Barn Talk - Autonomous Farming.. The Future Of Agriculture? w/Craig Rupp

Episode Date: October 8, 2021

Welcome To Barn Talk! In today’s episode, we have Craig Rupp on the show to discuss the future of farming, autonomous tractors, the struggles of starting a business in ag, & much, much more. Check Out What Craig Is Up To At Sabanto   WEBSITE: https://sabantoag.com/ FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/SabantoAg/ SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c SUBSCRIBE TO BARN TALK CLIPS ➱ https://bit.ly/3BlZnqq LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY ITUNES ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 ADD US ON: INSTAGRAM ➱ https://bit.ly/3gaobdN TIKTOK ➱ https://bit.ly/3eJfftr ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When did that boulder start rolling downhill? I guess the day, the defining moment when the idea gets popped into my head. 640 Labs, it was 2014. We were out fundraising. You know, Corbett 9, couple, we call them friends, families, and fools decided to invest in 640 labs. And 2014, we were going out fundraising. We were data, you know, data analytics in agriculture. And, you know, we weren't having a lot of luck getting funding.

And, you know, if you've ever talked with VCs, it's like asking a girl out on a date. They won't really tell you why. They'll just say no. Right? Right. We all know that. Yep. Right.

I have some experience with that. Yeah, yeah. They used to come me. I don't think Sawyer gets told no very much. Yeah. He's the taller, better-looking version of his family. What one farmer say, they used to call me bedspread, have been turned down so many times?

There you go. That's pretty good. It's good right there. That's a bomb. All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk.

What happens at the barn stays at the barn. Until now. we're going to let it all out for you guys today is a really special episode today uh we're going to go over our two favorite topics as you guys know we like talking about tech and we also like to talk about farming and so we're going to have a really deep dive on this one and uh we're going to explore the questions does farm uh does farm equipment continue to get bigger larger larger or is it going to get eventually smaller what happens when we can't find enough labor does a size and a fish really go hand in hand and we'll explore more questions further than that but I'm here with my

co-host sidekick Tork and more. Yeah, I like Tork and more. I should get like a hat that says Tork and more on it. Yeah, this is this kind of came together. We've been working on this for a while and I just have to say that I'm I'm seriously I'm seriously stoked for this. It's going to be it's a subject that's near and dear to my heart. But before we get going, I'll give you a little update on where we are in southeast Iowa. So a few people have actually started harvest. There's a pioneer plot in right north of Washington that came out yesterday. I thought maybe I could get all the info out of it, but they don't have it all compiled yet. But the corn's good. Everybody that I know this way, corn, the yields are pretty good. I don't think you have to go very far south.

and they start trailing off because they were pretty dry and they missed some rains that we got. But it looks like it's going to be good. And drying rapidly. I talked to a couple guys yesterday that were running and their corn is running 21% right now. And we were going to start this week, but I went out and hand-shelled some and it was still like 25. But that was on Wednesday. And I think by the time we get through the weekend, we're going to start Monday because we're BTOs. We got a lot to do.

so we got to get after it. Yeah. Don't want to be picking in the snow. A lot of the beans are shedding off. I got a neighbor that's got some early group two beans, and they're shedding off hard. So it's all going to come at once. Markets, so this is the Thursday close,

and I looked a little bit. It looked like things were down a little bit today. Everybody's worried about exports, so they're going to run it down a little bit. But corn locally, 565 is the best bid, and that's only going to last a few days because once these hog feeders start getting a few trucks coming, they're going to drop it like a hammer. But right now there's some pretty good local bids.

565, I think that's better than anything you can get anywhere else. Soybeans, 1264 in Cedar Rapids, if you want to go to Cargill and sit in line and hope that they don't break down. And 1299, if you want to go across the river to Quincy. Weak 713. I brought the wheat in. I brought the wheat back. I don't know. I like the change up.

Keep things interesting. Yeah. Well, it doesn't change much. I think it was 713 the last time we had it in there. Well, there's no change in the price. You just got to take them out and then throw them back in. Yeah, that's true. There you go.

That's a little change. Keep it spicy. Keep it fresh. Hogs $85. Cattle. I should have taken cattle out, but I'm not going to. 123. It's actually down a little bit because it's been $124, 125.

Bitcoin's $47,000. I thought, I thought we were. going to have a strong recovery. It went, it went down through this week and then came back hard, and I thought it was going to get back to 50, but it didn't make it. Tesla, 757. It goes down every morning, and then it works its way back through the afternoon. So, I don't know, $1,000 Tesla by the end of the year. Questionable. I'm holding out hope. That's why I'm a farmer. I keep hoping. So today we're going to ask if you guys get any value from the show, just share it out with your friend, shared out with your family, shared out with your coworkers, whoever, that's the kind of

the ticket to a mission for watching or listening to the show. We don't run ads on the show. We also don't run ads to promote the show. It's just kind of all organic growth. So that's all we ask. Leave us a review, leave us a rating on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and that just, you know, helps us, pushes us out to more people. We're trying to do some good in this world. So that's all we ask from you guys. Okay. So without further ado, today we got a guy. that really is on the bleeding edge of ag autonomy. And I couldn't have put together a set of questions that uses the word autonomy more than what I've gotten this.

So if I screw it up a few times, that's a lot of syllables for me to get out for some reason. So the company that he founded, they were the first to plant an entire field fully autonomously. And the platform that they're running has provided, has run multiple systems continuously for like 48 hours straight, which that's pretty impressive. He's an Iowa native, graduated from ISU with a degree in electrical engineering, and then he got his master's from Illinois Institute of Technology. He's worked with a broad group of companies.

So when I looked at his LinkedIn profile, I was looking through all these companies, and I was like, yep, yep, and making a note. And then there's, there's a, at the bottom it says, see more. Well, then when you hit see more, there's like another list of companies. So I was like, holy cow. So he has worked for some of the biggest. I mean, it's pretty impressive. He's worked from John Deere to Motorola to the Climate Corp. And then he's also started six companies of his own. And that's, that's not all of it. Today, he is a CEO of, of Sabonto. And that's an autonomous ag startup.

And any of you that are familiar with the videos of the cabless cabbidotot tractors that are planting or tilling or seeding, they are the company behind that. Check it out on LinkedIn. Twitter. It's pretty impressive. We're batting way above our IQ level with this guy. So hopefully he takes pity on us and doesn't use. his full arsenal big words.

So his CB handle is cat daddy. And among all of his accomplishments, he also has wild, wild boar wrestling on his list of abilities. So Craig Rupp, welcome to Barn Talk. Welcome to Barn Talk. All right. Thank you, Torek and Sawyer, for inviting me. And I'm happy to be here.

Okay. Well, we're going to get right into it. We're going to get into it. Just give us some background of growing up in Iowa as a farm kid and your journey of how you kind of went to start Sabano and just all the companies worked for. You know, what was your childhood like? What goals did you have?

What led you to go into engineering? Okay, so I grew up in northwest Iowa, Cherokee, Iowa, on a farm, corn, soybeans, hogs, cattle. And, you know, when I was young, my dad would have these box radios on his tractor. And, you know, lo and behold, they would break down and he would get rid of them and he would buy another one on a farm sale. And he would always give him to me. And, you know, I had this wild ideas that, you know, I'm going to go in and start, you know, communicating with aliens. Communicating with aliens or actually fixing these, you know. And I guess Rup Repaired turned into

Rup Salvage. And I just got an old soldering iron and, you know, a plumber's soldering iron and took parts off and would collect them. And I had no idea what they were. And so it just so happened in Cherokee, there was this little shop. It was a bike shop that happened to be a radio shack. And my friends and I would always go down there and look at these bicycles knowing that there's just no way in hell this thing would, you know, these bikes would ever see, you know, our farm. Right. And my dad always picked up bikes on farm sales. And then, And while it was in there, I just, I happened to notice the Radio Shack portion of the business, and I started seeing these little components.

And I'm like, my God, these look familiar. These are the same things. And it just so happens that they had, you know, these little workbooks or these manuals. You know, you could learn electronics at Radio Shack. And it was my version of the Internet. Sure. And I started reading through them. I was kind of interested, you know, as to how this works.

How all these parts work. Exactly. And then meanwhile, when I was. was, you know, when I was a kid, this is probably before your time, but there used to be television repair people that used to come out all the time, you know, because they had vacuum tubes. Right. And this guy would walk in with, you know, you know, a big old bag or toolbox. A big old bag, toolbox of vacuum tubes and then he had his tools. And these are tools that I'd never seen before. You know, these, these were not tools you fix fences with. Right. These were, you know,

little pliers and and and I just I was just intrigued yeah at that and then uh I decided that I'm going to get into um I'm going to be become um do something with electronics and and and electricity awesome yep so you always had a curious mind always curious about that kind of stuff so you always felt like it was in the it was just in you to be that way yeah and when I graduated um so I just told my brother I was a spare not the air And so my brother still farms and I, you know, I think my father, you know, breathe the sigh of relief when I decided that. Yeah, I'm going to leave the farm dad. I have had enough of agriculture.

And, you know, in 1984, I never thought I would set foot again on a farm. So you graduate. What made you decide to go to Iowa State? You know, it was kind of funny. I was your typical 18-year-old. I really didn't know what I wanted to do. But I wanted to, you know, at the time, I wanted to be a tech. technician and because I had no idea what an engineer and

technical difference between them and so I applied to numerous colleges to be you know that they had an electronic technician degree and you know I was looking at the price I'm like oh my god this is expensive yeah and then you know obviously the first thing that went through my mind is you know I'm I go to state school right so I did call University of Iowa and I remember I talked to them and asked them, you know, do you have a technician degree? And they just said, I call Iowa State. And so I called Iowa State.

Wow. And it was, and this lady answered the phone. And, you know, she paused for like five seconds. She says, well, what are you interested in? I'm like, electronics and electricity. And she's like, well, you know what an engineer is? And I, you know, I've no idea. No, I've never met one.

I have no idea, you know, what an engineer is. is the difference between them. And she probably spent 20 minutes on the phone with me. Explaining. You listen in Iowa. You messed up here. You messed up. You got to be better with the people when they call.

No. But, you know, you know, trust me. You know, as an 18-year-old, you know, it's funny. You know, they get, what's the term? They get advice from the oddest sources. Right. You know? Yep.

I remember, you know, growing up, you know, I'd never been around anyone who went to college other than the veterinarian. He would come out. Yeah. And he would tell my dad these wild stories about college. And I remember as a kid, he was talking about how, you know, he and his buddies rented a house. And, you know, I'm eight, nine years old. You were fascinated. I'm like, I could not believe renting a house with, you know, J, Brad and Neil.

Yeah. I mean, we could eat Oreos all day long. Mom's not around. I'm serious. No, I totally get. I totally get you. Were you more intrigued by the electronics or when you heard those stories, you're like, ah, I got to go. I got to get over there. I got to get to State College. It was a little of each. But I do remember that it was a defining moment. Yeah, that's awesome. You know, and he was talking about, you know, the debauchery. And I'm like, yeah. Yeah. Oreos.

Mom's not going to yell at, yeah. Oh, my God. The things I could do. Freedom. College is such a, it's such an interesting thing because it's a melting pot. You meet so many people from different. We had a guy on. podcast last week and he was talking about how his kind of his lifelong friends or people he met

in college versus high school because in high school you have common and extracurriculars yeah it's all extracurricular that you make connections because you're all in football or you're all in this or you're all in that but when you get to college you meet people that have similar passions that you have and that connection is stronger. Right. Then I didn't have that because I went to Kirkwood, and the only passion was drinking beer out of a funnel. But we aren't here to talk about that.

I've been to Kirkwood and drink beer out of a funnel. And it's cherished memories as far as that goes, but maybe not the best use of my funds, I'll just say that. But anyway. So you started Iowa State. Yes. And what did you, as you progress through there, did you get an idea of like what you wanted your focus to be?

Yes. As soon as you, as she like recommended being an engineer where you're like, yep, I'm an engineer and I'm just going to stick with that. Or did you just like, first class you took, you loved it. And you're like, yeah, this is it. This is what I want. Well, you got to get all that Jen Ed out of the way. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Right. You know, at the time, I think it still is, well, actually any engineering, you know, they would all put us in a room. And, you know, these were incoming freshmen. And, you know, I completely felt out of place. Sure. Because I'm looking around and, I mean, these guys are nerds.

And they look really, really smart. And, you know, I'm, you know, I was kind of wild. you know, I was the youngest in the family. Yep. And I think my two sisters and brothers would say that I was the wildest of the four. And, you know, they always say, you know, I don't take responsibility. And I'm like, well, you guys. This sounds familiar.

You guys took it all. There's none left for me. So, but they put us all in a room. And, you know, I'm looking around. I'm like, oh, my God, am I out of place? And then they, you know, you know, they tell you, you know, meet the people. sitting next to you and then they tell you next year one of those people will be gone sure because they're going to they're going to wash out they're going to wash out and uh you know i'm looking around

and you know scared straight i'm like what in the hell that i just get myself into sure and uh but then i thought you know um you know they made me smarter than me but i'll work harder i can work harder than that kind of that farm iowa background it was yeah yeah yeah yeah and i mentioned earlier my dad uh you know He always, you know, the harder he works, the lucker he gets. Yep, yep. He instilled that work ethic in you. But I decided while I was in there that I'm going to go into communications and wireless in particular. And that would have been fairly brand new.

That was an evolving technology. It was. I mean, at the time, you know, at the time, you know, a lot of communications were analog AMFM. And, you know, you just started seeing the evolution of digital communication standards and the technology evolving. So you graduate, you graduate with your degree. Yep. And then you decide, so was it a, did you know when you graduated that you wanted to go on and get your master's right away? Or did that, what was that thought process?

I was pretty tired of school. and I wanted to get into RF and I went to Chicago and went to work for Motorola. While I was there, it was kind of interesting at Motorola that you get, you get to get your masters for free. They pay for it. They pay for it. And internally in Motorola, there's two ladders. There's a management ladder and there's a technical ladder.

And I wanted to go up the technical ladder. and if you did not have your masters, you weren't, didn't have very many rungs on the ladder. And on the, on the management ladder, if you didn't have your MBA, then you were stuck. You're stuck.

You're never going to be a VP. You're never going to be a principal engineer. So I was, and it's free. So, you know, I take 12 classes and it was literally. Check the box. Check the boxes.

Yeah. What year would have that been? So you get your master's and you're at, motorola. How long did you stay there? I stayed there until 95. I started on GSM, the first digital cellular system. It was a European standard, but then, you know, migrated over to the U.S. Wonderful standard. Those Europeans are really good at writing specifications. Okay. Especially in the wireless industry. And then I, then I transferred O2 Arridium. So I know SATCOM. Yeah. So Arridium, their project was

I feel like I know this because so that was the original like satellite phone. Is that right? You know, there were other ones out there, you know, that they were, you know, it was a satellite mobile phone. There were systems out there like in Mersat and, but they were briefcase sized phones. Okay, so the only reason I know anything about that is because the guy that I worked for, went on a safari to Africa. Yeah, absolutely. And he was,

he was the company that I worked for. In other words, he had to have his hand on everything, and he was paranoid about anything going wrong. But anyway, he paid, I don't know what he paid, but it was a sizable sum, so that while he was on safari,

once a day at a certain time, he had this satellite phone and he could call and he called and I don't know how long, I don't know how long it lasted, but it was a limited amount of time that he had signal. Yeah. And so he called, he called every single person to get an update as to what was going on. Yeah, I don't think that was it. It wasn't aridium. It wasn't aridium.

Okay. That was one of the benefits of aridium. It was later. Yeah, low earth orbiting. Okay. Um, you know, what initially there were 77 satellites, but then they, they, through optimization, they brought that number down to 66. Okay.

So you were there through 95. Okay. Okay. Well, because I know that those were some wild times actually. I bet they were. They absolutely were the group I worked with. They were, um, they were a bunch of renegade, um, out of control engineers. Well, and it was something else.

But it was like the Wild Wild West and the fact that you were like you were inventing the technology, weren't you, basically? We were, absolutely. And it was funny because, I mean, it was kind of a, how do I say it? It was kind of a high risk career-wise to go to Arridium. And it was interesting about the people that I met there. And you mentioned earlier about keeping tabs on them. Yeah. I mean, there were, you know, there were 50 to 100 of us engineers.

And, I mean, there's some of the closest friends I keep in contact now with. Matter of fact, 640 Labs, one of the engineers I co-founded that company with. He was, I worked with him at Radium. Sure. And, you know, I get, just a list of all the guys. And, you know, I, you know, one of the guys. you know, one of the guys that at Sabanto is one of the engineer's sons that I had a smoked a cigar when he was born. Yeah. But it's a very close-knit group of us. Well, I feel like when you

get a group of people together that are singularly focused and share a passion, that bond, like that's a bond. That's a, you know, there's jobs. and then there's experiences. And that was like, that was an experience that you all had that when you talk to somebody else, people like, oh, yeah, that's neat.

But when you talk, like when you're with those people, you know, you know what that feeling was like. Absolutely. Yeah. And absolutely. These guys are,

you know, matter of fact, I mean, you know, in my GSM days or my National Instruments days or my dear days, we all get together every two years have a barbecue

and just an absolute great group of guys Was that your favorite company you worked for? You know, in terms of you know, Aridium was by far the most fun. The most fun.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, National Instruments was, that company was an amazing company. It was the most entrepreneurial, large company I've ever worked for.

And they would let me me do anything I want. And myself and another guy out of Wales, he and I would, we would, we were all over the world. We were in China, Singapore, Israel, all throughout Europe, all throughout the U.S. and South America and, and, and they, we were developing technology. And it was very entrepreneur. And they just let you go. Yeah. Wherever it took you. Yeah. I spent nine years there. Yeah. You know, and had, you know, had it not been there, I'd probably, we've got to spend, you know, four. Right.

You bring up an interesting point because it's kind of ironic. So yesterday, I just was listening to a little bit of a podcast that Lex Freeman was on, or Friedman was on. And he was on there about something else, but he was talking about, he has had in the past a very tight relationship with Boston Dynamics. And he's very into autonomous. robots, basically. But he said that

he's kind of parted ways with them. I didn't get a sense as to whether like completely or whether he just doesn't do much with them. And he said the reason for that is that when they sold, that company sold to Hyundai. And he said

when earlier the engineer, the engineer the people that were doing the work, they had complete free reign as to what they wanted to explore and what they wanted to work on with these robots. And he said today, the marketing side of that business has gotten really strong.

And they're very, they've narrowed their window of research because Hyundai paid a lot of money for it and they want to monetize it and he said he feels as though the marketing is dictating where the research goes and where the, and he doesn't like that. No freedom anymore.

And he, and I, this is a little bit biased because I know for a fact that he's very, he has very favorable impressions of Elon Musk and Tesla and all that. But he said that's one of the reasons why he thinks that, say, SpaceX and Tesla has been so successful, is because with Elon being an engineer at heart and a researcher at heart, he has done an excellent job of keeping the marketing department very underfunded and restrained as far as being able to dictate to the people actually doing the development. they don't have any rain on them. And I think that that's just interesting how you talked about that in that there's a,

I think that's something that can really stifle innovation is when you get the money involved as far as, how can we take this and make a dollar? And it's a tough balancing act. I mean, I don't take away from it because at some point all this research and everything that we're doing whatever, it has to pay, somehow you have to pay for it.

But finding that balance, I think there's a lot of companies that really struggle in having that balance. Yeah. So, you know, I've had the honor of working for, you know, some really incredible managers.

You know, David Lodeman out of National Instruments, I remember one time, he had said, he pulled me aside. And he said, you either make the decision or I will. And if I have to, I'm going to be pissed.

And then another one at Deer when I was there, John Ware was his name. Sorry for name dropping. No, that's fine. That's fine. I remember one time we were down in Houston, and the Starfire receivers were going to be built in Houston. And myself and another guy, we were integrating with them down at Houston, Sugar Land, right outside of Houston

and you know we you know after we worked one day we sat down we were having a beer

and you know we this was on a Thursday or Wednesday night and you know this isn't going good and

they were you know for one reason or another they were being manufactured in Fargo and they wanted to move from back down to this Houston

for this it's more of an RF based manufacturing company. And we're like, you know, I know what's going to happen six months from now. They're going to move manufacturing back up to Fargo. Because it's not going to work. It's not going to work. And, well, what do we do? And I'm like, let's go in and sit down and talk with John. And we sat down with him on Friday morning and we said, well, we want to tell you something.

You know, we think in six months you're going to be moving this back up to Fargo. You know, you know. here's why support the supply the manufacturing ability the the personnel blah-blow you know just went through all the list he said okay thank you let me think on think about it you know two hours later he says all right what do you what are you guys doing Sunday night right yep you're gonna you're gonna fly down to Houston there's going to be two semi-trucks you're going to load all the equipment on it's going to fire go and take it back yeah and you know that's a good manager it's a damn good manager yeah listen to listen to

Well, I mean, that's, and that's, that's a tough, it's a tough position because people are relying on you, but you, to have the, to have the, I don't know what the word is. Humility. Yeah, a lot of, a lot of managers and bosses, I feel like they always want to, they always feel like, yeah, I'm the boss. You listen to me and they put their thumb down on their employees, but good managers, good bosses, they understand that they work for their employees. Right. The other way around. Yeah. And that's. Because you hire people.

smarter than you so they can do the jobs you can't do and you take their advice. You know, so, you know, Steve Jobs, obviously, you know, he had said, you know, we hire smart people to tell us what to do, right? But, you know, it's, it's a great, you know, statement, but a lot of managers don't follow that. Right. And, you know, I try, you know, in my company, you know, I, you know, I'm like, Adam, this is on you. You, you, you're in charge of that. Yeah, right. It's your decision. Yeah.

And I try to, you know, because they're smart people. They understand. I think that that position's a little bit undervalued because, so I've been a manager. My former role, I managed the fieldman for the company we worked for. And I really wasn't very good at it. And the reason I wasn't good at it was because. I wanted them, well, I shouldn't say that. I think I was okay at it, but I could have been a lot better in the fact that I relied on my guys

to take ownership. And I always tried to instill in them that the best outcome that they could come up with was one that they came up with, or the best outcome we could have was one that they came up with and they implemented it. In other words, we had big goals as far as what we wanted to accomplish. And I put to them, however you want to get it done, you figure out how to get it done. As long as you get it done. As long as you get it done.

And that's a good way to do it. The problem that I had was, and this goes back to your Iowa kid, you know, pull up your bootstraps and get it done, is when it didn't get done, then I would jump in and I would just do it myself. and that's, if you're managing very many people, you can't do that. Exactly. And so, and that's just one side. Then the other side of it is the guys that they want, when something happens, they want to put their stamp on it that look what I did when, in fact, they didn't, they didn't do anything.

But so it's, it's tough. I mean, it's tough. One question I had for you is, you know, you've worked for these, all these great companies. What made you want to just hop around was, you know, Were you motivated by pay or were the companies that you first were short attention I mean, what made you want to jump around and really dabble in everything a little bit? Okay, so let's just go through the list. When I was in GSM, I wanted to get into satellite communications.

So, Arredium was there. So that was, and it was more of a technical reason. Plus, believe it or not, when I was in GSM, I got this mental. center. And this guy was just absolutely, incredibly, from a technical point of view. And I wanted to learn more from him. He moved. I moved. I followed him. When I was at Motorola, I decided, and two of our friends, we decided that to go out and start our own company consulting. And that was probably the hardest decision I ever made at that time. And so I went out, consulting there. Right around 2002 time frame, the economy went to hell, so we just decided to go our separate ways.

And my wife is from Iowa originally as well, high school sweetheart, and we decided that we're going to move back to Iowa. And that's why I took a job with John Deere. Oh, sure. Okay. And, you know, and again, have an egg background.

You walk into deer, it helps. Right. You know, so thank God I grew up on a farm. So I spent a number of years at John Deere, and then I loved consulting. And what's interesting about consulting is every day is different. You'll get a contract for three months, and then, you know, so, you know, I worked on refrigerators, on lawnmowers, on hydraulic valves for C&H, you know, and all the wireless companies. I just absolutely loved that. and I went back consulting, and then my company got acquired by National Instruments,

and then I went to National Instruments, love that company. And then, you know, there came a point where I was tired of learning about RF. It's, you know, when you go from, let's say, WCDMA or UMTS to LTE, yeah, the modulation is different, but, you know, it's the same. Just same, just different. Spectral emissions, adjacent channel a couple power, modulation accuracy. And it just wasn't exciting to you anymore.

Yeah. You felt like that you kind of taken that as far as it could. Yeah, I wonder. And you're a curious guy. Yeah. You grew up a curious guy. Yeah. And then I, so every year, I remember I was talking about Arridium, right?

Well, a bunch of us, we get together and we go snowmobiling up in, up in the, Michigan UP. Do you have a Rupp snow wheel? No, I don't, but I do know of Rubs. Gosh, you should have one. You should have one. Rupsters. Might be a little rough ride by today's standards.

Yeah, I think so. There was a lot of debauchery up there in the U.P. But a friend of mine, Rydium, he and I decided that. We're going to start starting companies. So I started a company, and I did not technically work for it. It was called Rough Riders Communications. and, you know, all of us are satellite communications guys, and so we started a data company in the,

in a darken basin down near the panhandle of Texas, bought a bunch of snowmobile trailers, put, you know, satellite dishes, and we're in business, and we're going to oil rigs. Oh, sure. Yeah, and it was kind of an interesting company, because, I mean, it was, I mean, it had pretty good, revenues for a little company. Right.

You know, it was, it was really hard to run a company in Oklahoma based in Chicago at the time. And then I, so, and then the other company we started was 640 Labs. And, you know, I, it took me two years to convince them, let's do something in agriculture. You know, I feel that agriculture needs, needs some, some technology and wireless and, and, and, data science and data analytics so we started 640 labs uh and then uh and that was yeah basically i got tired of rf and going back into agriculture and then um and then while i was we got acquired by climate corporation or monsanto they put us underneath climate in 2014 then bear by's mon santo and um you know i just did a little soul

searching. And, you know, believe it or not, when I left climate, my intent was that I was going to go finish my PhD. So I'm halfway through my PhD. So I moved back to Ames and then, you know, I got, I kind of saw how the sausage is made in the academia world. You know, I was 53. I thought, well, I'll just put out the pasture. I'll just go teach. Right. And I thought that would be kind of interesting to, you know, help the younger people. But then, you know, I just decided that. Wasn't satisfying. It wasn't satisfying enough for me.

So I wanted to take autonomy into agriculture. So did you move a lot? So as far as, because you said you moved back to Iowa with your wife when you went to work for deer. So did you drag her all over the country with it? Or did you do a lot of remote work? Is she just supportive? She's like, well, go wherever you're going, honey. Um, so, you know, my, my wife is something else, uh, and fully supportive the whole time.

That's awesome. Yeah, she really is. Um, you know, and she's really the brains behind the unit, uh, but, you know, between us, too. Um, you know, so we were in Chicago, then we were in, in, uh, Des Moines area. Then we went back to Chicago. And then I did a stint in Austin as well. so um but she uh you know i mean right now i have two houses one i kind of figured you did i got the feeling that you did and you have no idea how how bad that is i can imagine it's terrible

you know um but no she she uh she's very nomadic as well it's bad enough uh there's a lot of footage there's a lot of comedic footage that sawyer likes to take of any project that we do here at the farm. Okay. That he likes to just shoot video of me getting mad and walking, looking for where the last place was that I left tools. Because when you have, when you have four hog barns, two houses, a machine shed, a barn.

A couple garages. Whatever tool you need is wherever you used it last, but be damned if I can remember where. And then we have other, you know, like he takes it. So I can't imagine what having two houses. would be like because I would just all it every time I'd be like oh yeah I'm gonna damn it I left it here or I left it there so exactly what it is and it's even worse because like clothes take clothes for example right yep you know I have two suits yeah because I got caught in Illinois without a suit so of course I had to go out and buy one

guess where the two suits are right same house no they're in Ames oh so things migrate yep and then they never make it back and then you know, I'm going to have three suits someday. I just know I will. Well, and I feel like I'd be with you in the fact that I would just have to have a clone set of about everything at each house. But then, yeah, you're right. It would all end up at one. And yeah, I feel for you. I do. So did you always feel like you wanted? It seems like when you talked about your path there, you've, you kind of always wanted to be your own boss, start a company. Do you love being an entrepreneur more than you loved working for somebody else?

it always seemed like you jumped around, then you kind of jumped out of working for somebody, tried doing something and it worked, but then you got purchased by another company and then you just stayed there. Like, what do you enjoy more, being an employee or working for yourself? You know, well, first and foremost, it was, you know, just a couple of things.

It was never about money, right? So I never chased it. You know, I really, it's not necessarily working for myself either. it comes down to I want to work on something neat. When I was at climate. Fulfilling work. Yeah, fulfilling. You know, I want to do something different.

I want to do something, you know, unique that nobody else has done before. Or I want to work on technology where I'm learning. You know, when I was at climate, I had floated the idea to the suits that, hey, can I get like two, three people together and we can go automate something? and, you know, internally they're like, well, we're a data analytics company. We're an autonomy. We're this. Yeah. This is our box.

Yeah. This is our box. No. And, you know, I'm like, oh, geez, okay. Yeah. I mean, that's how it works. Yeah. So you start Sabato.

When was the, when did you, when did that idea get, when did that boulder start rolling downhill? Believe it or not, you know, it was, um, you know, it was, um, um, While we were at 640, so let me tell you where, you know, the, I guess, the day, the defining moment when the idea gets popped into my head. 640 Labs, it was 2014, we were out fundraising, you know, Corbett 9, couple, we call them, friends, families, and fools decided to invest in 640 labs. And 2014, we were going out fundraising. We were data, you know, data analytics in agriculture. And, you know, we weren't having a lot of luck getting funding.

And, you know, if you've ever talked with VCs, it's like asking a girl out on a date. They won't really tell you why. They'll just say no. Right? Right. We all know that. Right. I have some experience with that.

Yeah, yeah. They used to come me... I don't think Sawyer gets told no very much. He's the taller, better-looking version of his family. Would one farmer say they used to come me bedspread? I've been turned down so many times. There you go. That's pretty good.

That's good right there. That's a bomb. Yeah. But one VC told us that it's not audacious enough what you guys are doing. I see nothing interesting. And so Corbat and I are like, all right, we need it. All right, what are we going to do?

That's audacious. And I'm like, well, why don't we take a ton? Let's start doing autonomy. I mean, it's really close to what we're doing because we're collecting data. We're reverse engineering tractors and implements and combines and applicators. I'm like, you know, the next step is let's just start, we'll be agriculture autonomy. And so we mold on that and then we got acquired. And so that was always shoved to the back.

shoved to the bag and was always in the back of my mind is, you know, someone's going to do this. And it's going to be really cool. And then I tried to do it at climate. And, and then 2018 came and I decided that I'm going to step out. You're going to get it. I'm going to start it. I'm going to do it. Okay.

I'm like, you know, so. I'll lay in on my feet. Yeah, well, and you, you, you have experience. Were you halfway through your PhD? And then you're like, you know, I'm going to screw this. Because you said you wanted to go get your PhD. Yeah. That was on the top of my list.

I thought, you know, the hell with it. I'm 53. I'm up there. A little long in the tooth. I'm going to go, you know, just get a Ph.D. And go out to pasture, teaching kids, whatever. But then I thought, you know, I got to do this. I got to do this.

This is the craziest thing. There you go. There you go. So you hashed this. How many people were in on the idea of starting it? Two of us. Okay. And then did you have a list in your mind of willing accomplices that you thought you're like, I bet you I can get.

I can convince somebody to, you know. Damn right I did. Yeah. Damn right. I had a list. So who was your core team when you started? How many did you have? So the, so I, so our very first employee, there was this egg bot challenge in southern Indiana.

And so two of us, you know, founded the company. And there's this, I'm at this egg bot challenge and there's this, this kid there who, you know, I'm like, I've never seen a kid so excited. He was doing robotics and agriculture. And I just, you know what? I didn't even care. I just looked at his, the excitement that this kid had. And I'm like, I'm going to hire a kid. I wanted to hire Matt Climett, you know, because I'm like, this kid, this kid, I like, you know, he's just so excited.

And I hired him. He was first kid. I pulled him out of Purdue, essentially. Okay. And then, you know, when I went out in 2019, then, you know, I made a list of people. And then Corey Spaddy, he's a Purdue guy. I worked at CNH, Cabota.

I think he did a stint at deer as well. Ravi Yanduri. front and back end, full stack, incredible, you know, racehorse software guy. And then I hired these two guys, Adam Gaynor, who Arridium Child. Yeah. And Aaron Petersdorf. All these guys are, you know, they're really a remarkable, smart, versatile, industrious guys. Could you raise private money for her?

guys all pool together and get it started? Did you go out and look for investors to get it going? I, um, so initially, um, so I was the angel funder. Okay. So I funded it. Yep. You know, for the first, um, you know, six months. So I went out and I bought a planter. Never in my mind would I ever think that I bought a planter. Did you call your brother and say, hey, guess what I'm back, buddy? I'm back in business. I'm loading this thing up and coming home. Get ready. I did. I did. I did. I, I, I, I And, you know, I told him, Dean, I have a larger planter than you. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flame thrower.

Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the Everyday with Amazon. It's the family and friends event at Shoppers Drug Mart. Get 20% off almost all regular priced merchandise. Two days only. Tuesday, April 28th and Wednesday, April 29th.

Open your PC optimum app to get your coupon. And then I leased a JCB tractor. Oh, my God. And then believe it or not, I went and got a CDL. That is nice. Someone's got to drive the song. Yeah, somebody's got to haul it around. Yeah.

And I'm like, where am I going to find this guy? And I'm like, you know, well, hell, I'll just do it. Yeah. And, you know, and I went to someplace in Des Moines and 24-hour CDL and, you know. There you go. Well, it took a little bit more than 24 hours. Sure. But then, yeah, I had a list of these guys that, like, these guys are going to help you pull this off.

Okay. I feel like we might be getting a little bit ahead of ourselves because we had a conversation before we started. and I watched where you were yesterday in North Dakota, and you spoke a little bit about the why. Because I guess for those that aren't familiar with what you're doing, what's the, like, what is the why as far as where we are today in agriculture? And I honestly, I little bit knew the demographics of America, of ag, but I didn't know really,

but you spoke pretty eloquently to that. Yeah. You have me to repeat that? Well, yeah. I mean, kind of, what's the use case of autonomous farming? Why are we going? Why do you want to go down that road? All right. So, you know, and I preface,

I'll preface this again, like I did yesterday. It's a very uncomfortable conversation. Sure. But I think we have to have it. 3.4 million farmers in the United States. One third of them are over the age of 65. Okay. Per the CDC, they're going to live to be about 77.

Yep. Right? So 12 years from now, one-third of the farmers, we all know, are going to be gone. Yep. Now, what's equally frightening, frightening is another million of that 3.4 million, damn neared one-third are between the ages of 55 and 65. I got like four good years. Four good years.

You'll get that swivel coosie on the mower here pretty quick. That's his thing. He always tells me, he said, all the stuff we're doing now in about five, ten years, it's all going to be your responsibility. And all I want from you is just get a swivel coozy on the mower. A nice mower, nice mower, comfortable seat, and one of those really nice swivel kuzis. And I'll just mow everything. And, yeah, I don't think, I don't think how that.

That's going to go, though. He's pretty much. He says that, but I think that's going to be. Okay. We got off there. So we've got a major, we've got a major. Well, nobody's addressing this. Right. You know, and everyone's like, oh, you know, and what kills me is people, oh, the average age hasn't changed much. But if you think about it, you know, when, you know, when, let's say a 65-year-old person leaves, and a 23-year-old person comes in, there's a hell of a lot of more years between, you know, right, 59's the average age. Between 23 and 59 is a lot of years.

Yeah, you're getting a few people in that are very young, then that's what is keeping, that's what's keeping the average from moving a lot. But you're still headed to the cliff. Exactly. That's the. And, you know, and I'm pretty good at math. And I went through the,

And it's about, for every two farmers that leave, one comes in. Yeah. And who's going to do this work? Right. And then, you know, you talk to every farmer, you know, they're like, labor's impossible. But, you know, put that aside. You know, who's, who, you know, and I talked to my brother, you know, he said, you know, if I, you know, if I needed to hire a kid to shovel out his grain Ben. He's like, I have no idea.

No idea where to go. No. He's like, yeah, there's no kids like you and I. And then, you know, I would ask him, 10 years from now, who's going to be farming your land? I have no idea. Yep. That's right. And he's like, you know, I'm like, all right, how many, how many people under age of 35 can you name in Cherokee County? Right. Tough time. And I think he came down to 10. Yep. Okay. So, I don't know. What is there? there's like 500,000 acres in Cherokee County. Okay, 10 people. Right.

And the thing is, all 10 people can't manage 50,000. No, that's one of the big misconceptions. I hear that a lot, that technology is going to solve this because we're going to get more efficient and we're going to be able to cover more acres. But I personally know some guys that are farming, they're farming 10,000 acres. Okay, they can do it and they're good at it. They don't want to farm 20,000, and I could not manage.

I could not manage that operation. And there's a heck of a lot of people. I love farming. I'd farm 1,000 acres if I could find it, but I don't want to farm 10,000 acres. And so out of that 10,000, maybe there's one that wants to be, wants to harness every opportunity

is out there and he really wants to go. But, and then there's one that wants to farm a few. But you're not going to get, we're not going to get the people that can just can do it or that want to do it. Exactly. And the other thing is, you know, they're supposed to be, what, $10 billion by 2050. So not only is there more, less labor, but we got to feed more people too. That's the other thing.

So, I mean, that really does nothing to do with labor because we're just going to have. Yeah. And something else that we didn't touch on, which. to me is I look at this every day. So, you know, we're getting ready to go to harvest, and I didn't get any wagons bought. For everybody that's been, listen, I sold, I sold, the Parker's all sold.

I got to stop and pick up my big check, but I didn't get any wagons, any other wagons bought. I've got two Brent, 6507s, and I was going to buy another one or two of them in an auction, because a year ago, there were all these wagons for sale, so I made the decision to sell my old crappy Parker wagons, and I was like, yeah, they'll be an auction, I'll go get them. I bid on a couple up in Northern Iowa, and I just happened to pick the auction

where there's like three people that really wanted them, and they brought three quarters of what a new one was, and I couldn't bring myself to do it. So I let David Zezer know that I'm going to have to use his wagons. But anyway, machinery-wise, so if the average, for the average farmer out there, and surprisingly, we're still average, I don't know how it is. So we literally farm 400 acres here. And for me to go by, I hire my planning and harvesting done. We prepare, you know, we bring in the grain. We've got the wagons. We got the dryer. We got all that. And we get everything ready to go in the spring. But we basically no-till. And we have that custom done. And there's nothing that Sawyer would like more than to have, you know, an 8335R with a 16-row

planter and all that stuff and farm you can't afford it we can't make it work it's too much money the cost of the cost of equipment is insane well not even slowly it's it's geared towards that bigger operation it's not geared towards nobody wants to sell small scale equipment anymore and so your your barrier to entry just gets greater and greater so out of those 10 people that could be the farmers there's some of them that they're just not going to be unless somebody is willing to just set them up which you know some of those guys maybe willing to do that but it's a it's a big problem changes the game very good that's a very good segue very good segue you've done this before so um from where you started yeah you you've kind of where are you today where are where it what is the progression of subonto

from where you started to where we're at today. All right. So we started with, you know, the, you know, I'm not going to call it large, but it was fairly large, 220 horsepower 18 row. You know, we came back in the spring of 2019 and just started, and then I hired these guys. So, you know, we started looking at, you know, exactly autonomy. and, you know, I guess some of the things we learned,

the first thing I learned that, if I require a CDL, then what I'm not doing is, you know, every farmer complains labor, I got to have a guy with a CDL, good luck finding that guy, dependable, blah, blah, blah. And then I'm looking, I'm like,

we can't have a CDL because what I'm doing is, I'm not solving the problem, I'm just taking it over. And, you know, these over-the-road truckers, they make pretty good money. And, you know, and I'm going to have to compete with that. And so, you know, the decision was made that every farmer owns a three-quarter-ton truck. Three-quarter-ton trucks are, you know, they're very inexpensive, all things considered.

And so we started looking at, it was at least basically, you know, we started looking at weights, 16,000 pounds. Yep. 4,4,400 for the trailer. It gives us 12,000. And then we started looking at, you know, the Yanmar, the Cabota, the smaller tractors, deer. You know, everyone that made smaller tractor. And then, you know, we heard, you know, we said this 60, 90 horsepower is, we could haul that with, we thought, a four or five-year-old planter. And it was all, you know, just, you know, spreadsheets looking at.

Solving the math problem. Yeah, and then it turned out that, you know, when we came across Cabota, it was like, you know, you could lease these for next to nothing. Yep. And I'm like, well, why in the hell would we do that? Right. And so that's what really drove us to using these smaller tractors. So these smaller tractors, what are you, what size of, what are you planting with? What kind of planter are you using?

Harvest International. And four row, five row, six row? We do four row 30s and five row 20s. How many, how many machines are you out running around the country with right now? Eight. Eight right now. Well,

10. Okay. Yeah. For somebody that doesn't, it's not familiar with anything as far as autonomous, autonomous farming. Yeah. What,

what's the technology and, and what do you need to make it work? How do you make it work? If I call you and, say I got an 80 acre field and you want to come do it. What's involved in doing that? Okay. The first thing we do is when we show up to a field, we strike the boundary.

So we take the tractor and just drive the boundary. Geofense it. Geofense it. And we do that because we have rules and it's just out of things we have learned. Number one, never trust the field boundary from a farmer. That's a good play. That's a good plan. Yeah.

No matter. And you know what? We got burned a couple times and it was because, I don't know, trust me, these are the boundaries. The third post past the whatever. Yeah. And it's like, oh my God. And then it just turns into a nightmare, you know, continuing. No river bottoms too.

We get burned every time we may. Yeah, something that's there that wasn't supposed to be there. Yeah. And then, you know, oh, it's, you know, there's no trash on this ground. Oh, it just flooded. Now there's trash. Yeah. And then there's saplings.

Yeah. So, I mean, there is, there is, um, there is limits to what, what you can do. Yeah. From that, from that perspective. Yeah. And the other thing, too, is that it takes, it takes a little of discipline, um, to say no. Sure. You know, um, there are some fields that are probably in the short term are not well suited for

autonomy. Mm-hmm. And you just have to say. say no. Right. You know, I would love to, but I can't at this point in time.

The equipment that you're using, the software you're doing, somebody that is, so our, like our fields are mapped, as far as, um, when we plan them,

we're using, we're using, uh, precision, precision planning, um, software. So do we.

Um, so in that situation, you can load those maps into your, into your, into what, you're doing. Yeah, we're completely cloud-based. So, um, right, so we are using precision planting planters, kind of seed meters and downforce. Um, and we're, we're doing prescriptions. This last spring, we did prescription planting, but it's all up into the cloud.

Okay. So, and we communicate back down to the tractor, the prescription. So there's no jumping on and loading it on at 2020. We're running without a 2020. Yeah, well, there's no need for because nobody needs to look at it. Yeah. There's nobody riding around to look at it. Yeah. So, you know, my engineers, what they do is they monitor or they control. remotely.

Yeah, they control seating rate and they monitor. And if there's a difference, a significant difference in population, then we pause the tractor. Yeah, to figure out what's going on. Yeah. We look at the margins on downforce and adjust accordingly and whatnot. So we wrote algorithms that did that. My question is, is like, how does this picture? business, how is this business model works? So are you guys like going to farmers and saying,

hey, you know, do you want to try this out? Or are you guys coming to their farm? They're like, I want to see how this works. And like how, how, what is it, the ultimate goal is to get farmers to take on what you're doing? Or right now are you just doing research to figure out, get it down to a science before you go out and sell it to farmers? Like what's, what's the whole break, break that down for me. Okay. So right now, we have very progressive farmers. that we're working with that have obviously labor problems. And so what we're doing is we're taking over acres from them. They're paying you to plant for them.

They're paying, yeah, they're paying. Or whatever you're doing. Yeah. And like, for instance, this last spring, we took over a thousand acres over from a farmer in Nebraska. And we rototilled, that was his primary tillage. We rototilled 1,000 acres. Wow. With one little tractor.

How fast did it do that? You know, it took about two and a half weeks. But, you know, skin off my back. Right. I was sitting on it. Yeah, right. And the little thing just ran all night long and all day long and all night long. Oh, yeah.

You throw it in 480 acre field, and it takes a while, but, you know, we had time on our side. Right. Then we planted, and then we turned around and, well, we feel it. culivated, then planted, then tyne-weeded, rotary-hoad, cul-ve-colvate, cul-vade. So you do exactly how they would do it themselves. They kind of come to you and then they're like, this is how I do it, and then you guys do exactly what they would do just autonomously. Absolutely.

So you're just a cuss, you're kind of just doing custom farming. Yeah. Yeah. You know, with the mindset that long term, you know, he's going to be operating these. And, you know, what's kind of interesting what we're doing is, and why we're doing this contracting, farming as a service, the onus is on us.

Sure. And, you know, when, you know, when, you know, if you can imagine that, you know, like when we went out in the spring of 2020, I took all my engineers and they were sitting in the field. And, you know, if we have path plan problems, you know, it's going to be a late night until you get this fixed. You know, it's not, well, I'll start on it on Monday.

Right. No, it's like everyone's out there. They're experiencing what it's like to be the farmer there because it's got to get going now. Exactly. Because you've got that window. Exactly. And, you know, I've been an engineer for what, 30 plus years. And, you know, peer pressure is kind of a good thing.

You know what I mean? Back up against a wall. You just got to figure it out. Yeah, you got to figure it out. And, you know, everyone's there to help, you know, help you, you know, get. you know, if like, you know, we had all sorts of issues. I'm not saying that, you know, everything went, you know, came off, but we're... That's how you learn.

It's exactly how you learn. Yeah, and so as you do this, as you do more acres, you're collecting the data as far as everything, every, every, what do we call that? Every edge situation that you come up that is out of the norm, and you're using that to make the system better. Exactly. Yeah. You know, and it was interesting is, you know, when I was at John Deere, you know, most everyone came from a farm there.

I mean, a lot. There were a lot of farm kids. And there were a lot of guys that farmed on the side. Yep. Right. They still farmed. And or they wanted to be farmers. And then when I went to Traymont, working with precision.

Yep. They weren't in a climate. You know, all those guys there farmed for the most part. And I, and there's an advantage. to that. Yes. And, you know, and yeah, you can learn and whatnot, but, you know, they don't teach you that, you know, be careful of the shovel, these. Yeah, the nuances. The stuff that you grew up me, you just take for granted when you bring somebody that has no idea. It's. Yeah. And, you know, I thought that was important, you know, an important culture in the company. Yeah. To, you know,

to have, you know, experience that. And, you know, if you look at my software guys, they all know how to chain down a load. That's good. Because I make them do it. Right. You know, hey, jump in, help. Yep. And, you know, and they're very industrious guys.

And I wanted to make sure that that culture that, you know, nothing is beneath you. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good way to be. Do you find that that's, do you find that those guys that don't know, is that a good kind of like outside the norm having guys that aren't like in agriculture, grew up in agriculture, or they kind of bring some different perspectives, you know. People always say it's not always good to have people that have just been consumed by one industry.

It's good to have eyes from other industries. You know what I mean? Yeah, I do. So, you know, and I'll speak on my behalf. I spent, you know, again, you know, 20 plus years in the wireless industry. So I used to go into these manufacturing plants. And I used to, so, you know, the rule of thumb, just like $1,000 per horsepower. In the wireless industry, the cellular industry, specifically,

it's a million dollars per second per line per year. So you go into Foxcon where they make Apple or Nokia in Beijing. If you could save a second from test time, then you could save a million dollars per line. And it all comes down to statistics. Seriously, you look at, you know, if you're measuring something, believe it or not, you can make a faster measurement and degrade the measurement to the point where it's good enough. Yes. Around here, we call that an Amish carpenter. They only use the big numbers on the tape measure, but they're fast. Exactly. I've never heard of that term. Is that a Lawrence?

So a lot of these hog buildings that we, the company I used to work for, and they use Amish carpenters. And we always kind of bagged on those guys a little bit that they only used, they only used, anytime that we would find something that they didn't have quite right or a wall that was crooked, it's like, you guys got to stop using just the big numbers. You know, you got to learn them little bits in between and they get pissed at us. So I guess the one thing I learned specifically at National Instruments was, measuring things quantitatively versus qualitatively. And I think some of that, you know, is being,

is followed in our company today. Like, you know, our navigation accuracy, you know, Aaron, one of my engineers, I mean, he's all over that. And he, you know, if you ask him, hey, what's our, he angst over it. Yeah, what's our one sigma, you know, we're running right now with this. 5660 pulling this you know planter and he'll

he'll know it right off the bat. And would guys at John Deere and Precision probably not know that kind of stuff like do you think they would be as good as that guy? You know, I'm not gonna... Boy, you're kind of baity on you.

I know, yeah, he's just turning a knife. You know what though? All right, here's what I will say that kind of amazed me when I came into agriculture. You know, when you buy a planter, for example, no, let me start with, if you go by a DMM, a digital multimeter, right, go by a fluke, all right? There's a specifications associated with it.

And you look at that specifications, it'll tell you over what temperature range, how accurate. What's the integral non-linearity? What's a differential non-linearity? What's the accuracy? What's the gain? offset. I mean, it is down, I mean, you understand, and this is a, you know, you know, two, $300 digital multimater. They knew exactly how it's going to react to any environment. Yeah. But you go by a planter, and this is everyone, and this is everyone in agriculture,

and it goes beyond just, you know, like I'm surprised on planters that seed spacing, variability. What is it one inch? Is it two inches? They don't know. They don't know. Now, and they'll all get, you know, it's all dependent upon the ground. Right. You know, but. Is it? Is it? Is it? Because the ground's fairly. I mean, I mean, it's kind of amazing to me that you go on and you spend $350,000 for a planter and you don't even know what its accuracy is. Yeah. Right. Yep. And, and, you know, and I will say that, you know, you know, do it on. Right? Right. Do it.

I mean, you know, I'll go back to the DMM. They'll tell you what accuracy at 95% humidity rate. Yep. Right? Yep. And, but, you know, there's kind of a lack of that in agriculture. Yeah. You know, and I'll give the example.

Don't you find it odd that University of Nebraska has a tractor test lab? Yes. I mean, why is the third party doing this? Yeah. And I'm not going to dog on, you know, it's maybe, maybe I'm missing something in the industry and I'm sure people comment on. Yeah, that's all right. We love the comments. We don't read them sometimes if they look nasty. I only read the first few words. If they say anything mean about towards. Yeah, because I get triggered easily, soft. Yeah. What's the few, what's the, where is it going? What's the future for Sabonto and what do you feel like what, where are we headed?

My goals of the future is to keep deploying autonomy in the agriculture. We're going to be working with farming operations. We're also going to enable people, younger people, to, I want to see a first-generation farmer. Yeah, that's a good goal to have. Are you thinking that you're going to get to the point where you're offering that system that somebody buys the system from you, either has you install it or it's, it's, it's, to the point where they can install it themselves. On any model a tractor, not obviously.

Or are you looking at it more that you're going to continue to build out your fleet to where you'll be a sizable custom farming operation? I'm going to enable other people to retrofit a tractor. Nice. Yeah, I like that. We like that. I do like that. And it might be, it might be model, uh, specific.

Specific. Yeah, depending on who will work with you. Yeah. And I have, I'm getting inundated with people I want to do that. When I talk to people, I'm, I'm kind of excited about what you're doing. And what's different. It's, I'm not, you know, I'm not coming out and making a, you know, uh, I'm somewhat outside of the, you know, the norm. The norm. Yeah. I'm abnormal. but a common reaction I get when I explain to people that that what Sabanto is doing and using the smaller horsepower tractors, I've gotten this from more than one person. They've said, well, I'm surprised somebody from deer or fill in the blank.

I'm surprised that fill in major equipment manufacturing. I'm surprised somebody hasn't killed him yet. Because you're changing the paradigm. I feel like you're changing. Yeah, disruption is the thing. And we touched on this. I think we touched on this when you and I were talking before we started. Sometimes the best conversation.

We need to start the camera right when somebody gets here because we have some good conversation before we ever get started. I didn't say off the camera. Yeah, that's true. That's true. But this one I think, I don't think you have a problem with this. I feel like that in ag today, the mainstream is, that we are going to continue to build bigger and bigger equipment using autonomy as far as

we're going to sink the tractor of the grain cart so that we can put anybody in the seat or maybe we get to the point where we don't need somebody in the seat. But the cost of entry is still huge and we're on this plane of bigger is more efficient. Vigor is more efficient. And I feel like what you're doing is challenging that in saying, well, bigger isn't necessarily more efficient. And bigger is not necessarily going to solve the problem. Yeah, this problem we have.

Okay. And my answer to that is I could care less about efficiency and cost and whatnot. My goal is you go to, let's say, Washington, right? Right next door here. I know you know probably four or five guys, Sawyer's Age, who are industrious, they want to farm. Yep. And for one reason or another, they want to live in Washington.

Yep. That's where all their family is. You know, their high school sweetheart. They, I mean, this is where they want to live. It's a social media hub. Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, he wants to farm.

Yep. but he didn't win the ovarian lottery. Yep. And, you know, the day that some 20-year-old is going out and farming. Yep. That's a good day. It's a good day. Yep.

That's a good goal to have. Yeah. Hey, I'm willing to be your test on me if you need somebody. Okay. Just saying. Okay. Well, see, I have selfish goals. I want, like when I see it, I want to be able to just call.

call Gary Stout, call my neighbor, one of my best childhood friends at farms, not very far from me. I want to be able to call him when I know that he's out planting and be like, hey, how's it going? And, oh, good, you know, we're trying to finish this up. What are you doing? Oh, we're going to Roadhouse. Oh, yeah, are you done?

Oh, no, I just got my iPad. I'm planting right now, you know. What are you doing? You want to come with? Oh, yeah, that's right. You can't get out of the tractor. Mike Rob. Yeah, well, you know, seriously.

Seriously, I've waited bed at 11.30 at night and pull up my phone. And I'm watching this little tractor. That's super cool. Out in the field, toiling. Yep. All night long. I fall asleep. You wake up at 6 and...

Still going. You didn't get any alarm that anything went wrong. Yeah. I had one question. So we're on the tilling and planning side of it. What do you think... Do you think we could apply the same, you know, small, not big to the harvest side of it? because everyone always says that.

We say that. You know, I think you can do small tractors for those planning and tilling. But when it comes to harvest, you still need that big old grain, great big combine, need the grain cart,

you need the semi, and you need a big enough tractor with enough horsepower to haul that heavy-ass grain cart. So, do you think autonomous farming will go to that side of it last? Or do you think it ever gets there? Or do you think, you know, you always have to have big machinery, you know, doing that side of it.

I kind of threw a lot at you there, but. Yeah, you did. You know, we haven't addressed Harvest at this point in time, but we've talked about it quite a lot. We do have some plans. I think, I think continuing, I think it'll come down in cost as well. I think there's, you know, If you look at autonomy, you bring that tool into the harvest field operation. I think certain things change.

Just like tillage, right? You know, the size comes down because of autonomy. And I think the size will come down because of autonomy and harvest as well. And I think the other thing, too, is, you know, sustainability and compaction. Yep. I mean, that is starting to get a lot of traction. Traction and focus right now. And I think that the green card's one of the worst offenders of that.

Right. And I think autonomy could really change that. It could really change that. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the big advantages I see of the, even at scale guys that are farming a lot, swarm idea where you would have several of those smaller implements. As far as soil health, I think that's going to be big going forward as we get further. And that might have to be the selling point that you really sell to farmers because he said,

you know, most guys are going to be like, no, I'm not going to do that. But younger guys, you can get like me. But if you're trying to get an older guy, maybe you could sell on that point. You know, what's interesting, though, whenever I talk to farmers, it's not the combine or the grain cart. It's the trucking. Yeah. They're like, we're always behind on trucks. Yep.

So, I mean, when you talk a harvest, I think, you know, how can you, you know, get rid, basically get rid of the truckers? Yep. And, you know, I see the bags and maybe local, you know, have a more local, or the mother of all bins. There's various ways or ideas out there that I think. Tesla semi. take that thing right straight to the feed mill.

Sunder out there. Yeah. What's the, this is a little lighthearted, but I was just thinking as you have, as you have deployed these systems out, I mean, you've been out to Nebraska all through Iowa, Illinois.

Yeah. What's the, what's the, reaction? Yeah, what are some of the, what's the craziest reaction you've gotten from somebody? Like,

have you literally, had people that stopped by thinking that something, something has gone to miss? All the time. I figured. No, there's people that stop their cars and they get out and, you know,

they stare. It happens all the time. Yeah. All the time. You know, probably every 15 minutes. We've been visited by the police twice. Really?

Yes. Wow. 911 calls. They probably figured the farmer fell off the tractor. Farmer fell off the tractor. Yeah. You know, one funny, Corey and I were out in a field one time, and about a half mile away, we see a pickup.

And we're like, oh, there's another, you know, Docker spectator. That's what we call them. And, you know, Corey's like, oh, that's an equipment truck. That's some company. So, you know, after about 20 minutes, we go over there, and it's an equipment dealers always come by. Yep.

And this, I won't name the company, but he comes around. He says, well, guys, you caught me. I was just snooping, and, you know, he's taking pictures. But it just so happened, he had a flat tire because he was on one of those maintenance roads. Sure. And he had flat tires. And he was a little long in the tooth, so Corey and I, we'll change your tire or whatever. But when we got done, I said, hey, Corey, you think we should charge him $100 for a field call?

Yeah, you didn't find that so funny. But that was a good time. People stopped by all the time. I guess I should ask first, are you at the point where you are wanting to market this to people that want to install the system on their own equipment? Are you there yet? I'm not there at this point in time. Next year I will. When you get to that point, do you have any feel as far as what the rate of adoption? Like, how much demand do you think is out there for what you're thinking of doing or what you're working towards doing? You know, I think there's a lot of demand out there.

I do too. If I look at, I mean, we're inundated with people that, you know, yeah, calling you. Calling us, yeah. I guess the size of tractor probably doesn't make that much difference on the size of your system, does it? No, I mean, we're on, you know, right now we're on 180 down to 60. So it's probably more about the size of implement you're going to run. It is.

It is. Then it is the tractor that it's mounted on. It is. But if you're a, so if you're a guy that you're going to do a six, you've got a six row equipment. What kind of a, I don't know, I might be putting you on the spot. Like, what do you envision the price point to get a system on a 100 horse tractor that could pull a six row planner? That's yet to be determined.

Okay. That's good. But I guarantee it's going to be cost effective. Yeah. Because the 20-year-old. Right. It has to be at a point where they can make it. Yeah.

This 50-year-old ain't got any money because I got a couple of 20-year-olds. They bleed me dry. I know how that goes. It's terrible. What has been your biggest challenge with starting this company? What has been the hardest thing? Was it getting the tractors? Because I know you touched on that a little bit.

You figured that out with the cabotas and getting the leases, but what has been the hardest part of it all? You know, that's really all of it. There's so many. Ask me tomorrow. You know, so every farmer can probably relate to this. When you go out in the field and we're going to plant, we're going to till we're going to do something. And, you know, the entire world is crapping on you, right?

I mean, and imagine, you know, we got the front end, we got the back end, we got the equipment, we got the, equipment. We got the, you know, the navigation. We got the drivers. We got everything, you know, that all has to work. And you go out there, especially in the spring of 2020. And I'll be the first to say that, you know, there were times where we got our butt handed to us. Right, right. Right.

And you're under a microscope. We're under a microscope. And, you know, we've just gotten funded and we're out there. And, you know, the investors, the farmers, the, you know. Spectators. Yeah, spectators and, you know, it's, and then you realize logistics, you know, and you guys know that. You know, when you're going out and, you know, making logistics, making sure, you know, that planter has to be moving. Why isn't it moving?

Right. You know, you know, it doesn't have. They don't care. Communications issues, you know, it's, you know, and, you know, and, you know, and, you know, and then, you know, And I was give the example. I woke up one time. Not many of the guys knew this. But I woke up, you know, we went to bed at midnight.

I woke up at 3 o'clock. I'm like, what in the hell am I doing? Yep. I mean, what did I get myself into? I mean, is this doable? And I, you know, and I laid in bed until 6 o'clock. Yeah. Angston.

Yeah, get up in the morning, put a smile on your face. Come on, guys. You know. But then, you know, you know, the, you know, the logic portion of me says, okay, we have communication problems. This is a solvable problem, right? It's a tyranny of the urgent that got us into this situation. Right?

We didn't test it enough. And then navigation, solvable problem. And I'm just going through. There's nothing unsolvable here. And, you know, it's, you know, you really have to, you know, you know, keep everything in check and keep your emotions in check. You know, sometimes you want to throw the wrench and scream at the top of your lungs, but, you know, it's a solvable problem.

You know, and this is what you said reminded me of this, but something that has started happening, or maybe it's always been this way, but I find it, I always find it interesting that when you're dealing with new technologies. People and media especially, they enjoy putting human qualities on inanimate objects.

So the example I always like to look at is when my wife's Toyota, if my wife has an accident, if she had an accident with our car, it was the the the local paper would write that um 48 year old woman was involved in a car accident at the junction of one of 92 if my wife was driving a Tesla model S it would read model S crashes crashes into fill in the blank at junction 1 1.2 like it like it willed itself right or you know

the stories where those people there was there was a accident texas and two men died and they there was debate about whether uh full self driving was on it's like autopilot Tesla kills two men yeah well it's the same thing as like you're talking about when you're trying to disrupt something yeah when you're trying to disrupt something the technology it takes on a life of its love of its own and people like hold it to a human standard when it's it's it's not it's it's it's all the things that go into it and it's a process and we expect it's so funny because we've been we've been you know new technology just been coming out for you know for as long as we can remember you know as humans that's part of being who we are and I feel like everything that's new that comes out people just shit on it they shit on

it until it until it's perfect and then they can't live without Right. You know, let me give you an example. We were up in Minnesota near Mancato and we're planting. And it was for Crystal Valley Co-op. There was 20-30 farmers there, right? And oh my God, you know, the hardware decided to take a shit on us. Yeah.

Right. And we had a cold solder joint on these one modules. We soon, you know, after the fact learned. But it was intermittent. And the thing, and the engineers, were totally freaking out. Yep. Right.

And I gave him the mindset of, and what I did was I said, okay, come with me, went to the 30 farmers and just sat there and said, you think this is easy, it's not. Yep. Okay. There are about 30, 40 plates that we have to keep spinning, and one isn't. Okay. And this is what's going on. So it's going to take, don't stand around wondering, you know, what the hell's going on, you

know, these guys, you know, it is, you know, I have no qualms about walking up to a group of farmers and telling them that, you know, this, this is, this is actually hard and no one's ever done this before. And that's why you're out here. And there's probably, that's probably one of the better groups of people that you could have that conversation. Right. Oh, hell yeah, because they understand. Oh, God, yeah. They understand. Yeah. They're like, Then they tell their war stories, and I'm like, Yep, yep. That doesn't compare, buddy, with things.

Oh, that's nothing. Well, and I, you know, this is something I never really thought about. We had Jason Agley on here, and he's a farmer southeast Iowa, but he does a lot with solar. He's got a company that does solar. And he also used to be involved in the biodiesel business. And he actually did some money raising out on the East Coast when he was involved in getting a biodiesel plant going. And he said that farm.

Farmers are just an absolute rarity because when you go outside of agriculture and you find a banker, a banker is a banker is a banker. All he knows is banking. That's what he's done. And when you find an accountant, he's an accountant and an accountant and an accountant. But when you're talking to a farmer, there isn't a group of people that you can have more varied conversations with than a farmer because they're, They're a mechanic. They're an engineer.

They're an accountant. They're a manager. They're a meteorologist. They're all these things because they have to be because they can't get anybody to do it. Or they're not willing to pay. They're not willing to pay. They're not willing to pay. So they figured out themselves.

And it's true. And so like in that situation, you know, there's certain groups of people that if you were explaining a new technology, they would be pissed. Yeah, they'd be pissed. But I figured that those farmers would be like, yep, that's nothing. Yep, yep, I've been there. They're exactly right.

Yeah, they are. It's amazing. So what's been harder? Starting Sabota or wrestling wild boars? No, I'm probably starting starting to Sibonto. Sabanto, sorry. The boar submitted. Someday Sabonto probably doesn't submit.

Yeah, there was, there's a funny backstory about that, but I don't think I should get into that. That's okay. That's all right. well um i really appreciate you coming on and i think we should if you would be able when we get ready to post this if if my technical guy i'd love to post a little clip of a of a tractor running with can we embed that in the video because there's probably a lot of people that are going to listen and see and watch this that maybe have not seen the the tractors run

and we'll put a we'll put a little snippet in there and we'll put a link to your website in the description. If you send us that stuff over. Yeah, if you guys want to check out their website, you know, you got Twitter and LinkedIn and yeah. Yeah, check out all their social media. We'll have it down below so you can kind of see their videos and see what they're all about. But yeah, Craig, it's been a pleasure.

That's been great. It's been really good. This is everything we like to talk about. Yeah. And we love disruption around here. And, you know, come back anytime. As you get this thing, as you get this thing, whatever the next step is, Keep us in the loop.

I'll keep up on it. I watch pretty, I watch pretty hard. I'll be your test dummy. I'll be your test dummy 20 year old a year. Okay. Get going. All right. Just like you know.

All right. See? See? Yeah. They're all over. No, they are. They are. And it's, you know, they just need an opportunity.

Yeah. Right. And I want to see a first generation farmer. I just wanted to say, you're so right in the fact that I feel like this generation the beautiful thing about them is nobody really puts them in a box and they don't accept my generation we grew up and we accepted everything that was was put to us as be like oh yeah yeah that sounds right I think that's right everything we were told yeah whatever we were told we were like yeah and you know we watched the evening news at 530 back when when you only had an hour of news every day

yeah the good old days but um this generation because of a lot of, I think, maybe not positive things within society, but I think a positive reaction is they don't accept anything at face value and they want to do, they want to find out for themselves. And if you tell them no, they're going to find out eight reasons why they can do it. And I think that's, I think that's, that gives me a lot of hope. Because I, I feel like, um, a lot of things that need to get figured out. There's some big problems out there. There's a lot of things to figure out,

but I think we got a generation coming that they'll figure them out. They will. And I might get my swivel coozy yet. You'll get it. I'm certain you'll get it. All right, Craig. Thank you so much for being on. Yeah, thanks for coming on, Barn Talk.

It was a pleasure. It was great being here.