The episode discussed various topics related to agriculture, starting with the potential lawsuits against Roundup for being a carcinogen and the increasing role of technology in agriculture, particularly in precision agriculture. They also talked about the use of genetically modified crops and the controversy surrounding non-GMO foods, as well as the emergence of new crops in North Dakota. The development of new technology for agriculture, such as robots that use lasers to kill weeds and pests, was also discussed, along with the potential for the development of autonomous farms in the future. The impact of technology on the family farm and the small-town banking system was mentioned, along with the early adoption of technology by family farmers. The episode concluded with a conversation on autonomous farming and lawn maintenance and the benefits of having autonomous lawnmowers.

__

Transcript:

It’s funny, they just mentioned Alexa. Yes. Today is of course Tech Tuesday.

I’m Steve B along with Marlow Anderson, my guru of Geek Co-host national day calendar.com. Don’t forget to celebrate every day. We’re gonna talk about National Day Calendar coming up in just a minute cuz you had a really good idea. And I, I think businesses and everybody should look at National Day Calendar a little closer and follow it.

Really follow it because it makes a difference in your business model. It does, but we’re gonna get to that. So did you catch the promo about. You can follow us on Alexa? Yes. And so did you catch Alexa’s prediction for the Super Bowl? No. For what? World War iii? No. Yeah, like 1223 at 6:05 PM It, it’s video of asking Alexa, when’s the world gonna end?

And World War iii. Wow. 1220. That’s Alexa’s artificial intelligence prediction. Yes. Wow. Then it, you think of Skynet is real and they already have a date. And little bit actually it came out, the video was on TikTok. What does that tell you? Yeah. It, somebody staged it. So the world’s not going to end.

Despite all the reports out there that you might be reading or hearing about, that Alexa has predicted that the world is, world War II is gonna take place. Which you can actually, yeah, you can tell, you can have Alexa repeat whatever you want it to repeat. It is actually a setting for that.

Really. Yes. So you can go in and say whatever, and it’ll come back in Alexa’s voice and repeat what you said. So it would be pretty easy to stage something like that. I was gonna ask you about this cause my wife Wendy, she’s got a fitness watch , she’s got an Apple watch on her wrist and.

over the last week or two. We’ve been having conversation. All of a sudden it’ll start chiming in. Cause no, we’re not talking to you . But it’s listening to you. But it’s listening That’s right to everything you say. Everything you say. I’m like wait a minute. Did they change some settings or, I’m like, it’s not done that before, but maybe so it just listened and kept its mouth shut now that Yeah.

Yeah. Maybe there was a update or is it actually trying to coach you in your conversation? Yeah. Say Steve, say, I love you. It’s keying in. Maybe it’s ahead of Valentine’s Way. All right. Or your watches are talking to each other and Wendy’s watch realizes I don’t have one.

No, I got dumb watch. Oh, okay. No. I thought about it. That would be the thing. Your watches would talk to each other and it would say same. We don’t have to. Your significant other is upset with you right now. And it knows this because Cuz her heartbeat is a little higher. Or it’s like a mood ring.

Yeah, like a mood ring. And then it would actually notify you and say, and it would say something like, bring home flowers. Yeah. You’re in trouble. Maybe I should get one of those wines cause that might help me. Or even better yet, your AI just orders flowers because you, cause you don’t know what her favorite flowers are.

But your AI does do too well. I’m just, I would be in that space. I’m just picking on me. Okay. Yeah. How many husbands don’t know what their wife’s favorite? Many flower. Yeah. Many. Yeah. You might be onto something. It’s I wonder how many marriages it would help if the watches just talked to each other and you didn’t have to talk to your.

Because I, I’m sure there’s a good percentage that, maybe that’s just better cause I could hash it out and then you guys could just be what It’s like cancer or AI and cancer, that when it looks at AI looks Interesting analogy. Okay. I’m just, I know it’s a weird way to go there, be a cancer in society, but I’m just thinking that you’re not going in there, it can detect cancer earlier.

So maybe it can detect moods of your significant others sooner and then you would actually be able to understand what the other person is telling you. I’m not gonna say just what through my head right now, , because there’s a very medical, scientific yeah. But I guarantee you that sooner or later there’s gonna be apps or everything else that’s gonna say, Hey, you wanna know what your spouse is actually saying to.

Yeah. , no, because that’s gonna start another fight. Yeah. That my watch and her watch are gonna hash to half hash out. I don’t care where we go to eat for our anniversary, that means, oh, let’s go to blah, blah, blah. Yeah. But she does care. Yes. Okay. Now I’m a guy and I typically fall into this trap all the time.

It’s I don’t care. Where, wherever you wanna go. I’m the same way. Yeah. It’s oh no, they care. Yeah. , it’s your job to figure out that puzzle. Does this make me look fat? ? And the AI would actually give you a response, gonna tell you what your watch is gonna tell her, whether or not tell her, watch, whether or not you’re lying about that.

Yeah, exactly. Am I

Marlo? This is a dumb watch on my wrist. Cause it’s gonna stay way, stay that way just like me. Not a bad idea. As I’m evaluating all of this right now, Oh, so National Day calendar. Of course. Today one of the things that’s not on our little. Calendar short is it’s National Hot Chocolate day.

Yeah. Yeah. Because we pick two and tell stories on those two and there are many days that there are more than two things. Okay, so I’m assuming you picked the biggest thing or do you go by, what’s the biggest story? Or maybe what’s the more unique or fun story that we can round up?

Yeah. What’s not unique and fun about hot chocolate? I brought you hot chocolate today. Yes, you did. Did. And thank you my wife. Thank you for that. This is my wife in school district. She’s doing hot chocolate day today, so she’s making hot chocolate for all of her kids. And, but this is what got us to this little discussion we’re about ready to have as well.

Yeah, it is because I brought hot chocolate and I listened to the calendar short that we play and I’m like, but National hot chocolate day’s not on there. , there’s that’s the reason. So now you explain there’s always a lot, but okay. There’s only two on that short cuz otherwise it’s not short anymore.

We used to, in the early days, used to say it’s also blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah at the end of the short. But we found that a lot of people, it’s just, a lot of times it’s just too much turned into blah, blah, blah. Exactly. So didn’t pay attention. So we just picked two and stayed with those.

Yeah. Okay. But anyway, it is national hot chocolate. It is the day it, and my wife and I were at Sam’s Club Yes. Over the weekend and picking up our weekly shopping supplies and in bulk. And so I got cursed out a couple weeks ago because they had on sale hot chocolate bombs for $3 and 91 cents, which I thought was a really good deal.

Cause they’re a bargain shopper instead of the 10 51 that they normally wear. Yes. Oh and I got my butt chewed a little bit for that until she had one and enjoyed it and Okay. So it’s amazing. I’m right more often than she wants to admit, but I digress. So we go there this weekend Sunday and the whole end cap pallet of the chocolate bombs.

91 cents. Yeah. 91 cents. And there’s seven of them in here. And there’s seven there in a box. Yeah. So it’s like a dime fif, 15 cents for a cup of hot chocolate. Yeah. It’s a crazy, that’s a crazy price. Yeah. So we got eight. I’m like why don’t you get ’em students? And Yep. Yeah. And we’re pulling out of the, and I’m like and I usually get yelled at because I buy too much when things are on sale and we’re pulling out of the park.

It’s maybe I should get more. So we went back around and I ran in and got a case of them. Okay. So there’s 14 of these times. Seven in a case. So she’s got them for little gifts and for her class. And she went back yesterday. They’re all gone. Of course they are. For 91 9 cents now. Yeah. We were talking off air about why businesses should follow National Day Calendar more closely.

Yeah. Because these were marked down for less than half, so about 60, 70% off. Yep. Initially already. Yep. And then they marked them down to 91 cents. I know the cost on this is probably a little higher. Way more than that. Yeah. So if they would’ve known that it was National Hot Chocolate Day on National Day calendar, they could have just put a sign up saying National Day Calendar Hot Chocolate’s coming up Tuesday, be prepared and sold ’em for the full price.

Yeah. Or at least at the three, the sale price. And still made four x on what they just did. Yeah. And still would’ve sold out. I. Practically getting them away. Yeah. So we had a conversation with Walmart a couple years ago. They wanted to tap into our API on the national days that they would put into their forecasting.

So then and Hot Chocolate Day is probably a good example of this, but even iced coffee day, right? Maybe not a great example. I’m trying to think of something that I, ice cream Day would be better. Okay, so was they, is it every day Ice cream day? Every day is ice cream day. Yes. Yes. But on Ice Cream day, they would actually take our.

API and they’d put it together with the Weather Services api and then they could do some predictive forecasting as to, is it gonna be 110 in North Dakota or is it gonna be 60 degrees on National ice cream day? And then they would actually bring supplies in accordingly to supply, depending on the weather.

And the, you were gonna say they were gonna make it snow ice cream. Oh, there would be that as well. Or if it, instead of the what? What’s the little, the frale stuff? Yes. Yeah. That we had a few days ago. That’d be perfect for that. For like dots. That’s dipping Dots. Yeah, exactly. Por. Pour some stuff over.

When was little, when was Corona? It’s oh, those days were the coolest days. Yes. As you went out and it’s oh, I wanna catch those . It was dipping dots. Who knew? There was a lot of ’em the other day too. Yeah, there were, it was like a lot of different dots. Yeah, there was. Yeah. Alright.

So two guys with a D h D that were going, gonna have a conversation. Yeah, that’s you and me. What were we gonna talk about? , we’ve talked about 18 other things since we have agriculture, the Roundup scenario. Oh yeah. The roundup scenario. Could we just heard that at the top of the Ara news with with bear buying Monsanto and all subsequent properties.

Roundup was one of the products in the Monsanto line, which at the time made Monsanto very valuable. But you take a look at what’s going on in California with all these potential lawsuits that are out saying that it’s a carcinogen. My roundups are, right here. Here’s the thing.

If you bathe in it, if you drink it, I don’t care what it is, it’s probably gonna be a carcinogen. Sure. . We don’t know all the details on that yet. Yeah. Even water kills. Yeah. I can drown. Yeah. That’s why they call it water boarding. Sure. Very effective. Yes. So anyway yeah, so I, I just, I think that, technology’s gonna continue to play a bigger role in agriculture and probably in the pesticide and weed control space.

You and I were talking a little bit cuz I, I was telling you, cuz we were talking about this at the top of the hour you and I were talking about, I was reading the requirements for being an organic farm. Organic farming is big and in a lot of cases it’s a little bit smaller footprint from agriculture because it’s a smaller crop base.

So you’re not doing. 360 acres of wheat, you’re doing 40 acres of organic wheat. Different profit margins. So I was looking at the requirements of that last night and going, wow, it’s three years of this and three years of no artificial nitrogens and three years of no pesticides and all of this.

Yeah. And it’s three years, three, like the soil’s gotta be clean. And it’s quite part of it. It’s quite a commitment to move to that because you have to sit there for three years and, grow crops or whatever, that you’re not doing anything too. But yeah with technology now, that actually is a much more doable thing.

And part of that is where we’ve been going with precision agriculture, right? Because the precision agriculture with micronutrients and things like that have really tightened up that space on how efficient some of those operations could be. And you take a look at UAV V that has been in that. that space of precision agriculture for a while.

The computer systems on a combine and a tractor, a planters it’s amazing what they can pun intended. Drill down into Yes. And drop the right seed at the right place, the right moisture with the right nutrients. Yep. And you can get away from a lot of those additives. And you start thinking about like seed.

When you buy seed, will you actually need to have roundup ready crops now, you can buy seed that is resistant to Roundup and that way you can spray that field and kill off everything else and you’re, your wheat continues to grow. But it’s genetically modified. And a lot of people are, there’s this really big move on right now about eating non GMO foods.

That’s been around for about 15 years, a long time. I remember that discussion. People were, they freaked out about gmo and I remember having a conversation. I was broadcasting up at the state fair and I was talking to a farmer from Saskatchewan, who, north of Esteban, and I was visiting with him about his crops and what he was growing up there.

And he was growing corn, 68 day corn. Yeah. . I’m like, what? Yeah. Because he was getting 243 bushels per acre in Canada Yeah. Of corn. Now, going back, I never thought I’d see the day when you forego small grains as a rotational crop in the Red River Valley Corn. Did that think back, you never saw corn North of I 94.

That’s true. And the growing season was too short. Yeah. But GMOs facilitated that. Yeah. And I tell you what, that farmer 10, 12 years ago, I was talking to, it’s 68 day corn. That’s unbelievable. It is unbelievable. 243 acre corn or bushel corn in Canada. I never thought he’d see. But that’s what G M O does.

It allows different opportunities for different crops to grow in different regions. And when you start peeling back, no matter what side of the issue you’re on, if you take a look at the world’s population, good luck. You are not going to feed the entire world without some sort of A G M O, whether it’s shortening that germination period or the duration that crop comes to maturity.

It’s just not gonna happen. You’re, we’re not gonna grow enough food. I think about the grapes I would’ve never dreamed in a million years that. 15 years ago we’d start to see grapes growing in North Dakota. Not on a, on a level that would be viable for a vineyard, for example.

But yet there are group grapes emerging in North Dakota. See now I knew that was possible because we had these red grapes in my, so there’s always backyard. Yeah. And that was pretty much the hedge, it was Milos and grapes. Yeah. and grape vines climbed a bilock. They weren’t that great. I know they were bitter.

And now that NDSU has been involved with this a little bit, and they have some very flavorful grapes now, and there’s actually at least one place in North Dakota that sells grapes by the ton. Isn’t that something? Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. And not just the, but look at the wine industry and some of the.

Craft alcohols it, the apple, the cider industry. There’s a lot of different so there’s, you could make the argument that there’s good with this. Of course, the argument with with us consuming GM O. Products is that maybe there’s some health ramifications because of this.

People will claim that there, there aren’t cancer rates on the rise because we’re eating these type of things. I would probably say that cancer’s on the rise if we’re gonna go to the food thing because we add stuff to, it’s the additives of preservatives. I but anyway. Fully point fingers there.

Him and I were talking a little bit about organic farming and what that means, the tech side of things when it comes to agriculture. An opportunity to close a gap and become more organic. Whether that’s the intention in agriculture or not, it’s just when you have the opportunity to use technology to.

Streamline the growing process. There’s a lot of benefits there. So I think, what we’re about ready to talk about is two things. First of all, probably healthier eating and improving crop health, crop production, all that good stuff. And secondly, cost savings. Cause to, put down a pesticide or weed control or whatever.

There’s a lot of cost to that as well. And the first thing for sure is gonna be robots fighting weeds. really well. Yeah. So there’s actually a lot of robots that are emerging that will go through a field or your yard. Everything I wanna talk about here too can be utilized in your yard in some way or another too.

So if you’re tired of your dandelions or whatever, there’s actually a robot called Dandy. And I’ve seen this at CES and it’ll actually go around your yard, identify, I think it identifies 2200 different kinds of weeds right now, and continuing to go so it knows the grass and knows the other things that are in there.

And it knows like flowers and things too, so that you don’t want to, and then it has, so it’s not like Dr. Evil’s plan to put little lasers on sharks. We could put ’em on gophers, right? That’s exactly right, yes. And let ’em run around and lasers on robots. Yeah. Yeah. And it’ll go around. So this one actually does, that’d be a lot of work.

Training the gophers. Oh yeah. Don’t terrible get that, but eat the end. Yeah. Yeah. But it could be done. Maybe. But you the, so this thing goes wrong, it actually does put chemical down, but it just puts chemical down on the weed that. So doesn’t one spot, you’re not doing a mass spring. So when you take a look at some of the the fertilizer that gets administered during a planting process you have that ability from the little robots to do it in even a more precise manual. Like when I do, when I fertilize my yard now, like the first time it’ll be a weedon feed. You have weed control and you have whatever it is that you’re mixing. Yeah.

Plant food. Thank you. I was thinking of plants, nitrogen and whatever else. Yeah, that’s cra, , electrolytes, going back to our, one of our favorite movies all time. Yeah. So what’ll wander around and do that? Imagine now that you can do this on your farm, so that it can go around and then it just identifies the weeds instead of spraying the entire crop.

With something that it’ll just spray the weeds that it finds, and it just like your robotic vacuum cleaner that you have in your house. This thing will just go around One I was just reading about does 50 acres a day. . So cool. Yeah, so it’s if you’re, if you got a field of, a section 640 acres or whatever, that basically means that every 10 or 12 days this robot has taken care of your cycle.

Yeah. Makes a cycle of your entire thing. It is about the growing cycle of a weed. Yeah. So you can go around and this one unit then would take care of that whole section for you. And it doesn’t impact, it goes between the plants that are growing that are, and then it’ll just spray the particular weeds to take them down.

Now you can, there’s another thing that’s being developed that doesn’t use chemical at all. It uses lasers. Lasers. I knew you were waiting for this, and it’ll actually see these weeds and shoot a laser to kill it. So this goes a little further actually, because if. Your fan. If your field, for example, is starting to see some grasshoppers, for example, it isn’t just weeds that these things will take care of, it’ll take care of pests as well.

See, I should go around killing locus up at our cabin cuz we had with the little wings and with magnifying glasses. BB gun. Oh yes, you’re, that’s a pretty good shot. You could be a good shot with that. No kidding. You gotta sneak up on ’em and then you gotta get down close enough to Wow. Make the shot. I got pretty proficient with my little red rider.

So I think that we did not eye out, we’re just coming on the age here where the cost of putting down weed control, pesticides, whatever farmers are gonna have a choice. There’s a cost of technology and there’s a cost of, but these application, but theses are not that. That’s the thing.

In order to put app, if you’re gonna put wait the next time you’re going to buy something that you’re gonna put down some weed control on, for example, or rent an airplane or whatever it is that you’re gonna do, right? These things are very expensive. Now. You can have a robot that takes a 10th of the space that’s gonna go between your rows and your of your crops and actually seek out and destroy these weeds or whatever, one at a time.

One of the things I wanted to bring up too is because you were talking about the fertilizers and the ability to put different pesticides, right?

And supply chain. Yeah. You take a look at what’s happened over the last couple years and the ability to get products and then those products are at a horrific price for producers and that all goes into the input costs. And cuz eventually we as consumers are going to be paying Yeah, those costs. But you have the ability to put up little docking stations around your field.

Yeah. Take care of it. They charge themselves up. And cuz I’m thinking supply chain it, where’s the, it’s interesting. Where’s the tipping point on cost? Because, and if you’re in agriculture farmers, ranchers, they every penny and fraction of penny, you have to monitor those costs. So at what point is it yeah, I could pay way too much for a chemical that I cannot get.

Or maybe I just invest into these little, and I’m thinking little spider robots from the Selleck movie . Gene Simmons is the bad guy. Yeah. It’ll look quite that way. But maybe, who knows? Yeah. Yeah. If you’re killing weeds or, think about yeah, I gotta gopher infestation.

You can kill those two prairie dogs. Yeah. There, there’s a lot of different things that you can do in a field with one device. One investment because, and I equate a lot of things to uas and UAVs, that’s just the platform you, what you put on that is the metric for your precision agriculture or inspecting power lines.

So that’s just the platform. So if you’re thinking of this little robotic spider, for lack of a better, that’s just the platform. So there’s this it’s weed season, so I’m gonna put a little laser that kill the weed or it’s rodents season. Yep. So I’m gonna get rid of the rodents or locus season and I, or gonna get rid of the locus, or I can do it all at the same time.

Yeah. While just wandering around. It just takes care of all potential threats to the. . Okay. And that’s, and that might be me because I’m out there the day before the corn gets harvested to I guess that’s a different story. , , do we want it now? But think of some of the work that Grand Farm is doing in Fargo in Cass County.

That’s some of the technology that they’re supposedly working on. Yeah. It’s an all autonomous or farm is what they going, because that’s the next step. It is. It goes from, okay, what’s a tool? Just like your tractor or your combine or your skid steer is on the farm to little robotics to, okay.

I can pretty much design an autonomous system, so I’m just gonna throw this out at everybody because this doesn’t relate to us too much, but you can see where this is going. And this goes back to your organic producers, right? Restrictions on what organic producers can spray means that they spend much more on weed or hand weeding.

Then do conventional producers. So if you’re getting into the organic producer, you can’t even go out there and actually spray your crop if you’re gonna go out and do and kill weeds, for example. You actually have to manually do this, if you’re gonna go out and spray a weed, you’d have to do that.

Oh, yeah. You think about that Now I grew up in the Red River Valley sugar beets. Yes. About 91, 92 was really the end of migrant labor in the Red River Valley. Because that migrant labor came into ho sugar beet. Yeah. There wasn’t a mechanical system or a chemical system that was there to get rid of those weeds.

So you manually hold sugar beets. So robots have the potential to more than half weeding costs. So we’re looking at a hundred to $300 per acre in cost savings for lettuce and broccoli. So I know that doesn’t pertain to wheat fields and things like that, but if there’s cost savings for lettuce and broccoli, I can tell you that there are cost savings for oats and wheat and corn and, strawberries or whatever else that we’re growing around here.

So I got one more question. Yeah. How feasible is it and when and , can I spend my money on this now? My wife loves the garden. Yeah. And we’ve got weeds garden. Your home garden’s a lot of work. It is a lot of work.

We’re talking about precision agriculture and what that means on the ag side of stuff and the ability to Mitigate some of the supply chain costs, some of the supply chain delays things like that when it comes to putting chemicals on crop land you can close that gap with technology.

Our friend, Dr. Gunderson Yeah. From devil’s Lake he was cutting edge on precision agriculture, very cutting edge. Yeah. And UAVs I remember 14 years ago, I had a conversation with them at ag show and I was like, the focus on the show was energy that day. And I was like, wait a minute.

So we got talking about the UAV platforms and you gotta remember this is 12, 14 years ago. And it was like, yep, they can do that. Yep. They can do that. Yep. Because I’m posing all these different applications for the energy sector. And he’s, yep. Yep. . Okay, let’s talk. Because, but he was focusing on precision agriculture.

And at the time the part of the story that really intrigued me was up at lake Region College, devil’s Lake. They were doing this precision agriculture with UAV v with drones. And these students in a two year program were a hundred percent placement after a year, their first year. And they got a job.

Yeah. And they were getting big jobs. Yeah. Big jobs. Yeah. Their second year was usually paid for by their future employer. And they came out with six figure salaries. Yeah. On a two year program. playing video games. I flying, I mean they were only graduating I think 20 students a year or whatever.

Pretty small, but it was still wildly successful. But it was so at the front edge of that and they were focusing on the precision agriculture. Yeah. Now you go to what some of the things we were talking about last hour and holy crap is precision agriculture come a long way. Yeah. It’s not just sitting in your combine or your tractor or your planter.

It’s so much broad, more all data driven as well. Yeah. So yeah, it’s really interesting what is going on in the space. Yeah. I need this micronutrient in this micro application. Volume on this spot and two feet over this way. It’s a larger application of. Same micronutrient. It’s that precise.

If you go on a quarter of land or a section of land I call ’em microclimates. Maybe others use that term as well. Micro, I’ve heard microbiomes, micro, all of that. But you go across a field that’s a, that’s just a quarter and any given rainstorm part of it might not even get any.

So you end up having parts of it that are drier than others. You have your soil pump, you have soil types down by the slew versus, versus on the other side of the quarter. Exactly. And now you can take, instead of just, scattering seed across the field and hoping that it will grow.

And farmers always knew this, you’re gonna, I’m gonna seed close to the slew, but it’s not gonna get as tall as the rest of it. Or depending on what you’re put in, that might actually be better than the rest of the field. Yeah. And the first two rows that only works row works with candy lines in my yard.

Yeah, it says scatter them. Let the wind blow. Yeah. But that’s, all of that’s coming to an end now because, all this stuff is data driven and they know how to plant and all this good stuff. So it’s really exciting. I think I, I’m not sure what this does to the family farm as we move forward.

But I think the ability to lower costs in some of these things means that they can spend the half a million dollars for a combine now. I don’t know. Maybe not. They’re more than that. Are they really? Oh, yes. , you gotta be kidding me. I remember when they broke the hundred thousand dollars barriers.

Way more. Oh my goodness. So that seems and that’s part of the problem with this, our small town banking system, they weren’t set up for those size expenditures. They were set up for, oh, you need seed money and fertilizer money and to get your operation going for the year. It was, and here’s a thousand dollars for a tractor.

Yeah. Yeah. Law. Yeah. Marla, you ain’t, you guys need more. So the technology side of things, one of the other things that I think is really cool is you go back and look at agriculture and the family farmer embracing technology and equated a little bit to, okay, I got a news phone. It’s I need to find a seven year old to show me how to operate it.

you go back 30 years, you remember DTN when that first came out. Sure. And that was cutting edge technology and it was something that every producer, every farmer, rancher had to have because of the weather applications, the market applications. They were putting up big satellite dishes on their farm just to get that DTN feed.

Yep. So our egg friends, they’ve known the TE technology side. They’re always early adapters to technology. Yes. So you can go back, I don’t know if our former governor Jack doll res, I think it was his great-grandfather. Great-grandfather, yes. That, that settled into the Castleton area.

And, his story about scattering wheat seed under the field. And it’s just a fascinating thing. He met Alexander Graham Bell and he was one of the very first people to buy a phone system, and it was because he got tired of riding across the farm, the plantation at the time.

What’d they have, like 12 homes or something on this? Huge, it was a big operation. Big operation back in the day by scale, back in the day. It was huge. And it would take a day’s ride to go across this land, and he got tired of trying to go across it. So he bought a phone system and put it in.

Yeah. Crazy North Dakota. Yeah. One of the first ones. Yeah, one of the first ones. And, who knows? As companies go, sometimes you need to have that order, that sale that, so that you can go and make the next one. You don’t know if, because of Mr. Doll repel if, do we even have phones today?

Because, bell could actually afford to continue to produce them because he was able to sell something to North Dakota. I just, I always wonder about that. I’m sure a way to figure out a way to have communications, of course, but let’s just claim it. . Yeah. Yeah. We’ll say that. Okay. We’ll claim it.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s a North Dakota thing. It is. Yeah’s chop up to North Dakota. Yeah. Okay. Very good. Yeah, very good. We’re good like that. Yeah. . So at that’s a fascinating story in itself. Yeah. And I encourage people to go check that out sometimes that just shows the depth of how cutting edge farmers and ranchers in the ag industry in North Dakota has been.

And like you said, so the ability to adapt to new technology, frankly, it’s because of survival, right? So they have to do it right in order to survive. But you think about even today GPS going into vehicles and self-driving wasn’t on the highways and byways first. It was on the farm. And they’re getting experience.

They’re gathering data as they’re combining and seeding and doing all this stuff and that information. Is going into our cars now to make our cars safer. I remember when GPS first came out on on tractors and combine. You just set the points at the end of the fields and the only thing you had to do with in the initial part was.

Turn it. Yep. It followed everything else on its own. It just, that was cutting edge technology. Yeah. So we have a lot of, is that why Google Maps in, in other places, run you off a cliff . But in North Dakota you’re fine because we’re flat. Maybe that’s true. Develop that technology in North Dakota.

Yeah.

. Speaking of problem solving Yeah, we were talking a little bit about agriculture.

Yeah. Actually a lot about agriculture during the program today and what that means from a a farming perspective. If the ability to. You have a tool out there that can go mitigate costs for different chemicals that you put on the cropland. It’s eventually autonomous farming.

It’s to get frank about it. My yard, we were talking a little bit about that dandelion killer, how to 2000 whatever little lasers cause that’d be cool. Laser. But the ability to go through your yard, because right now in, you see them around the autonomous lawnmowers. Yeah. You just set ’em up and they mow your lawn and that, there’s a few that have them around, but I think the cost or the price point is no little much.

I know Husk Varna does one. And I interviewed Badger at cs, they have a $700 model for a quarter acre and their $800 model does an acre now first sub thousand dollars. I have one came in the mail the other day. Because previously we’re talking six, $7,000 at least free. Yeah. Yeah.

For an okay one, now it’s $600. My last push mower costs $600. I, granted, I got a little nicer one, but I don’t think it’s unusual for people to spend $600 for a push mower nowadays. No. So to have an autonomous one and a lot of people are going to the electric ones. Yes. Which you’re not gonna get into a good one of those until you’re five, six, $700.

So to spend $600 for a mower or 700 bucks that will, you’ll, you’d set it up and let it do its thing all summer long. Are you kidding me? That just seems incredible to me. So as I’m sitting in the backyard, in a lawn chair, sipping a cocktail with my feet up Yes. Enjoying the sunshine and my wife’s yelling at me.

What are you doing? I’m mowing the yard? Yeah. Yeah. , it works for me. . I love that. And your mo yard is always manicured. It’ll just go out and every day it’ll go out and putts around your yard and make sure it’s mowed and all that stuff. And then you throw into that the dandy scenario.

Right now you can get rid of the weeds. Now you can get rid of the weeds. That’s another 700 bucks right there. So that was where I was gonna go with this, okay. Is you take a look at my garage and I’ve got lawnmower, weed, trimmer blower, vac different implements, right? Snowblower takes up a whole stall of your garage, right?

I have seriously the same problem, takes up a stall of my garage. All these different summer, winter, spring. For all the seasons, I, there’s not even a four-wheeler in there. So you would need another stall for that. No. Yeah. It takes all the fun away from having a Yeah. This extra stall in your garage.

It’s the work stall, the stall that I could actually park a vehicle in or, yes. Yeah. Exactly. Or my boat or Yeah. Or whatever. Yeah. But you’ve got all the space taken up. Yeah. So how long before we get to implements that get to multitask? I’m gonna, my answer moer this, right?

We, we’ve got the mower, we’ve got the weed killer, we’ve got the garden. Little tool. Yep. When are we gonna get to start checking multiple boxes off? Just like the three in one printer, fax, what was the third thing? Scanner. So now we have Yabo. Yabo. It’s a three in one as well.

It’s a, it’s, it’ll take care of your leaves. So what does YABO stand for? I have no idea. You are really bad on air. Maybe. . , that’s pretty good actually. And it’s true . So two guys with adhd. That’s right. All right. Yeah. So yeah, so Yabo is it’ll take care of your leaves. So in the fall when you, it’s like a leaf back.

Leaf back, right? Oh. By the way, it also mows, so it’ll mow your yard. Oh, that’s right. There’s the third thing, and that is that it cleans the snow off your driveway. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So here’s a picture. Snow lore as well. Yeah. So it’s a lawn mowing here. I’m turning, I know you, not everybody can see this, but it’s basically I guess you could say it’s like a tractor.

Okay. It doesn’t look like a tractor, but how a tractor would be in on a farm. Or you can add different things to it. You can combine with it. You can plant the seeds. There’s these different attachments. So the basin, you just get the attachments. That’s correct. So I have a question for you. Yeah. Why does it have headlights?

If it’s autonomous, it doesn’t it can see in the dark, but that’s true. But I think it, it doesn’t need, I think it looks batter in me or it does. I have headlights on it. It’s kinda yeah, there you go. So it’s showing you the different, it’s your lip cooler, but it doesn’t need the headlights.

So how cool would it be that when it snows and it senses that it’s snowing, that all of a sudden it just starts going out there and snow, or moves the snow off your sidewalk or your driveway and when you get up in the morning, if it’s snowed overnight, it’s just done. Always just done whenever got a blizzard going on.

But I like that it’s always not neighbor that gets up at four o’clock in the morning and does half the nobody said you had to stop doing that. Okay. And we’re not saying you have to stop if you enjoy it, you just have the yabo do it for me. But there are a lot of people in it, and I always think about is it quiet though?

Because I try to be careful that I’m not doing that. I’m not sure about that. Yeah. Cuz Four o’clock snowblower I, yep. Might be a little quieter than you cuz you’re out there cheering as you’re five, , as you’re blowing the snow, you might get up in the morning, have a cocktail, and watch the AR boat work.

That’s true. That’s true. You could program it to do your neighbor’s yards for you, or at least the sidewalk all the way up and down your block. Yeah. Because just be done. Yeah. It’s really interesting. And I always think about people who want to stay at home a little longer when they’re getting a little older, and this is one of those devices again where Oh, shovel and snow is one of the first things that kicks people out the house. That’s correct. That’s correct. Because they can’t keep up with anymore, so they either have to hire it out, people don’t wanna do it anymore yeah. So you have to hire it out or what, whatever.

And a lot of places, like my mom, for example, I. There’s nobody in the town that she lives in that does any snow removal or yard, work or whatever. This would be perfect for her because she could keep her yard looking good. She could keep the sidewalks cleaned off and the driveway cleaned off all the time then.

These, this is a pretty cool device called the Yabo. I don’t know what the cost of this thing yet is yet. It’s just coming out and we need to get one of those for me to demo. Yes. Oh, they have a power station too. What is that about? Yeah, you have the badgers. Oh I’m excited to try the badge too.

This this is like a head unit and then it’s got the dish for an attachments that just stick onto the front, keep the power on any, anytime. So they have a power unit as well. What in the world? I am just reading through this right now. Technology changes that fast, folks. Yes. So now if you need to power your smartphone, your drone, your camera, your projector, speaker, laptop, cooler, wherever there’s a power outage at home, you are, if you’re out camping, you can take your ya away.

So charges up and it’s like a, and it’s got a, it’s got things that you can, the power unit has u and plugin and that type of thing. Yeah. So if your power goes out home, it’s like Ford likes to tout their lightning pickup is, Hey, the power’s out. You can power your house now. You know why they have headlights.

They can light your way during a power outage. But I think the headlights are in the attachments. So it’s on the frontier. It is interesting that it has, maybe it’s just a safety feature so people can see that it’s running around at night. Maybe that would be the only thing that it would even make sense as to why it would have lights put one of those bicycle flags on it that would, it doesn’t work at night.

The snow’s that deep. Okay. Yeah I’m guessing it’s a safe, I would be curious to, so if you are programming this, so I would be curious cuz you take a look at the snowfalls we had back in November, heavy wet snow. Yes. And I had to get up at way too early in the morning because I knew from the April storm that we had that if I let too much snow get down, then my snowblower couldn’t keep up.

And, but this would’ve the ability to, oh hey, there’s a little dusting of snow. Get out there and clean it up. I’m trying to find out the price. So the battery unit is 1300 bucks. This could go around vehicles and you gotta be strategic on parking Your vehicles in the driveway though, right? If this thing is for sale already, I’m just telling you.

Yeah, you might just see. Guess what? Your mom, guess what your mom’s getting for her birthday? Oh my goodness. . It literally is for sale. It is expensive though. It’s 5,600 bucks with all the attachments. All the attachments. So autonomous mower, which some of those are $6,000 anyway, plus the snowblower feature, plus the leaf I, oh, not the rate.

So right now, if you choose to pay a 10, 10% deposit, you’ll get a 10% discount on the price of the unit. The snowblower is estimated to ship in October, 2023, so you could order it right now. You’ll get the yard bowl with the snowblower in time for snow season next. The lawnmower is expected to ship in May of 2024, so you will get the lawnmower attachment in time for spring the following year, and then the leaf blower estimated to ship in May of 2024 as well.

So by May of 2024. Now you’d have everything covered for next season, starting in the snow season of 2023. Yeah. Show sponsor. All right, let’s, I think so. Instead of MyPillow we can use my yabo. Yes, I think so too. . Something a little more practical. There we go. We can talk about the experiences with my yabo every week.

It’d just be cool. Do you have a cat that can ride around on it? Yeah. Do you really? No, I don’t have a camera. Oh. We’d have to, a dog. We’d have to borrow, we’d have to borrow a cat so that we could get some footage of the cat running around, laying on it. Get the dog on it. That’s true. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah.

Little training. , Yabo owes us a lot of money right now. Yes, they do. How many people wanna buy this thing right now? I’d be curious. Buy both hands. I do. Yeah. Yep. I can’t spend my money fast enough on that.

We’re looking at the ABO stuff a little bit more. We’re just gonna assume that they’re gonna sponsor the show moving forward.

Yeah, so I have one of these. The blower attachment is amazing. Yeah, because I asked, it’s like I wonder if the blower attachment could just blow the snow, cuz if you get. A dusting, you want to get that off the sidewalk. But you don’t need a snowblower. There’s not enough to snow blow. So we’re watching it as it’s moving leaves off the, off, off of a yard here.

And the blower actually goes, what about a, I’d go like a 60 degrees. Yes. Directional. So it starts on the left side, pushes the stream of air out 120 miles an hour, by the way. And then it goes out 60 degrees or so to the right. Can we just have those winds? ? Yes, we did . So it just captures them and recycles that into, blowing the snow off your, but you’re right.

For sidewalk or something, this would be amazing snowblower. You just need the blower unit and keeps the sidewalks. Just that dusting of snow that we get occasionally. That’s perfect. It’s doing a pretty good job of moving the leaves here though too. I was thinking too, the other side of of this is we were talking a little bit about the different attachments.

It’s I need a rotor tiller, I need an aor, I need a De Thatcher. I just, all these different implements that you get kinda like the Ryobi one plus one line. You little tool for everything. You just snap the battery into it. Y Arby’s gonna be your new best friend. Yeah. Your dog’s my kid. A little jealous.

A actually, the first time my dog saw one of those autonomous lawn mowers. Yeah, it freaked him right out. Really? Yeah. I can believe that. And they’re like, what is that? I think it freaks most people out the first time they see ’em too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Anyway, all so Yabo just know we’re gonna be calling you soon.

ya boo . Yeah. We think, I think of the commercials right now. Commercial . That’s too funny. All right let’s talk about TikTok for a little bit. Yes. We were talking about TikTok and the world’s. Going to end World War iii? Yes. Yeah. Alexis ai. They have a little video on TikTok about it. False. So if you’ve read that somewhere this morning?

No. World War II is not starting. December 20, what was it? Third, I think. Yeah, something like that. It’s 6 0 5. I remember the 6:05 PM yeah. So’s interesting. Because it’s false. It was a TikTok. Yeah, it’s a TikTok video. Yeah. What I find interesting about TikTok is, and we’ve talked about the Chinese conspiracy theory, which of spy using technology to spy in the United States.

I personally don’t believe it’s a theory. I’ve looked at devices, I’ve looked at routers, whatever. There’s extra chips in these things that who knows what they’re being utilized for, like I said, my wife. Smart watcher, asshole watch. It’s like it’s starting to talk to us now. And it didn’t do that a week ago. And then you look at DJs listening and the drone company that’s based out of China. Why is it that every other drone that’s in a similar class as the DJs are like twice the price, three times the price? It’s because they want you, Chinese wants you to buy these because they need you to buy em.

All of this footage that you take goes into the DJ app on your phone or tablet or whatever, and guess where it’s stored in China? There you go. And not to be a conspiracy theorist or anything, but, so let’s see, the Chinese government, should we spend a hundred billion on a satellite, or should we give this drone company 10 billion and let those crazy, citizens in the United States buy our products and then we have better coverage because there’s gonna be 2 million of them flying around in the United States, and we own all of that footage.

The satellite can only show us what you’re doing outside your home. We know what you’re doing inside your home. Yeah. So it’s, yeah. You could take it that way. And quite frankly I tend to lean that direction a little bit but, so this is a discretion is the better part of valor. Right?

So TikTok people feel the same way about this, including our government, or at least we think. That’s what our government said, or that’s what they’re saying that, there’s been talk about banning TikTok, the government’s movement. Yeah. The government has actually banned TikTok and all government devices, state devices, and federal devices.

So let’s just look at this a little bit. So does, do you feel that Facebook and Google have influence in our government? Yes. Okay. Do you feel that TikTok is a major competitor of Facebook and. . Of course they are. I say yes. Yeah. Because any, anything that takes you away from those platforms means that they’re competition because they’re all about eyeballs.

Fa it’s, it, if you’re more and more people are spending time on TikTok, less on Facebook, because that’s, people just have so much time and they prefer to look at TikTok. If there was no TikTok available, you’d probably be back on Facebook or Instagram or whatever else. MySpace or MySpace.

So the theory is, or the conspiracy theory is that, that Google and Facebook and these companies are lobbying our country, our legislators, to ban TikTok because of the competition that it actually has as opposed to that it’s not. Instead of it being, let’s just say it’s a security issue.

And so that’s why I’m bringing this up. I don’t know if it’s true or not. I just am bringing this up because I think when you hear stuff nowadays, you really need to think through who’s bringing these things forward. Yes, TikTok is a Chinese company, but they do have spaces or places in the United States, and I think they’ve done a lot of work to move that video to United States, but quite frankly, the Chinese can get any video they want anyways.

But I’m looking at it more of what these media platforms, these different social. platforms do as far as social engineering. And you take a look at what TikTok, and this is a known quantity, is the version that the rest of the world gets versus the version that the Chinese children of course get of course, because the focus is on children with TikTok and you’re looking at the educational opportunities, the limited screen times you’re talking social change.

Yeah. Not necessarily intellectual property at that point and e and even what it’s feeding to you. So it knows how you might lean politically or it knows that you like broccoli and it knows that you’re not a big fan of check this video out. Marlo does not know how to. It knows this stuff.

So then it’s it starts systematically sending you maybe messages that question the way you think a little bit. And you could say the same for any platform, that does this Well, and the other platforms have been doing that for a while. Long time. We’ve talked about this.

You’re sitting on your cell phone, you’re sitting next to you and you’re having a conversation with somebody about waffles. Yes. And gee I got a Waffle House ad, or egos just popped up or on Correct the ad. But that’s been on the ad side of things. Yeah. Now take that to the next step where you’re talking about maybe social engineering a little bit.

Don’t you think it always goes back to money anyway? Of course it does. So you just follow the money trail and if they feel like they’re able to engineer the messages that you’re getting. It’s all about if the company is actually able to make more money from that anyway. So that’s really what boils down to.

One of the things that you and I were talking about, we were gonna talk about movie theaters. Yeah. So on the weekend watch the new Josh DeMel and Jennifer Lopez movie. It’s okay, it’s on Amazon Prime. For the free subscription of Amazon Prime. Whilst that regular prime, the subscription’s not free.

You pay 130 bucks a year for it. It’s Prime. Before she ever figured out there, there was movies that too. A lot of people were like that programming, cuz it’s, I just don’t shipping the shipping and get it quicker. Yep. But it got me thinking, and by the way, the movies, eh, It’s cute. Good movie.

Okay. I mean for It’s a good Date Night movie. And I got thinking it’s but is it a date night if we don’t go to the theater and Right. Go out to dinner and we’re just sitting at home watching this. And I got to thinking it’s like good Gravy is Blockbuster went the way at the Dodo, our movie theaters going that direction.

They certainly seemed to be when pandemic hit. Yeah. The pandemic just took care of most of the theaters in the country. And we used to go to movies all the time. All the time because it was at night out of the house. Yeah. Yeah. But if you get lazy and okay, at a certain point it’s, it gets cold out.

Let’s just watch it here. And of course you don’t have the 19 inch screen anymore either, do you? Yeah. So that, that was probably the biggest. Theater popcorn. Which is by design of course. They make sure that they can hand have those ingredients that they have to make the popcorn.

But regardless, it might be $20 for microwave popcorn. It could be theater popcorn maybe. But I agree. And so there’s movie passes coming back, I remember that. I did not have it back in the day, but I remember that. Yeah. So I had it, I forget what I was paying. Was it 15 or 20 bucks?

It’s coming back cause it said welcome back. Yeah. And I think, didn’t they go through either they, they went through bankruptcy or structured something and now they’ve restructured and I don’t know if somebody bought them out or whatever, but they didn’t have the relationships with all the theaters.

It was part of the problem initially. There’s Hey, here’s movie pass and we’re gonna roll this out and it’s a discount. But you didn’t have, you’d walk into a theater and they’re like, yeah, we. Honor that. We don’t work with that. So what they’ve come out with now is, cuz before you could just walk in, anytime they would sl they would, you had a, like a debit card.

They would just slide it and that’s how you got into your movie. And I actually used it a few times. I thought it was cool then there was one day I went over to Grand and it didn’t work. So obviously they were in and they were already in until then they started, we paid for that.

Yeah, that’s exactly what was going on. I’m sure. So now they’ve gone to this they have these different plans. I’m looking at this screen right now. Basic is 20 bucks a month, standard 30, premium 40 and Pro is $60 a month. They have a credit system. So on the $20 a month you get 68 credits and. I was thinking is like $60 a month.

That’s a lot of movies. No, it’s really not now. Not really. Yeah. If you go to a movie for two people, you’re gonna probably, yeah. Oh my goodness. Yeah, you’ll spend a lot. So if you go during the weekday, a matinee is 10 credits. If you go to the evening, it’s 15 credits on weekends of 20 credits.

What’s a credit equate to? So credit is if you get the basic plan as 68 credits a month. So you could potentially on the basic plan, go to 10 movies or six movies. Excuse me. If you did the matinee, and this is not in LA or in New York, this is everything other than LA or New York area. 30 bucks a month, you get 140 credits.

So you could potentially go to 14 movies a month. What’s a credit equate to though? So a credit, a matinee is 10 credit. Okay. Okay. An evening is 15 credit. But does it matter what the theater is though? Because you take a look at a matinee and Bismarck, it doesn’t matter. And I think it’s $10 now. They just went up to, yeah.

Yeah. I don’t think it matters. That’s why the, that’s why they have a credit system so that you’re limited to the amount of movies, and then if you go on weekends, it’s 20 credits. Question is though, did they work out the relationship with the theaters? So they have 4,000 theater. That they are, that they’ve partnered with?

They have there are some, they say that, they say you can use it anywhere, but I don’t know that scenario. I’m on the waiting list and I just got approved to get my card now. So if I, and I think I’m gonna go through it. You’re a lot of waiting lists right now. I you, I get a Yeah. NASA’s waiting list.

Yeah, I know. That’s the one I’m more excited about. Movie one waiting list. But I can get, so it’s not waiting anymore. I can actually go purchase a plan now, so I’ll buy one. I probably will do the standard or the premium. Premium is 113 credits a month. And they say five to 11 movies? I’m not sure.

I guess it just depends. If you’re going to Friday night movies, Saturday night movies, you’re gonna have five movies for 30 bucks a month. No, the other problem with that though, How many movies are coming out? I, there’s a few blockbusters that are slated there. They’re starting to have more, more worn out.

Yeah, it’s getting better and better. So anyway. All right. Two guys with adhd, who are hung up on Yabo. Yeah. Yeah. Can Yabo get my popcorn? Maybe. Maybe that’d be okay. Bring it with me all the time.

The post Exploring the Intersection of Agriculture and Technology: GMOs, Robots, and the Future of Farming appeared first on The Tech Ranch.