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On this episode of the Precision Farming Dealer podcast, brought to you by Ag Express, we shadow PrairieLand Partners precision specialists Jonathan Born and Bryan Berggren in the field.

Born and Berggren help farmers implement new technology for the 15-store John Deere dealer that serves customers in central and southeast Kansas. On this episode, we catch up with Born as he helps a mixed fleet customer solve their rural connectivity issues with a JD Link Boost activation. Born shines light on his 15-year career in precision, new tech trends to keep an eye on and how his dealership’s approach to precision has evolved recently.

Later in the episode, we catch up with Berggren as he conducts a technology trial on an 80-acre test plot for one of his customers. Berggren is putting ExactShot, See & Spray Ultimate and Predictive Ground Speed Automation to the test.

The Precision Farming Dealer podcast series is brought to you by Ag Express.

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Full Transcript

Noah Newman:

Great to have you with us for another edition of the Precision Farming Dealer Podcast. I'm your host, Noah Newman. Big thanks to our sponsor, Ag Express Electronics, for making this podcast series possible. And today we're headed out to Kansas to visit with a couple precision specialists from Prairie Land Partners, a John Deere dealership with 15 locations across the central and southeast portions of the state. Stop number one takes us to Iola, where regional product support specialist. Jonathan Born is helping a mixed fleet customer solve his rural connectivity issues with a JD link boost to activation. Let's hop in the cab with Jonathan. First one is, so you've been in the business a long time. What would you say are some of the biggest changes for your job you've noticed over the years or recently? Anything stick out?

Jonathan Born:

I'm in my mid to late 30s here. And so when I started in this game, I was a young one. And then as we progress around now moving our time, we got a lot of younger groups in there. So I'm now the semi old guy that's on there. And so things that I started, 2600s was still being produced. They transitioned to 2630s. I think those is not that much of old technology. I hate to sound cliche here about hacking my day. So as that progression of time, so those displays were more of an add-on piece as it was not so much as an integrated piece. And so that's probably the transition where we've made it in the last couple of years of technology is more just so embedded in the pieces of equipment as before it was something that you added on to help you out.

And so that's probably been the biggest transition of everything's just ingredient. So that's why we had a department of guys that were dedicated just for this before and you had the one guy and now as all, everybody's expected to have a pretty good understanding and knowledge of the electronics and the precision ag stuff. So that's probably been the biggest transition I've seen.

Noah Newman:

You guys at the dealership or the business, you interact with the sales team and it seems like precision. How widespread is precision throughout the entire dealership? And then just talk about how important it is to have that synergy with the sales team and maybe, I don't know, parts people, just everyone at the dealership.

Jonathan Born:

Yep, exactly. When I started in this game, we'll say 10 years ago, we essentially had four separate departments. And if it had a screen and wires and was electric, that was like, "Oh, we can't deal with that. That's that guy over there's problem." And I think I've heard the term mainstream. I mean, we've beat that term to death. We got to really mainstream this.

We got to really mainstream this. And so I think Deere has the same thing too, is they talked about mainstreaming, the precision ag or the electronics, everything through there. I hate to be sitting in a fent tractor while we're talking about all this stuff. We need to be in a green tractor. So if we can integrate all of this, and that's the way Deere's doing is we're integrating these displays, receivers, technologies all integrated into the machine. So you can't be a salesman and sell iron. You're expected to know stuff about all of the precision ag or the technology functions in there too. So we kind of did away with, this guy knows this stuff and so I'll sell you the concaves that you need and I'll sell you the four wheel drive on the combine, but oh, that technology stuff, we're going to have to go talk to this guy about.

So we've really started integrating that into every kind of training we do for salesmen. And so I think my job is essentially transitioned from going from being the guy that knows all the stuff about it to transitioning to I'm teaching the salesman or I'm teaching the service guy or the parts guy that, hey, when a customer calls in for this part, what resources do I have to go get it? Instead of being the guy, you need to refer that to the guy. We need to teach those people to have their own resources or be able to go find these resources to answer their own questions. Because if you still have that one guy, I mean, that one guy's so overloaded and his work life balance sucks because everybody's calling him all times because he's the only one or this group is the only one that can answer these questions to, "Hey, we've now spread this knowledge out a little bit." We kind of talked about the little guy had the tree that he was looking at in the distance and the marker that he was laying his lines down with.

Now he's got auto steer and section control. And so we got to do that same thing in the dealership. We've got to take the basics and input them into the parts guys and the sales guys and the service guys to have that basic knowledge so that we have the capacity to go on to the next new thing, the autonomy, the next thing that's coming out to learn that and then to start passing that down to the next guys. And so it's all about passing that knowledge or getting everybody up to speed. So we do that through internal trainings. I hate doing meetings and PowerPoint slides and everything like that. So we try to find ways that are a little bit funner or a little bit more where guys are receptive to it to learn how to do the things that are really basic in their job anymore.

Noah Newman:

What have you noticed about customer behaviors recently in terms of technology adoption and maybe some of the barriers though that are keeping more customers from adopting it or?

Jonathan Born:

Yeah, so we'll say back 10 years ago, it was the big guys that had the technology and the little guys, they were still driving with markers and stuff like that. And so as we transition here now, we have options that can, I mean, for under 10,000, I mean, so to a small 500 acre farmer, 10,000 bucks is a big hurdle, but there's guys that are doing that on 500 acre farms to get an auto-steer system up and going. And now it's just like basic. There's still the holdouts of guys that are driving with marketers that are planting with their six eight row planner and going. But I kind of feel like the technology is accessible to guys that are smaller scale. And it could be just that those guys that are smaller scale used to be the age of those guys, they're aging out and then you're having the sons or the grandsons coming in that wants all the cool new stuff.

And so they push or they find ways to get the technology so they can implement it into their 4430s or something like that. They can put a universal steering wheel on it and have a screen in there and away you go. So I guess the things that I've seen over time is that it used to be just the big guys that had the technology because it was allowing them to fatigue, do more, increased productivity. But now that is being transitioned to the basics auto steer, auto sheer section control. Those are like basics anymore of anybody that's going to have. Now we're getting into Starlink and infield data share and we're starting to do the automation stuff. So like AutoTrac turn automation where the tractors turn around at the end of the rows. And so that's the newer technologies that typically the newer guys, the bigger guys have.

And then we're transitioning, we're filtering that down to the little guys with the auto track section controls and stuff that everybody has now or quote everybody.

Noah Newman:

You read a lot of articles about autonomy and AI and all that stuff. What's your perspective on that kind of technology and do you see that becoming more mainstream or widespread in the next five years maybe?

Jonathan Born:

Yeah. Yeah. And I see that scaling down to smaller guys too. So I think when you first start thinking about that, you think of those 5,000, 10,000 acre farmers are the guys, the only ones that are going to be able to utilize that stuff. And there's going to be some of that that's an autonomous tractor that's pulling a 50 foot field cultivator. A guy that's farming 500 acres isn't going to have something like that. He might have some options where he's got a 25 foot field cultivator on a smaller tractor where they're going to do that. And so I think there's going to be options out there, not even just for Deere, but for, I think everybody's playing the autonomy game. And again, in the next five years, probably especially we're going to see more leaps and bounds. And I'm not the first one to say this.

Deers talks about this all the time. We're going to see more leaps and bounds in technology in the next five years than we probably have in the previous 50 years before then. And I think that's a pretty accurate statement that I've heard it a couple times. The first time you hear it, you're like, whoa, that's really big and that's really impactful. But I think there's quite a bit of truth to it. It's progressing along and there's things in the pipeline coming down that are going to definitely make it more accessible to everybody.

Noah Newman:

And as we were talking about earlier, some of the demo farms you guys have, when you and some of your coworkers get to test out new equipment like S and Spray, maybe Exact the Shot or Exact Shot. Yep. I'm just curious, what are some technologies that have really impressed you or that you think are really going to deliver ROI to some of your customers? Yeah.

Jonathan Born:

See and Spray is a big one for ROI, definitely. We have some new ground speed automation and combines that are going to increase productivity as far as just throughput through the machine that makes the machine run that's optimal and level throughout the day all the time. So See and Spray, of course, where we can save on chemical, that'll be a big resource concern. And the other one, I mean, I think the biggest resource concern we have as farmers is time. And so if we can do things through autonomy that are going to help farmers save time, that'll be a big benefit to them. So I mean, if we have labor, time labors is kind of where I'm going with that. So if we can reduce the need for another person to farm X number more acres, I think that'll be really big for guys, as well as the using less chemical or making that machine, optimizing that machine to do the best it can throughout the whole season.

Noah Newman:

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Jonathan Born:

So JD Link, it's been out for quite a while. So John Deere's used that MTG. So MTG is essentially a cell phone in the cab. And so when they first developed in like 2011, it was about when they started coming out on machines consistently. They were like a 2G. So we're 5G now, we're 2G, 3G. So 2Gs and 3Gs aren't still viable here in the US lease. And so we have to have to replace a bunch of those cell phones, those modems that are in the cab. So any large piece of equipment, so combine S600 series combines starting in 2011, 8R tractors and R series sprayers. So like maybe the last year of 30 series. So 11 to 14, they had 2G, 3G modems in them starting in 16 or something like that. They started putting four genes in them. So that cell phone or that link in there can communicate things like location of the machine.

We can see information from the equipment that we can use for diagnostics. So we can pull codes from the machines. So a technician from the farm can pull codes from that tractor while before they go out to it. So maybe we can get the right part the first time. Maybe we can order, or maybe it's along the lines that it needs to be software. So maybe we can send software, we can send that payload remotely over there, 90% of them we can do that with. And so that can potentially save us a service call or save us even some tech time on diagnostics and driving back and forth around. So that's one portion of it. So John Deere also helps monitor some of that information in the background, so it's not like Mother Deer in the background's watching you. So they compile a lot of that information and bundle that up as an expert alert.

And so an expert alert is that John Deere has seen the machines thrown this code, this code, this code. It's taken some readings from these sensors in the machines and they have compiled that information from warranty and other history stuff there. And so they bundle all that up and send it to our service department and say, "Hey, customer X, Y, Z is having issues having this issue. We've seen this issue before. If you go test maybe these two things, or if this thing is happening, then we're pretty confident this part is the reason or this thing or this process needs to happen of what needs to be done." And so we've just taken our diagnostic time and sometimes the customer doesn't even know that it's happening in the background, but if it continues, it's going to be a major breakdown. So one thing we use an example is like a very cool drive fan.

So what cools the engine on the front of an 8-R tractor, it's got a belt on it as that belt and adjustable pulleys. And so as that belt wears down, those adjustable pulleys will start banging against each other on those variable shelves. And so it will get to a point where it'll eat those variable drive belts. And so variable drive shifts. And so if we can replace the belt before the pulleys starts macking together, we can save a $5,000 repair with a couple hundred dollar belt. And so they have sensors on them, they have drive and driven sensors on the front end of that machine. We'll get an alert that says, "Hey, this driving driven is out in, we need to replace this belt." We'll call the customer, "Hey, Mr. Customer, let's replace the belt here before you really wreck the front end of your machine." So that was one of the early ones that was probably the last three years that this was really, those expert alerts have really been coming in there.

So we have huge benefits for the service department, for the customer as far as it goes for equipment serviceability. We can monitor the equipment so the customer can look at the fuel levels. He can see where on a big operation like this, we can see where the machines are at and how much productivity they're getting done. If they have three or four machines, we can go and look their machines and see what operator is the best operator and see what ... Maybe we can learn something from this guy because he does this every time, but he gets 50 more acres in a day planted or sprayed or whatever. And maybe we can learn something from that inside our own operation. And then the last thing that we like to hit on is the agronomic side. And so guys that are tracking their coverage maps as far as like plant acres, we can document in the planter what variety we planted.

And then we can take that variety and overlay it next to the harvest yield. And so we can do a yield by variety and figure out which variety perform the best on these acres for this year. And we can do that for fertilizer. We can variable rate our fertilizer across all of our acres and that all can be transitioned back and forth with that JDLink, that MTG and we don't have to take data sticks out and export them like we used to before that. So that can be really handy. So I always hit on the surfaceability, always hit on the monitoring and I always hit on the agronomic side of things. So benefits of JDLink.

Noah Newman:

All right. Let's head over to Mound Ridge, Kansas now, where product innovation specialist Brian Bergren is running an 80 acre test plot on customer Ray Flickner's farm. He's conducting multiple trials with exact shot, sea and spray ultimate and predictive ground speed automation. Let's get the scoop from Brian.

Bryan Berggren:

Today we're out at Flickner Innovation Farm, and we're showing you a little bit of what we've done or what we're trying to prove this year. So we're putting all our technology in place and to start off with, we planted this with a XactEmerge planter and we used XactShot and what that does, that's a fertilizer system that you can place the fertilizer either just a shot on the seed, you can move it off the seed in between the seed. So what we did here, we did four different trials, four different strips. We did exact shot with our normal six gallons of acre rate. We did streaming side by side, and then we put in some capture LIFR, which is an insecticide, and we did the same two treatments with that. So then we came back in here just probably a week ago today with our sea and spray machine, and we did our post residual along with some Roundup and some lotus here in the sea and spray part.

And we sprayed out of the seed and spray side, we sprayed roughly 60% of this field. And as a whole, last year, I'm going to back up just a teeny bit. Within Prairie Land, two years ago we had four machines. Last year we had 20 machines and of those 20 machines, they averaged as a whole, 60% as a whole. And this year, the sea and spray is getting quite a bit of traction this year. We actually have 50 machines in our AOR here in Kansas, which is central Kansas to the east, excluding the very northeast.

Noah Newman:

And so you'll come out here and you'll run the sea and spray system for people then, or does any farmer run it on their own or? Oh

Bryan Berggren:

Yeah, sure. Like I say, out of all of those machines, most of them are farmer owned. We have four Ultimates that are, excuse me, five Ultimates, just like machine you see here that are with commercial applicators and they're gaining a lot of traction. They've had the request and last year, our biggest one, they had a lot of traction with it, did good. Matter of fact, they were probably the number one as far as chemical savings. Out of the whole group, they averaged just a little over 60%, I think 68% or something like that. So they did very good. This

Noah Newman:

Partnership with the Flickners to be able to come out here and run all this new technology, can you just kind of tell us a little bit about the value of that and everything you're able to learn from everything out here?

Bryan Berggren:

You bet. These guys have been gracious enough to work with us. They do a lot of hiring, custom hiring their farming done. So, and with that, that allows us to be able to come here and they also partner with K State, which we are doing here. And the idea here is to grab some data that's not us generated, but K State is going to come down and help us do the research. They're going to dig and look at our root masses. They're going to ... And across the road, we're doing another trial with the sea and spray only. We're trying to assess plant health. That's something that's really, really hard to prove, but we're going to try to do a full season plant health assessment on the sand spray within the soybeans. We also have a field south of here that we're doing the same thing with cotton.

Cotton, those guys go over those fields like 12 times and they're always spraying some sort of a liberty or something like that to keep the fields clean because weeds and a cotton stripper do not mix.

Noah Newman:

What have you learned so far about the sea and spray and how, I guess mainstream, for lack of a better word, would you see this kind of technology being in the next few years?

Bryan Berggren:

They changed. John Deere changed their strategy as far as the pricing structure. So right now, this season and moving forward, you're only getting charged for the savings, which means you're getting charged for the acres it does not spray. Okay? So that takes some of this equation out. There's such a thing as fallback mode when the boom gets too high or you go too fast, it starts spraying solid in that section. So what that does is that gets the price way down to an acceptable price point. And people want this technology. They want to be able to use this to number one, save chemical or money on chemical and all of that to be responsible just a little bit with what they're doing with the land. Nobody wants to spray chemical all the time. And this is really, I would say, gaining a lot of traction in the industry as a whole is moving this direction.

They're coming fast and there's lots of other companies developing this type of technology. I would say personally, I was very skeptical from the beginning because I've run the sprayer for 20, 30 years and worked for some commercial applicators and it never ceases to amaze me how sensitive it is. It sees more than we can see actually with our own eyes and even moving at 12 to 15 miles an hour through the field, recognizing a crop versus a weed. It's unbelievable. Really, really impressive.

Noah Newman:

Okay, that'll do it for this edition of the Precision Farming Dealer Podcast. Big thanks once again to Jonathan Born and Brian Bergren for giving us a peek behind the curtain and thanks to our sponsor Ag Express Electronics for making this series possible. Until next time, stay up to date on all the latest Precision Farming Dealer News on precisionfarmingdealer.com. Thanks so much for tuning in. Have a great day.