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In this episode of the Precision Farming Dealer Podcast, you’ll hear Jim Lappin, AMVAC director of SIMPAS product portfolio & alliances, and Caleb Schultz, AMVAC Retail Channel Precision Ag Services Lead, break down the basics of the SIMPAS application system.  

We’re taking the show on the road to a special technology summit in Rockford, Ill., where retailers and farmers got an up-close look at AMVAC’s SIMPAS technology.

SIMPAS stands for Smart Integrated Multi-product Prescription Application System. AMVAC representatives Caleb Schultz and Jim Lappin explain how it works, where it’s headed and why customers are excited about it.

Full Transcript

Noah Newman:

Come on in. Welcome to another edition of the Precision Farming Dealer podcast. I'm your host, Noah Newman, associate editor. Great to have you with us here today as always.

We are taking the show on the road to a special technology summit in Rockford, Illinois, where retailers and farmers got an up close look at AMVAC's SIMPAS technology. We catch up with Jim Lappin and Caleb Schultz, two AMVAC representatives for a look at how SIMPAS technology works and why customers are really excited about the future of it. Without further ado, let's jump right in. Here's Jim.

Jim Lappin:

My name is Jim Lappin. I'm the director of the SIMPAS product Portfolio and alliances at AMVAC.

So SIMPAS is an acronym, stands for smart integrated multi-product prescription application system. So we shorten to SIMPAS for short. It's an aftermarket system that you can put on most planters that allows you to prescriptively apply up to three products per row.

So you think about equipment like this in the market today are applying single products in a single crop. Our own smart box system, our own lock and load system. There are liquid systems you can bolt on to your fertilizer system. There are competing systems out there, but most of those systems are designed to apply one type of product in one type of crop.

The SIMPAS system is designed to fit 22 inch or wider row planters, so 30 inches are the dominant ones out there. So 30 inch planters, or in some case cotton wider, but 30 inch or wider row planters. And again, can apply prescriptively up to three products. The system can either apply a product whole field, end to end, it can apply variable rate across the field, or it can apply just within a specific zone that you've highlighted through a shape file to just apply the products specifically where it's most likely going to give a benefit.

Noah Newman:

Now does the system work across all models of planters and different brands, or what's the adaptability like with the system?

Jim Lappin:

So we cover most of the major John Deere case planters, particularly the newer high-speed planners. It requires planter specific brackets. So we run across planters from time to time we haven't yet gotten to. And the other issue is even if you have a standard John Deere planter, people add other aftermarket items to the planter so no two planners are all set up the same. So again, we just have to assess the planter, we see we can fit most planters.

Noah Newman:

I know a big part of this is the smart cartridge container technology. How does that work? Explain that to us.

Jim Lappin:

So every container has a smart tag, which is an RFID chip, and that's a readable, writeable, RFID chip. So it can contain a lot of information and provides different functionality for the system.

One, it keeps track of if you have a cartridge that's been filled with particular product, it keeps a record of what product has been put into that container. It also keeps track of as the product is dispensed from the container, so for every revolution of our meter we know how much product is being dispensed. So it keeps a running tally, if you will, of what's been into the container and what's gone out of the container.

So at any point in time we know exactly what's in that container, which gives us the opportunity to charge by the acre for what was applied versus charging for the whole container or by the unit.

Noah Newman:

You touched on this in the introduction, but just how much does this technology change the game for farmers who are using this?

Jim Lappin:

Growers have been using precision approaches to fertilizer for a long time where they're variable rating fertilizer based on the need within a field, they're variable rating their seed. This is a next logical progression to move into at plant inputs and the pesticide arena, the biological arena, those things that can be done. And I can give you some very specific examples. So let's take some [inaudible 00:04:01] nematodes.

Nematodes are a pretty big problem across most places in the corn growing area and the soybean growing area, but they don't infest whole fields. They tend to be more concentrated within specific areas of the field. So in the past you had to make a decision, is the infestation bad enough to justify a whole field treatment? If it wasn't, then many cases it went underserved, if you will.

Now you can identify those areas. You can use technology, you can use soil sampling, you can use satellite imagery, you can use various data sources that are now available, and say, I can refine that recommendation to I may only have to treat a portion of the field, 30%, 40%, whatever the case may be, and only use the product where you're getting the most benefit.

Noah Newman:

Yeah, so it sounds like it could really pinpoint where they need to use it. So how much does the price then of SIMPAS compare to other inputs?

Jim Lappin:

So I'll give you an example. There's the price of the equipment. So you buy the equipment from Trimble, Trimble is our distribution partner. They've also been a development partner. So the price of the equipment is approximately $2,000 a row, and then there's some variables there in terms of monitors. What kind of monitor, how many other things are you trying to manage with that monitor?

So if you're buying the same monitor for a 12 row planter versus a 24 row planter, so it's hard to put a per acre price on that. But the point being there's an equipment price. And what we find with a grower, let's say a grower's swapping planters every four years and he is running 3000 acres across his operation. In that kind of scenario, it's less than a bushel per acre of benefit you would need to generate to pay for that system.

Now, when you go to the products, we've taken a little different approach. Again, we charge by the acre, not by the unit, pound, gallon. And we're only charging for those as applied acres. So in my nematicide example, if I have a hundred acre field but I'm only applying a nematicide to 40 acres, I'm only being charged on the 40 acres where I actually applied the material.

Noah Newman:

Who would you say is the ideal customer for SIMPAS?

Jim Lappin:

We find to date have been large innovative growers who are looking for how do I get to that next level of yield? Where do I have yield limiting factors? Everybody's got a production budget and they're looking to how do I get the most return on investment for that budgeted dollar?

If I can save some money on an input by only treating 30 or 40% of a field where that problem is most relevant, I can take those dollars, I can either drop them to the bottom line or I can reallocate them, what's the next most yield limiting factor I can attack and address?

So again, progressive growers, planters, guys who are always looking for how do I compete and how do I improve and get to that next level?

Noah Newman:

Tell us a little bit about what brings you guys here to Rockford, Illinois today, and what you hope to get across to the people that are here in attendance?

Jim Lappin:

So we're in the process of concluding, we've been on for the last eight or nine weeks we've conducted about 12 of these seminars. So we're inviting retailers and growers, retailers that we likely already do business with with our existing portfolio of products or they're very focused on precision agriculture.

So guys who are already readily engaged in the precision ag business, and in some cases they're bringing along some grower customers. We've had some meetings where we've had existing users and we've had meetings where we have new prospective users.

Noah Newman:

All right Jim, well thanks for taking the time to speak with us. Anything else you want to add before we let you go?

Jim Lappin:

Well, one of the common questions we often get is what are the types of products that are available? So we have a broad portfolio. We have about a dozen products right now. Our goal is to build a portfolio of 25 to 30 products so a grower will have multiple choices and lots of flexibility.

But we have insecticides, we have a fungicide, we have some soil health, some plant health. We're looking at things like inoculants, we're looking at things like iron sclerosis, micronutrients. So again, a broad spectrum depending on the challenges you're facing.

And whether you're in North Dakota or Louisiana, New York or Colorado, or anywhere in between, we want to come up with a portfolio of solutions. And one unique thing about our approach is we're making it an open platform, meaning we're inviting other manufacturers to bring forward products. And in many cases we've already licensed products from other manufacturers. Our examples so far from [inaudible 00:08:40] micronutrients, from Syngenta a fungicide and an insecticide. So we're working with multiple manufacturers to bring those solutions forward.

Caleb Schultz:

My name is Caleb Schultz and my role with AMVAC is the precision ag retail channel lead. So my role with AMVAC is to work with retailers who will be in our SIMPAS ecosystem to help them think about variable rate agronomy and prescriptive applications through the SIMPAS system.

Noah Newman:

And what's the biggest topic or theme would you say that you cover with the retailers when you're introducing to the SIMPAS system?

Caleb Schultz:

Well, I think the biggest theme is really reorienting them, not away from our traditional business but into a new realm of business. Where traditionally with our [inaudible 00:09:32] plant solutions, we're doing a granular insecticide, whole field, whole farm type applications. We're trying to reorient them to think about, okay, now we have three product opportunities in a field. Those can be done whole field, flat rate, or we can introduce prescriptive applications where we're effectively helping the farmers ROI by removing areas where we don't need to treat.

And really trying to focus our products where we know they're going to have a good rate to return, they're going to perform best. So targeting the correct agronomic conditions.

So it's really about just reorienting our retail customers to start thinking about some of these prescriptive applications.

Noah Newman:

We just spoke with Jim and he told us about how there's just a wide array of farmers or customers that use this system. It could be someone in North Dakota or someone in Mississippi. So what kind of feedback have you heard from customers that have used this so far?

Caleb Schultz:

Well, a lot of them are really excited about the possibilities for products. We think that's really going to drive the adoption of the system as we bring a lot of products into the portfolio. When you have three opportunities on a pass at planting, that really opens up a farmer's mind to think about, Oh wow, all the things that I always wanted to address but either just haven't thought about or didn't really have a way to think about.

One specific example. When we apply a product like our zinc product, oftentimes zinc is just riding along with starter fertilizer and a fertilizer blend. Zinc is the most common deficient micronutrient. It's actually not difficult, but uncommon to only target that one nutrient.

So with something like SIMPAS we can completely target just the needs in any part of the field for that one nutrient instead of having it ride along with the nitrogen or the phos or P and K, stuff like that.

So I think that's a unique opportunity is to now instead of thinking on a macro basis, you can really think on very individualized, targeted applications of all these different products. And that's usually what farmers really start to key into is the product opportunities.

Noah Newman:

Yeah, we've spoken with soil health specialists who talk about how important micronutrients are like zinc. And you really don't hear that much about it usually, but something like this could really help farmers out in that department.

Caleb Schultz:

Yeah, so micronutrients, things like that, they're getting applied. And it's not like we're shorting crops, but oftentimes you actually may not need them or you may need them in greater amounts in certain areas.

So yeah, we've still in the industry had that opportunity with micro bins and stuff like that on dry spreaders. But it's just in my career, I've done a lot of precision ag in my career and we never really did much targeting micronutrients specifically when we're talking about variable rate agronomy. So it's just a new opportunity.

Noah Newman:

Yeah, in the realm of precision ag and just the industry as a whole, where do you see SIMPAS moving from here five to 10 years from now? How do you see the system evolving?

Caleb Schultz:

I see it evolving just really through the products. I think there's going to be a lot of excitement once we get a wider range of products. Our goal within the portfolio is to have 30some odd products in there. I think five, 10 years from now as we grow the fleet of SIMPAS systems out there, I think we're really going to entertain a lot of third party companies wanting to get into our cartridges, wanting to be a part of the ecosystem, and wanting to bring their products into the portfolio.

So we're going to start with our AMVAC products. We're going to focus on the things that we've always done well, and then we really want to invite other people into the ecosystem so that they can participate and we can really build a really cool brand ladder within SIMPAS.

Noah Newman:

How much are you looking forward to being here today in Rockford and just sharing everything about SIMPAS with the people who are here?

Caleb Schultz:

I'm looking forward to it. I've never been to Rockford, Illinois, so one of the pleasures of my job is seeing agriculture all over the country. That's one of my favorite things about my job. So we travel from site to site when we do these events, and it's always fun.

Really the best part about it is when people interact and get some questions. So we're always looking forward to people asking questions. So that really clues me in that they're involved, they're really enjoying the presentation, and it really helps me think through what retailers might be really thinking in the back of their head about what we're presenting.

So I usually really like it when we get some interaction and get some questions, especially hard questions. I like hard agronomic questions that make me think. So hopefully that's what we can find today.

Noah Newman:

Well, off the top of your head, what are some of the hardest questions or most common questions you've heard in this tour across the country?

Caleb Schultz:

Well, I wouldn't say hard questions, but the most common questions from retailers is, and that's my job is to help them think about new classes or products that we haven't done in a variable rate manner before.

So especially when we think about our insecticides, that's our bread and butter. But it's fence row to fence row, and people get really nervous about removing that from certain areas of the field. So I like those questions. I like looking at some of the new technologies for DNA sampling that's going on that help us target areas for disease and things like that, but I also really like to help people just think through, Hey, we already have a whole bunch of data. Just think about it in a different way.

And you already have the data pool to create these prescriptions, let's just think about it creatively and we can think about a new class product. It's really not that it's very difficult, it's just maybe a mental barrier that they haven't really considered those products before.

So when I get those questions, that's really the fun part for me is just thinking creatively about a new set of problems instead of seed and fertilizer that we've typically done.

Noah Newman:

Well, thanks for taking the time to speak with us today. Anything else you'd like to add before we let you go?

Caleb Schultz:

No, I sure appreciate the time today, Noah, and hope you enjoy the event.

Noah Newman:

And that'll wrap up this week's edition of the Precision Farming Dealer podcast. Thanks to Jim Lappin and Caleb Schultz once again for taking time to speak with us this week about SIMPAS technology. And if you want to go back and listen to some older episodes of the Precision Farming Dealer podcast, head to precisionfarmingdealer.com. I'm your host, Noah Newman. Thanks again.

Have a great day.