Noah Newman:

Thanks for tuning in to another edition of the Precision Farming Dealer Podcast. My name is Noah Newman, and today we have a special, What Farmers Want From You edition to the podcast. Keith Wendte will join us for his take on precision technology and the improvements dealerships can make when selling it.

Now Keith manages data and analysis for his family's 7,000 acre Illinois operation, from an office more than 200 miles away, yet an impressive 37-year career as an engineer for International Harvester and CNH, so Keith knows what he's talking about.

Listen in as Wendte talks about the cutting edge technology making a difference on his farm, the keys to successful data management, biggest challenges face when adopting new technology, how dealerships can improve, and more.

So let's jump right into the conversation. Here's Keith.

Keith Wendte:

Hello, my name is Keith Wendte. I'm currently a member of the Wendte Farms operation. I live in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, but my main role is to gather and analyze data for our farm operation, which is located in southern Illinois. It's a 7,000 acre operation and we quite regularly do plot work on a regular basis, so I have plenty of work to do when it comes time to analyzing yield data on our plots, and that's my main focus for the company or for the operation.

Noah Newman:

Well, Keith, our first question for you is, what cutting edge farm equipment technology would you say is giving you the most advantage right now?

Keith Wendte:

Currently, we're looking at purchasing a drone in order to apply fungicide and herbicide. This is really important for our wheat crop when we're trying to apply fungicide in the early spring. Quite often it's wet and we don't have the ability to get in there with a sprayer. The only other alternative is to use a plane or a helicopter, so using a drone will give us the advantage of being able to go in whenever we want to, on a timely basis.

Noah Newman:

Yeah. We heard a lot of talk about drones at the Precision Farming Dealer Summit. Now, have you used drones before or will this be your first time using them?

Keith Wendte:

Yeah, we did actually use it a little bit last year to apply fungicide and it was very successful, and I forgot to mention it also gives us the ability to put in our own check plots so we can evaluate how well the fungicide or insecticide is doing on our crops.

It also gives us an opportunity to spread cover crop seed if we decide to do that, in standing crops. So that gives us an advantage over trying to establish a cover crop after the crop has been harvested. So, we're looking forward to trying some of that as well.

Noah Newman:

Now on top of that, are there any other changes or upgrades you're looking to make to your precision equipment this year?

Keith Wendte:

The main thing I think that we're going to do is, in the past we've used RTK correction signal in order to get good elevation maps on our farm. We rely on surface drainage in order to get rid of the excess water that falls on our fields. We have a clay pan layer on our farm, and so tiling really doesn't work, so this is our only means for getting rid of the excess water. And in order to lay out these surface ditches, it's critical to have very good and accurate elevation maps.

Since some of our farms are located far away from the farmstead, the correction signal only is accurate up to eight miles away. So, we're now going to be using digit farm for our correction signal, and that enables us to get accurate maps on the fields that are located a long distance from our farm.

Noah Newman:

What would you say is one kind of technological improvement you're hoping to see in the next few years when it comes to precision technology, whether it's maybe more precise ways to measure soil health, variable rate applications, automation? Anything come to mind?

Keith Wendte:

Yeah, I think a uniform method for measuring soil health would be an excellent start as far as evaluating some of the practices that we're doing and then tracking that over time to see if we're improving soil health.

Also, I would like to see more work on-the-go soil testing so we don't have to gather samples and send them into the lab. Same thing for tissue sampling. It'd be nice to be able to find out what the crop needs during the growing season and be able to react to it in a very timely manner.

Noah Newman:

Now, when talking about some of the pain points of precision technology, and this could be for you or maybe some other farmers who you've talked to, but what would you say are some of the biggest challenges people face when it comes to adopting new technologies on their farm?

Keith Wendte:

For me, since I do the analysis for the data, I have to gather all this data, imported it into our GIS database software, and there are so many different formats out there, that it's hard to keep track of which machine uses which format, and then also being able to import that data. And then after I've evaluated it and made prescription maps, you have to export it to load it onto the machine to do variable rate whatever and having to having a different format for every machine, it just gets sort of cumbersome.

So what I'd like to see is for this ISO 11783 standard, to be adopted by all the manufacturers, so that there's just one format that we're able to use in order to do the import and exports.

Noah Newman:

Yeah. I remember watching your presentation, you listed all the different data files that you have to use. It kind of, I mean, it makes your headwind explode all the different formats that you have coming in.

Keith Wendte:

It really does. Yes.

Noah Newman:

And when it comes to data management, obviously you have your handle on it pretty well, but do you think there are a lot of farmers out there who get the data and they just don't know what to do with it, and do you see value in maybe dealerships having a data guy that could just be there to help people with their data?

Keith Wendte:

I think that would really be a good start. Farmers are sometimes unwilling to share their data, so they might be a little bit afraid to hand over their data to someone like that.

However, if they don't have the background and they don't have the time to do it, I think that would be a good way of analyzing their data and actually using the data in order to make changes for their farm, to make them more efficient in the future.

Noah Newman:

Obviously, autonomy's a hot topic right now, so I just kind of want to get your take on that. Do you see it having a place in your operation the next five to 10 years or so?

Keith Wendte:

I'm not sure we'll be using it in the next five or 10 years, but maybe after that. We just have a lot of problems with our fields. They're fairly small, they're irregularly shaped, and we have a lot of hazards that can occur, such as sometimes we get washouts along creeks and trees falling down along the creeks and things like that, so I'm not sure how autonomy would be able to handle some of that.

If we have to go out there and start the machine up and correct the correct situation, it's just going to make us more inefficient. Having said that, I think some of the lower skill jobs such as retrieving hay bales, straw bales, doing some surface ditching that we have to do with our ditcher, running the grain cart around to bring grain off of the combines, I think those would certainly be operations that might be advantageous to have total autonomy and we might use start using that sooner than I think.

Noah Newman:

Yeah, it just seems like there's so many new products. Every day, something new comes out. It just... How do you differentiate between what a new product, one that might be useful for your operation or one that you just kind of don't pay attention to? Anything specifically you look for when you're evaluating new products?

Keith Wendte:

The main thing is if it return on investment and makes us more efficient. So, when I'm doing my analysis, that's the return on investment is the only thing I look at. I look at increase in yield and how much extra yield we have and then how much the new product costs. And if it provides a return on investment, and the results are statistically significant, and we can consistently get that after two or three years, we will adopt that practice and we'll never look back.

Noah Newman:

Gotcha. Well, we have a lot of people from dealerships that listen to the podcast. They like to get insight from farmers like you. So off the top of your head, what do you think something precision dealerships can improve on or something that maybe you're looking for out there that they could do better at?

Keith Wendte:

Okay. I think the number one item on the list is improved customer support, especially when it has to do with electronics and the precision farming hardware and software that farmers have to use in order to put their crop in or harvest their crop.

I think quite often farmer gets out in the field, he's ready to go. He's been trained. He knows how to do it, but then something goes wrong and he is not able to get the planter going, for example. So I think if dealerships and other companies that supply precision products, were better trained and then offered support on a 24-hour basis, I think that would be the most useful thing that they could do in order to support the producer.

Noah Newman:

Definitely some good insight there. I wanted to ask you, what are the precision adoption rates like amongst other farmers in your region? Do you see more people embracing it?

Keith Wendte:

It depends upon what you're talking about. If you're talking about auto guidance and point row shutoff for sprayers and planters, that has been a very quick adoption rate. But some of the other things like variable rate planting population and fertilizer, it's been a little bit slower and probably part of that is just because it takes a little bit more effort and time in order to create these maps.

But like I said, auto guidance is a no-brainer. That's really come on strong and just about everyone that I know in our area, has that ability to do that, so it's really made farming a lot easier.

Noah Newman:

There you go. Well, it was great meeting you, Keith at the Precision Farming Dealer Summit and the National No-Till Conference.

When you think about that experience, just anything jump out? Any big takeaways from the conference?

Keith Wendte:

There was really a lot of thought-provoking speakers this year and got me to thinking, I thought we were doing a good job of making the farm more efficient and getting maximum amount of profit and things like that, but then some of the speakers are pointing out things about regenerative farming and being able to carry it on to the next generation, and it really got me thinking of things that we could do to perhaps make that happen.

And a lot of it boils down to soil health and taking care of the land, and that got me thinking a lot more than what I'm used to, so just made me think a lot. So, I think that part was very valuable.

Noah Newman:

All right. That'll wrap things up for this week's edition of the Precision Farming Dealer Podcast. Big thanks to Keith Wendte for joining us, not only for this conversation, but also all of his hard work at the Precision Farming Dealer Summit and the National No-Tillage Conference in St. Louis. Really enjoyed having him there with us last week.

Thanks for joining us this week. Until next time, for all things Precision Farming, head to precisionfarmingdealer.com.