This is a pocket speech. Not having enough time to come up with a new topic, I cheated a little and used a trip report…..:)
Although I had a report to start with, I pretty much had to rewrite it at the last minute to make it into a speech. During the speech, I forgot words/sentences. I think the Ah counter counted two digits repeated words. He said I used repeated words to fill in the blank stares. 
But the whole group was so nice and supportive. I still felt good afterwards.
I use to think receiving constructive criticisms is the best way to improve. Now, I am having second thoughts. Even though we don’t tell people what they did wrong, simply encouraging them to keep trying might get them to where they wanted as well. It might take longer. But it is a happier and less stressful journey.
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When I first started working at John Deere, my former coworkers in the car navigation business cannot understand why tractors need GPS systems. “It is a wide open field”, they said, “How can you get lost?”
What most people including myself at that time did not know is that farmers have much higher demands on GPS technology than the consumer or even the military market. Agriculture has been quietly but rapidly revolutionized by GPS technology in the last ten years.
In this process, farmers are becoming more technology savvy than ever.
We visited Idaho in April.
The potato farmers here just started their planting season.
During the Idaho trip, we visited five farmers. It has truly been an eye opening experience for me. I found that not only our farmers can navigate current technology with ease, find creative ways to solve problems, they also have an open mind for new technology, and are good at coming up with ideas or demands for future products.
At the first farm, the owner pointed us toward a truck, and said,” we are about to load the seeds into the planter.”
“Where are the seeds”, we asked each other, “All we see are potatoes.”
After we uttered these words, we quickly realized that the seeds for potatoes are potatoes.
We were just glad the farmer didn’t hear this discussion.
But not all potatoes are good seeds. They have to have eyes, several of them!! Eyes are small holes on the potato for sprouting. After they pass the “eye” test, they are cut nicely and evenly into half to increase production.
It is a careful, manual selection process. But that’s where the manual process starts and ends.
From that point on, potatoes are automatically loaded into the planter, the planter is attached to the tractor that drives and steers itself in along a pre-calculated line. As the tractor goes down the field, the front of the potato planter opens up the dirt and digs a hole, the next part drops a potato seed in it, the last part closes the hole and smoothes over it. By now, a seed is planted.
It is a seamless operation but requires careful configuration to make sure everything is set up correctly. I watched an operator set this up with ease and impressive speed.
At the second farm, the farmer has already adopted a product that was only introduced in February. By April when we visited, he was ready with his feedback to us on the advantages and disadvantages of this product. Contrary to my view of farmers being more conservative with technology, he said he always wants to put his hands on the latest products and thrive to be the first to try them out.
When we arrived at the third farm, the wind started to blow stronger than ever. We can hardly open the door to get out of the car. After standing outside for a while, the lower half of my jeans turned brown with dust. When I spoke, I could feel sand in my mouth. This is where we ran into our first of many iPad using farmers. He wants iPad apps so he can setup, monitor and control from a remote location or anywhere with a cellular connection.
iPad using farmers. That’s a new, but fast growing customer base. But when I look around at the wind blowing up loose dirt everywhere around me, I can see why remote control from an office or a truck will be a pressing need for our customers.
The forth farmer we talked to owns large spreads of land. He has two tractors running at the same time to cut back planting time. He wanted to be able to share common setup information and common base coordinate from tractors to tractors so two tractors can operate as one!
The last farmer gave us the hardest challenge.
They want GPS technology not just in planting and harvesting, but everything else in the between. They also want to use it for tracking potatoes from the field to the shipping truck, and to storage warehouses. They want traceability from FDA check points where a bad patch is identified back to the specific row where the potatoes grow from. This calls for a research project with software and hardware changes.
Overall, I was impressed by the farmers that I talked to during this trip.
The customer base is changing quickly. Their needs are different from those of traditional farmers.
As one farmer summarized, “Give me tools to help me be a better manager not just the guy that drives a tractor!”
