn husks or whatever decrease stuff or algae or

1196
01:03:49,680 --> 01:03:51,840
Speaker 1: whatever you have access to to be able to create

1197
01:03:51,880 --> 01:03:53,560
Speaker 1: your own fuel for your own farm. So it's a

1198
01:03:53,640 --> 01:03:55,680
Speaker 1: very smart thing to do. Yeah, I mean, otherwise you've

1199
01:03:55,720 --> 01:03:59,400
Speaker 1: got the stuff that would just be waste that you know,

1200
01:03:59,440 --> 01:04:01,280
Speaker 1: you might be able to find one or two other

1201
01:04:01,360 --> 01:04:05,000
Speaker 1: uses for it. But reuse of this stuff, making use

1202
01:04:05,040 --> 01:04:08,120
Speaker 1: of as much of the crop as possible is another

1203
01:04:08,280 --> 01:04:12,280
Speaker 1: means of reducing environmental impact and increasing efficiency, cutting your

1204
01:04:12,280 --> 01:04:15,040
Speaker 1: fuel costs at the same time. Very very important for farmers.

1205
01:04:15,040 --> 01:04:18,840
Speaker 1: So things like pedal powered root washers for like things

1206
01:04:18,840 --> 01:04:21,760
Speaker 1: like carrots and potatoes, you know, just small stuff like

1207
01:04:21,800 --> 01:04:23,280
Speaker 1: this that you wouldn't think of, but you know, for

1208
01:04:23,320 --> 01:04:27,760
Speaker 1: somebody who's just going to uh, you know, maybe harvest

1209
01:04:27,760 --> 01:04:29,720
Speaker 1: a small area that's you know a couple of hundred

1210
01:04:29,720 --> 01:04:31,560
Speaker 1: feet and they want to take it into a local

1211
01:04:31,560 --> 01:04:33,640
Speaker 1: farmers market or something. They gotta find some way to

1212
01:04:33,640 --> 01:04:35,320
Speaker 1: wash that before they bring it into town, and they

1213
01:04:35,360 --> 01:04:38,240
Speaker 1: can be a very time consuming process. So these pedal

1214
01:04:38,320 --> 01:04:41,320
Speaker 1: powered root washers that are very effective, very efficient, um

1215
01:04:41,560 --> 01:04:43,520
Speaker 1: smart design. You're just use an old bicycle in a

1216
01:04:44,320 --> 01:04:46,919
Speaker 1: tub of some kind. Yeah, I've actually I've actually seen

1217
01:04:47,120 --> 01:04:53,439
Speaker 1: an entire uh nonprofit startup that does this very thing.

1218
01:04:53,800 --> 01:04:58,960
Speaker 1: They take bicycles and they repurpose the bicycles into pedal

1219
01:04:59,080 --> 01:05:02,360
Speaker 1: powered machine are much many of many of them are

1220
01:05:02,440 --> 01:05:07,120
Speaker 1: dedicated toward farming, and they end up bringing them to

1221
01:05:07,480 --> 01:05:12,920
Speaker 1: places where electricity isn't even always a part of life.

1222
01:05:13,120 --> 01:05:18,280
Speaker 1: So you're seeing this in developing nations where it's really

1223
01:05:18,320 --> 01:05:22,360
Speaker 1: improving people's ability to do more work with less effort

1224
01:05:22,800 --> 01:05:26,200
Speaker 1: even in the absence of electricity. So agriculture, they could

1225
01:05:26,240 --> 01:05:29,800
Speaker 1: use it to power radio. They just just about anything, right,

1226
01:05:29,920 --> 01:05:32,120
Speaker 1: I mean power something that cooks. I mean, you know,

1227
01:05:32,160 --> 01:05:35,440
Speaker 1: it's amazing. It's the one that was a pedal powered blender.

1228
01:05:36,120 --> 01:05:38,000
Speaker 1: I think you go ahead and make your mixed drinks

1229
01:05:38,080 --> 01:05:42,080
Speaker 1: right there. That's pretty good. I could use that this weekend. Yeah.

1230
01:05:42,080 --> 01:05:44,919
Speaker 1: Oh man, So let's just talk for a second about

1231
01:05:44,960 --> 01:05:48,320
Speaker 1: how hot it is in Atlanta. Yes, the farmers, we've

1232
01:05:48,360 --> 01:05:50,040
Speaker 1: got to be really feeling the heat right now. Yeah,

1233
01:05:50,040 --> 01:05:52,680
Speaker 1: And I know that affects them because it's not every

1234
01:05:52,760 --> 01:05:55,000
Speaker 1: day that when you know, the temperatures are in the

1235
01:05:55,040 --> 01:05:58,080
Speaker 1: one hundred degree range and humid like this. Yes, it's

1236
01:05:58,080 --> 01:06:01,000
Speaker 1: got its own heat indexes around a hundred twenty some days,

1237
01:06:01,160 --> 01:06:03,560
Speaker 1: got its own set of circumstances to go along with it.

1238
01:06:03,640 --> 01:06:05,720
Speaker 1: And yeah, and I don't I don't have any idea

1239
01:06:05,760 --> 01:06:07,840
Speaker 1: what it does to farmers, but I'm sure that it

1240
01:06:07,960 --> 01:06:10,080
Speaker 1: just drives them crazy because you never know when it's coming.

1241
01:06:10,240 --> 01:06:13,560
Speaker 1: It's coming, you don't know what week that's going to hit. Yeah. Yeah,

1242
01:06:13,600 --> 01:06:18,320
Speaker 1: So this has been a really fun topic to talk about. This.

1243
01:06:18,320 --> 01:06:21,000
Speaker 1: This is again one of those things where I hadn't

1244
01:06:21,000 --> 01:06:23,160
Speaker 1: really lent it much thought I really should. I've got

1245
01:06:23,160 --> 01:06:27,240
Speaker 1: a cousin who is um very much in this world.

1246
01:06:27,640 --> 01:06:31,000
Speaker 1: He and IT does incredible work. He flies all over

1247
01:06:31,040 --> 01:06:34,840
Speaker 1: the world working with farmers to help increase crop yields.

1248
01:06:34,880 --> 01:06:37,560
Speaker 1: I should talk with him and see what other interesting

1249
01:06:37,600 --> 01:06:41,560
Speaker 1: technologies are on the horizon, because he's awesome. What am

1250
01:06:41,560 --> 01:06:43,800
Speaker 1: I doing on the other side. You've been talking with

1251
01:06:43,840 --> 01:06:46,160
Speaker 1: that guy? Well, he's in Tokyo. It's hard to touch

1252
01:06:46,200 --> 01:06:48,120
Speaker 1: base with it. I know a little bit, but he

1253
01:06:48,160 --> 01:06:50,920
Speaker 1: knows a lot. Yeah, yeah, he knows better than to

1254
01:06:50,920 --> 01:06:54,000
Speaker 1: come onto a podcast with me. Well, I hope you

1255
01:06:54,080 --> 01:06:56,800
Speaker 1: enjoyed that classic episode farming. I have to admit is

1256
01:06:56,840 --> 01:06:59,080
Speaker 1: one of those things where it didn't really occur to

1257
01:06:59,120 --> 01:07:02,800
Speaker 1: me that knowledge he could play a huge role. I mean,

1258
01:07:02,840 --> 01:07:06,360
Speaker 1: obviously I knew things like tractors and harvesters and stuff

1259
01:07:06,400 --> 01:07:10,120
Speaker 1: like that were important, but over time tech has really

1260
01:07:10,760 --> 01:07:15,200
Speaker 1: revolutionized our approach to agriculture, and I'm sure I could

1261
01:07:15,240 --> 01:07:19,000
Speaker 1: do an update to this episode. If you have suggestions

1262
01:07:19,040 --> 01:07:21,400
Speaker 1: for topics I should cover in future episodes of Tech Stuff,

1263
01:07:21,720 --> 01:07:23,640
Speaker 1: please reach out to me. The best way to do

1264
01:07:23,680 --> 01:07:25,800
Speaker 1: that is on Twitter. The handle for the show is

1265
01:07:25,880 --> 01:07:29,000
Speaker 1: text Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again

1266
01:07:29,880 --> 01:07:39,040
Speaker 1: really soon. Tex Stuff is an I heart Radio production.

1267
01:07:39,280 --> 01:07:42,120
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i

1268
01:07:42,240 --> 01:07:45,440
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

1269
01:07:45,520 --> 01:07:46,440
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.