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