Bryce Dickson | John Deere - 2021 Technician Winners

I've got two daughters and we go to a lot of horse shows and stuff together. And whenever somebody's water pump or something doesn't go on their truck or something like that, they'll be telling the people, oh, my dad's a technician, he knows how to fix everything, he can fix anything. So some weekends I'm there fixing up water pumps or getting something going for people looking good. I'm Bryce Dixon from Brant Northland. I work there as a field technician mostly specialising in the precision ag site of things. I guess being recognised for the hard work you put in as a technician. I actually myself do a lot of training in my own time with the GPS stuff. I've got my own tractor set up so I can put a screen in it, put a receiver on the roof. When new software comes out, I'll go have a play around on my own land and figure out how to work everything. And being recognised for that, I guess extra time that you put into to make it good for the customer has been really rewarding for me. Yeah, I met Kevin about probably four and a half years ago when he bought his variable rate fert spreader and he wanted to do a bit of GPS work. Over the years we've developed a real strong relationship with all the advice I've given him with working that fert spreader and stuff. And he's a keen duck hunter and pheasant shooter just like me. So yeah, we share those stories and bit of banter between us.

We both enjoy outdoor activities. Hunting, fishing, cows, cattle farming. He's turned into a mechanic. I'm a farmer. He's a lot younger than me obviously, but I'm better looking still. I'm Kevin Alexander, I'm with my wife Michelle. We farm here just north of Whangarei Y2 farms and these are our cow. So we're dairy farming and we have a maximum of 350 cows and we've been using John Deere tractors for 20 odd years now. If I've got a problem I could dial up Bryce on my phone. How Bryce, I'm in trouble. He says wait on a sec, I'll pull over and he'll go into the back of the computer on my tractor and we'll diagnose the problem. And if he's driving by, he knows where I am. I could be down here where these cows are in Paddock 6. And he said I'll meet you for lunch because he's good on lunch. He said I'll swing by and we'll have lunch and talk about it.

What a simple fix to. Yeah, I've helped Kevin with a number of things on his farms over the years. He was collecting all this information, but he didn't really know how to look at it in the John Dee Operations Centre.

So, yeah, I'd done a bit of.

Training on him with that. And then we're looking at his maze and had a bit of a bad trowel, wasn't growing very well and stuff. And he was trying to understand why and stuff. And, you know, through looking at operation center and elevation maps, we did rainfall simulation, we figured out that the trial was actually planted in a low spot in the paddock and it had just been waterlogged with the recent rain we had. So getting him to understand how we can use that stuff we're recording in the paddocks has really helped him in his farming practices.

We need more Bryces. He's been quietly training me and problem solving with me. He established the borders around obstacles. So we don't throw fertiliser under trees, we don't throw it into streams, into drains, onto roadways. It's all where the pasture is or where the crops are. So value with Bryce in my business, immense. Hard to put a figure on it, but really quite immense. So when I heard that Bryce had won the Technician of the Year award. Outstanding. One of the best in Australasia. I don't quite where the area was measured. Certainly in New Zealand. That's pretty special. Come on, Bryce, get back here, show me some more tricks.