OSU Professor John P. Fulton joins host Dave Orr to discuss how farms and agriculture businesses are reinventing their workflows due to supply chain challenges and available technology, eliminating operational costs and manual labor.
OSU Professor John P. Fulton joins host Dave Orr to discuss how farms and agriculture businesses are reinventing their workflows due to supply chain challenges and available technology, eliminating operational costs and manual labor.
Hello, and welcome to another edition of Topcon talks, agriculture I'm Dave Moore, the regional sales manager for Canada, and the proud host of top gun talks today. We're talking about a topic that has certainly become close to all of us on the agriculture industry and that's the changing input costs and how it's changing our workflow. And to help speak to this topic is our longtime friend, John Fulton from Ohio state university. Welcome to the podcast, John.
Speaker 2:Thanks, and, uh, pleasure to be here and, uh, look forward to this discussion today.
Speaker 1:So, John, as I mentioned, uh, you work with Ohio state, uh, as a professor in their food, egg and bioengineering, uh, department. You wanna just kind of maybe explain to the, our listeners a little bit more on, on what you do on a daily basis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Ohio state is what we call land grant institution. So I actually, um, teach, uh, specifically a precision ag class. That's relative to some of the things we do with Topcon and bringing in some of the technology and videos that you guys create, uh, and bring those experiences, allow our students to have experiences with the technology. And some of the information you guys share also conduct research primarily in, uh, in the area of machinery automation and just precision ag, uh, in particular to management of inputs at the farm level. And then I also do in majority of my, my job responsibilities is what we call extension or going out and, uh, doing education, uh, not only farmers, but work with a lot of retailers and service providers, uh, globally not only educating themselves or educating their personnel, but also working with their programs that revolve around precision ag services.
Speaker 1:Well, it's interesting. So these extension programs that where you get out and kind of maybe work with people that aren't necessarily enrolled in Ohio state, um, what would be some of the topics that you would maybe work with these guys on or, or help ensure that the knowledge is being passed along to these producers or, or agriculture, um, employees alike,
Speaker 2:Uh, in recent years, a lot of the topics revolve around data, farm data and collection of that and turning that into, uh, we'll save the, say value back to the members or customer base that those folks are serving. And then, you know, I spend time on, you know, like I mentioned, automation is one of the areas that we work on a lot here at Ohio state. And so what does farms, what do, uh, consultants retailers need to have in place to support adoption of automation? Uh, today we think still a lot about driving the machinery and automating processes on the machinery, but, uh, recently, you know, that's evolved in as some of the robotic options, uh, that have been commercialized and, and whether it's farmers or retailers thinking about the adoption of those. So how, how not only be adopted, but, uh, think about logistics and other support mechanisms around the adoption of that technology into the farmstead or in the case of retailers into their processes, delivering inputs and, and other services back to, uh, to farmers.
Speaker 1:So I guess you really actually are kind of hitting on a topic that, you know, this podcast has explored over a few episodes. Uh, more recently is that precision agriculture, isn't just simply auto steer anymore. Um, you know, you still go to a farm show and if you're working a booth, you'll quite often hear about, you know, Topcon specifically or, or any of our competitors being referred to as the auto steer group. Right. But when you actually look at a suite of products in this industry, precision agriculture is a lot more than probably the, the original auto steer, correct?
Speaker 2:Correct. And it's, it's moved beyond, right, right. We we've thought about what you guys offer and you guys offer a suite of technologies that can be embedded in the machines today, including software to help support data collection analytics around data as well. And, and to your point about technology, as you're aware of it's, it's become very embedded into the machinery today. If I purchase sort of lease, um, machine, typically we're thinking about a tractor, uh, our Cedars or planters, sprayers, and even harvesters today, you know, we're not adding technology on the, the technology's there and available for, we'll say the operator or farm manager to take advantage of. It's like, you know, we we'd call it air conditioning in cars today. I mean, we buy a car, it comes with,<laugh> a radio and an air conditioner today, right. If not something a little bit more advanced, so times have changed, uh, today we're, we're talking about even further automation making, uh, embedding artificial intelligence and making changes on the, go to those machines.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And probably over your career. Um, within this realm, you've probably seen the, you know, the movement from guys going and looking at a, a tractor based off of horsepower or the ability of a, you know, horsepower on the PTO shat, or any of that to maybe what more it can do for the total solution of the farm and how it can drive success and, and change workflows truly.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, and, and for those folks, you know, farmers specifically that have adopted precision ag technology is they think about upgrading new machines that that's part of that equation today of having those options available. So it fits right in clips right into what they're doing as far as not only managing their farm, but collecting a data necessarily to, to bring information back, to make decisions and, and to make adjustments to the farm operation.
Speaker 1:Right. And of course, we're, you know, in these couple of instances, we're specifically talking about a grain farmer or a row crop farmer, but I think it's also applicable to livestock industries, um, you know, poultry, dairy and beef operations, all alike. Uh, they've also seen a large uptake in robotics or what could be defined as precision agriculture. That's certainly changing their workflows also.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Is case in point number one, we have specialty crop producers here in the state of Ohio that have adopted some of those robotics because of labor shortages or, or challenges there. And then we look at our, um, dairy producers and the high level of adoption robotic milkers today. And so to your point, that's, those are two prime examples that, you know, it's here, it continues to evolve and, and you continue to see different types of adoption in these, uh, different aspects of the food chain taken advantage of automation.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And you mentioned something that's obviously becoming more prevalent, probably maybe on the larger producing farms, but, uh, labor shortages, you know, they're very real how, how they became created is, you know, everybody's got a different story on each farm as to why the labor shortage has affected them. But precision agriculture has obviously become a very suitable and timely response to labor shortages. Is it driving some more adoption of precision agriculture practices on farms?
Speaker 2:Um, you know, kind of some of our feedback on that, not necessarily from surveys, but, but working with some groups definitely have adopted, uh, we have more farmers asking questions and showing interest. And so when I say showing interest, we've had some say field days where things like the autonomous tractor, that's pulling the grain cart to some of the automatic turning options that are provided through companies like yourselves, where it's just not auto guidance, if set up properly, you know, we still have a person in the cab, but essentially the, the field operation is managed totally by the technology, right. And that includes not only why it's operating, but it's actually turned into machine automatically to. And so we, we see a lot more interest in that as we have demonstrations and field days, uh, for that by farmers. And, and a lot of that is not only becoming more efficient, right. That's always a, a big terminology we've used for many years, but continues to, to be, uh, something that farmers work at. But the fact that there's limited, uh, labor to support some of the nominal field operations, why operations continue to get bigger. And so the farmers and, and some of their prime employees still have to get everything done. So either shortages, they're looking at ways to be able to get the field operations done very timely and efficiently out there.
Speaker 1:And something that's interesting to me that one of our, our colleagues mentioned to me one time was that every single farm in America or north America cause Canada is included in this, whether they have any form of precision agriculture on the farm or not, um, they're always looking to what the next step is. So a late adapter is maybe looking to getting into guidance or auto steering, and that customer that has full RTK system and maybe variable rate application might be looking into yield data, collecting it or whatever. What is the driving force for all of these individuals, no matter what stage of, uh, adoption you're at of precision a to continue to look to precision your agricul and always want the next level.
Speaker 2:Dave, that's a really good question. Number one, I, I guess I would alter your comment a little bit there because some growers, you know, will come and say, well, I haven't adopted precision a, but yet they're carrying a smartphone and do a, quite a bit of business on a smartphone and have their preferred apps to do business. And a lot of those are commercial apps right. Provided through and they may be paying for. And so maybe how you define precision ag. We use the term digital a quite a bit these days because the whole data, data analytics, advancements being made and artificial intelligence. But I guess whether it's apps to the technologies that a company like yours provides, right? The variable rates section control, it's improving the operations, maintaining margins and profitability. That's always first and foremost. And so as I look at it, the option, you know, can I do more with less? And so I'll just take right. Guidance enables me to, to maybe do some other things why I'm not only focused on that field operation. It enables me because the machine's driving itself and maintaining its performance. I, I might be able to do some business on my phone while I'm in the machine. And so I think it's enabling me to do more with less maintaining margins is definitely at the forefront. And without a doubt, when we go back and, and this has been a little bit on our research, that the quality of life has improved. And so, um, and maybe you have some similar experiences where, you know, you'd work 15 hours a day and the, the 15 hours was driving a machine and being responsible for that machine for the total time that it was operating. And that, that can, you know, wear you out. And if not physically wear you, you're at a little bit, but today, you know, I can still put in 15 hours, but I can probably do it more efficiently and, and do other things during the day beyond just driving the machine because that's taken care of with the technology. And so, uh, that quality of life today, though, I think what we're seeing is, as we look at, uh, the data play, and there's a lot of examples here in north America is making sure that we're making informed input decisions and you know, what practices work or don't work, but within my operation to maintain my margins, right? I mean, it boils down to profitability, but we look at some of the, the challenges today with high input prices and they continue to rise. And so all this data to some degree, if there was a year to really dig into it and, and look at things like, well, what am I gonna do my, with my, my phosphor and potassium programs this year? Well, the data should have been, you know, if you had been collecting the data, uh, you could have really taken a close look. And if not had some years of analysis put into play to direct you to, you know, either prioritize what fields get applied to, Hey, you know, maybe this year I didn't need it. I, I really don't need to invest that. I need to really focus over here on seed. I need to focus on if I'm, if nitrogen for, for our corn producers, uh, and we producers in our area. I, I think there's really the logic there to have that data, to, to inform those, those hard decisions, right? Those nontraditional decisions of, Hey, I'm not gonna do that this year as a cost saving measure because of the high input prices. Uh, precision ag to me really was a, provided an advantage to growers that have been able to collect both the yield data, but more importantly, been collecting additional data along the way to be able to look at and make sound decisions in their operation, considering what we're facing. Uh, this coming year
Speaker 3:Since 1992 ag express has been a trusted advisor for ag electronics needs, let ag express help your operation be more efficient with your time and help save you money on input costs with our precision ag solutions, call us at(515) 446-3400, or visit us online@wwwdotaexpress.com today.
Speaker 1:And to today, we're joined by John Fulton from Ohio state. Um, John, you brought up, you know, input costs, driving a lot of decisions on the farm, whether it's to what crop to put into your crop cycle this year, um, maybe input cautious in general because of seeds or, or fertilizer or diesel, or even basic prices. You know, so far down the line of just the price of the iron that you're looking to purchase to be able to complete those operations. I, I think we all know from world events that are going on, which driving some of these situations. Um, but how, how is that truly affecting the farms at least this high input costs? Do you think we'll adopt more workflow changes to the common day farm or the large scale farms because of these input costs rising so much?
Speaker 2:I think the, the direct answer to that is most certainly you're gonna see more, more adoption in this time. Uh, just simply because again is whether it's efficiency that we're trying to gain to information, to drive, uh, sound decision making at the farm, the adages, the more data I have, the better decisions I should, should make. You know, we're, we're gonna have some, some differences there of, and maybe not make the, the right decision. But I think that in general, it's, it's definitely building to that as, especially as we, um, visit with a lot of our retailers and service providers on this topic.
Speaker 1:And so do you think, um, this is gonna drive some long term solutions, um, where new practices will be implemented on farms in any of those areas that we've discussed?
Speaker 2:You know, I wanna use to bring into the fold is not only, you know, this, this idea that input costs are high and, and fuel or gas prices, diesel fuel prices are high. I know in our state, in, in region, we're really, uh, being put under a microscope for environmental reasons as well. And so that's part of our, our challenge here too, is that the public, uh, whether they scrutinize farming to demand transparency on how we're growing crops. If we look at some of the sustainability type efforts that are out there to report in, I, I think both on the environmental sustainability now, even carbon type markets that are evolving here, you know, the requirement underneath that is data and, and data around practices. And so back to your point about new practices, I think we continue to see things like, uh, precision soil sampling continue to grow, uh, not only to evaluate, uh, spatially, uh, soil fertility, and ultimately maybe consider things like variate fertilizer applications, but it also gives us insight of where we should be putting our investments as a farmer perspective. But when we look at sustainability and environmental reporting needs, it also gives us data to report into those channels that we're doing the right thing. We'll say at the right time, when we look at some of the four R promotions that go on here, uh, in our neck of the woods. And so it serves multiple purposes, not only to, to, for the insights for the grower to make decisions around practices and input decisions, but it also will, I think provide, uh, input to some of the sustainability, environmental, and conservation and, uh, carbon markets that we're seeing play out here, at least in our area.
Speaker 1:So do you think any of these, you know, potential solutions that could come up and, you know, let's look at fertilizer for instance, there's, um, definitely an increase in, in the cost of fertilizer right now, and a, a re not a replacement, but an alternative to fertilizer is manure. Um, would we ever see an offshoot of the grain industry looking for more nutrients put into the ground being manure and then a cattle company, or a livestock operation deciding to up their increase because they can sell their manure and make profitability from that?
Speaker 2:Well, we've already seen that actually here in the state of Ohio and just here in the, the, you know, transportation to manure, to the farms beyond just, you know, the neighbor or within a county outside the county or what we call counties. And, and beyond that, farmers are willing to pay some, some money and it gives them a, a definitely an alternative to inorganic fertilizers. Um, we've even seen a turn to where we're applying manure in season and advantage that gives Dave. And so we're looking at, in, in a showcase advantages of the side dress manure and corn specifically. So rather than using an organic source growers are using, you know, liquid from swine dairy, uh, and some cattle operations taking that and, and using it as a sidedress product versus maybe a UAN, um, you know, 28 or 32, what we normally would have. So I think we're, we've seen some of that transition that the growers are willing to, to either sell and, you know, farmers willing to pay for transportation to move some of that, uh, not extreme distances. You know, we're not moving it outta state or anything, but definitely getting it over to the next county and, and seeing it move further than we have in the past.
Speaker 1:And I guess as the demand for that material goes up, the only way to get that material is by increasing your livestock heard. And if it's going to help supplement an income as a dairy or as a swine operation, I guess it could potentially be an offshoot that helps grow those herds and, and has an economic offshoot within the agriculture industry. Correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I don't know that I would see a lot of our livestock producers growing herds, but it does give'em an opportunity to, to increase their herd size if the market is right and, and they want to do that. I don't know if they're possibly gonna grow specifically to sell more manure, but we definitely have seen, you know, more facilities going up. And, um, and then with those not only having nutrient what we call nutrient management plans with the opportunity to move that manure as a, as a fertilizer source, and then not something we're just trying to get rid of
Speaker 1:What would be, you know, over your career. Um, I know we've worked for a couple of different institutions, but what would be one of the most intriguing products brought to the agricultural industry that you saw change workflow and how it affected it, whether it was guidance or variable rating or any of those things, what, like, in your time, what was the most impressive thing that you felt was changed agricultural industry while you've been in the, in the industry? And there's been lots. I know, probably right.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, you know, at the onset, definitely guidance was, was pretty intriguing and, and now you look, seems like every machine sold has guidance embedded into it. And so that's definitely had an influence, uh, across, you know, not only north America, but as we look at Europe, the number of guidance systems or auto guidance systems, you know, in terms of actual workflows and where we are today, you know, I look at is ver rate. And I wanna kind of note that, I think about the workflow today of going from, we'll say a sample to creating a, a prescription to having that at the machine to execute whether that's a planting to fertilizer application prescription. I tell you that the software in conjunction with the variable rate capabilities is pretty, pretty amazing today. Uh, in my mind, Dave, I mean, it used to take us hours, if not days, it felt like to, to go through that process. And today, and just as a, a number, it may be 24 plus steps to get that done, to go from a sample all the way through the softwares and uploading, downloading, and thumb drives and making a recommendation and revising that recommendation and getting to the machine and putting it in the display and then actually hitting the on button. And it actually does something, you know, today we're doing that in, uh, probably steps that are less than what we count on both hands today. And so not only is it the software, but the technology and the telematics and wireless, you know, over 90% of the north American retailers provide disservices to enable that today. And so to me, that's been a, it's been taking us while, but it sets us up for future opportunities, especially when we think about automation, because ultimately we're gonna have to have prescriptions in play to tell those robots what to do out in the field. And so we've really built a capacity to enable ver rate, but specifically to do prescriptions and, and do that pretty efficiently today.
Speaker 1:Right. And, and, you know, to build on that just variable rate itself. I know within Topcon product suite, we can variable rate things from broad acre seating down to, you know, row cropping down to wet manure, dry manure, dry fertilizer broadcasting, so variable rating. And of course the sprayer. So variable rating, isn't just one or two applications anymore. It's just about time. You are putting something onto your soil. There's a capability to make sure that your workflow and your input costs and all of those things together are, uh, kind of regulated by the most efficient way of variable rating.
Speaker 2:Well, and I look at, you know, going to the question around manure, I mean, you guys have a, an IR sensor today that's available to measure the concentrations of that manure totally N PK. And those are steps. Not only to understand what you're doing out in the field, right, as feedback, but really are steps towards automation where I can actually adjust equipment in this case, tractor speed or whatever on that application equipment to, to make sure we're applying what's recommended out there on the field.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. John, thank you very much for your time. I know you're probably a very busy man this time of the year, and I, I can't tell you how much appreciated this conversation. I know our listeners will certainly have probably found it very enlightening and, and informational. And I thank you very much once again, for taking some time outta your day to join us on top contact talks, agriculture.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, Dave,
Speaker 1:Thank you once again for joining us on Topcon talks, agriculture for today's interesting information about input costs and changing the workflow with John Bolton from Ohio state. Don't forget to follow us on any of your favorite social media outlets, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. And please listen to our podcast. Anytime it's Spotify, apple podcast, Google podcast, or wherever you get your favorite podcast from take care and look forward to chatting with you next time.