Lane Richins, chief technology manager at Stotz Equipment, walks through how Idaho farmers use data and precision agriculture to boost crop yields. The video shows real conversations with customers about applying John Deere technology to their operations.
Every plant matters. The best part of the ground right there. What you do is so unique. Interesting to see that data. That's a crazy operation. With this we can see exactly down to the line. We're going to be able to do it, create the jobs, get them into the tractor and then we're good to go. We're good to go. Well, I think farmers are always trying to get better, right? As this transition happens, this generational shift happens from grandpa to dad to son. The technology is coming more and more. The old timers, if you will, like they made so many decisions based off their guts. When our dads were doing it and when they were our age, you know, it was kind of like here you just kind of go and you work your butt off and you figure out at the end of the year where the dust settled and how you are now. These farmers are really looking for data driven decisions to change their operation. See how much of a man you are. Get after it. Let's go. That's a biryani. That was a good onion. I'm glad we didn't cut in half a rotten one. My name is Lane Richins. I'm the chief technology manager for Stoats Equipment. I grew up on a farm in rural Idaho, a little town called Malad. So ag's always been in my blood and that's just can't get out of it, you know. We're spread out across eight states. We cover from the Snake river plain in Idaho. So basically from there straight south all the way down here to Arizona, basically to the Mexican border. So it's a pretty big swath within all of our big footprint. There's a lot of customers that are growing fruit, potatoes, sugar beets. We grow a lot of alfalfa everywhere. Wheat, mustard, safflower, barley, a lot of corn, silage for dairy, pumpkins, popcorn, sunflower seeds, cotton, pecans, some pistachios. Oh, how could I forget? 85% of America's roses are grown here in Arizona. The way that I manage it is I let my team be themselves. So it's winter, early spring, and that's our pre plant season. A lot of times what we're doing this time of year, we might think we're not as busy, but behind the scenes it's like a duck on water. There's a lot of motion going on below the water that you can't really see. So this is where we spend a lot of time preparing data, analyzing data. Originally something that I was concerned about is whether or not farmers would Be receptive to the data aspect. They're saying, okay, I have all this. What do I do with it now? I guess as a farmer, we need to make sure that this data is paying for itself. We sit down and go over their crop plan so that we can start helping them use the data that they've created so that we can actually then send it out to the machines and execute the plan. With Agros, they do a lot of custom tillage, a lot of custom application. We were helping them with their data. And I think going into that meeting, our goal was to find out how things went from last year, just to kind of try to see if we can't clean up some of last year's stuff to push it into next year's program and see if what we're doing can benefit our customers this coming year. What do you want to go over first with doing the package this past year? What value has it brought to Agros, in your opinion? I really like the, I mean the mapping and being able to like, so say, for example, you see the different colors. If we were to go over this with the customer, I could, I could, me being in the harvester, I could tell them exactly what those different colors are. Like. You see the red and the green, Those might not correlate with yield. Exactly. Because of moisture and trash. But I could go over all of these fields and be like, this was wet here, this was dry here. You know? Yeah, you can explain all of that. And then I. You can even kind of cross over that with the temperature and stuff. The customer really liked the temperature reading. He was like, that is awesome. But because I sent him and then we went out to Hegler Creek Dairy, I guess. OP Center, Wise Corbin. How, how's Heckler Creek on OP Center? I would like to see better yield if we can help them figure that out off of the choppers. Yeah, because it's like hit and miss. We end up with like half of the data on some fields and then other fields we have all of it. And so maybe you just need to talk with Kurt and see what, what he thinks the cause of that is and if it's something we can resolve. What we did last year with Curt was we did some variable rate prescriptions. So this was what we did based off the numbers. Wow, lan, you just popped up these numbers quick. So we wanted to see the data side by side because he felt like it maybe didn't go as he thought it was going to go. So we kind of went through that and we kind of showed all the data all in one place. This was our high yielding potential and it was our high yielding. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I feel like this, this field worked really well with this. So if we were to do this field again, we, we could take like this area here where we know it performed really well and drop some seed in here. We can go back using those maps, can be like, ah, we could space it out a little bit more and get maybe better yield. And then as long as we're collecting the data, then we can see like, what. How did that actually turn out? Sweet. Now we can actually see where some savings can come out of this. Now I can just go back and say, hey, that was an extra ton of corn. Like, that's no brainer. That's, you know, we're 50, $60 a ton of corn. That's easy to justify. So then we had the opportunity to talk to County Line Farms. County Line Farms is also another potato beet grower up in Idaho. I see. Swell. So you can see where your yield map on your combine is telling you where you're probably getting some wind skips and not picking up some of that drier ground. That's a win skip. I don't think we've really used half of what this op center is capable of doing. Really well. I think the conversations like we had today, you know, we can build off that and that just, you know, for an example, that was one field. We can integrate that into our whole farm and different crops and I think it's going to be, you know, limitless. Yeah. Well, thanks for coming in, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Let's go look at this. Thanks, Lane. Yeah, thanks. I'm looking. All right. So we had a great couple days in Idaho. We were able to visit with a lot of customers, got a lot of good positive feedback. I really like where we're going with everything and the relationships that we've, we've worked on with these customers. Thanks for the onion. What are their pain points and how can we use technology to fill that gap? We've got a bunch of weather in Arizona, so I got to get back to Arizona so that I can get us ready to plant. I think you're going to see some awesome farming, some awesome customers. It's going to be exciting.
