TECHNOLOGY

Stealing the Farm: China Continues Raid of US Agriculture by Theft and Agroterror

Tue, 05 May 2026 11:49:51 GMT

China is stealing the farm. Real-time. Live action. Happening now.

The most devastating raid of agricultural technology in U.S. history has been underway for at least 25 years and continues at a blistering pace.

Case after case, year after year, brazen Chinese Communist Party (CCP) espionage continues. Yet, every federal prosecution highlights an undeniable truth—each bust is a pebble in a landslide of successful heists. Two new cases per day and 2,000 pending investigations, according to the FBI, many of those ag-related, all while CCP officials brazenly proclaim a theft policy of “picking flowers in foreign lands to make honey in China.”

Whether pinching product from research labs, digging rows in the heartland, masquerading as USDA-approved envoys, hiding seeds in carry-on luggage, mailing crop pathogens in panties, plane-hopping with trade secrets, or a litany of other heists, there’s always something new for the CCP to steal.

The ransacking of U.S. agriculture is on. Arguably, bigger and bolder than ever.

Adios From Wuhan
From 2014-2016, Jiunn-Ren Chen, a Chinese national, split time between Ankeny, Iowa, and St. Louis, Missouri, working under the Monsanto umbrella at The Climate Corporation (TCC). Good job and good life for a family man with a wife and daughter. More like good cover.

In late 2015, Chen contacted Sinochem China National Seed Corporation and requested employment. Sinochem, steered by the CCP, reciprocated. In May 2016, Chen flew to Beijing, met with Sinochem reps, and caught a flight back to the U.S. On June 1, he resigned from Monsanto/TCC, but kept hush-hush on the new job with Sinochem, insisting he was moving to China to be closer to extended family.

“If a gang of thieves tells you they are going to steal your farm, you should believe them,” says Col. John Mills.

(Photo public domain)

Later in the same day, June 1, Chen logged into TCC’s Google Drive account and downloaded six files. The following day, he downloaded two additional files. Further, between June 4-10, he downloaded 55 more files.

According to subsequent FBI testimony: The files downloaded by Chen after his resignation contained trade secrets and confidential proprietary information … Further analysis revealed that Chen had used his TCC email address to transmit confidential trade secrets and proprietary information to other email accounts on at least five occasions between approximately August 19, 2014 and February 14, 2015.

On August 19, 2016, Chen bought three one-way airline tickets to China. The next day, he, along with his wife and daughter, boarded an 11:30 a.m. flight out of St. Louis Lambert International Airport, 63 files the richer. Adios.

By way of Shanghai, Chen disappeared in Wuhan. He was never caught. He was never criminally prosecuted.

Chen’s story is dime-a-dozen. In 2022, then FBI Director Christopher Wray described the level of CCP theft as “More brazen, more damaging than ever before.”

“When we tally up what we see in our investigations, over 2,000 of which are focused on the Chinese government trying to steal our information and technology, there is just no country that presents a broader threat to our ideas, our innovation, and our economic security than China … The Chinese government steals staggering volumes of information and causes deep, job-destroying damage across a wide range of industries, so much so that … we’re constantly opening new cases to counter their intelligence operations, about every 12 hours or so.”

“That theft, those threats,” Wray added, “are happening right here in America, literally every day.”
Col. (Ret.) John Mills , national security professional and former Director of Cybersecurity Policy, Strategy, and International Affairs at the Department of Defense, told Agweb in 2021: “The FBI woke up to this threat far too late, and now we are in very deep. It is the CCP’s goal to steal, glean, obtain, transcribe, and photograph anything of value from the U.S., and the agriculture sector is right at the top.”

Best Western Comforts
Multiple Chinese thieves and spies nabbed over the past decade offer a tiny glimpse behind the CCP’s espionage curtain and suggest ag theft on a vast scale.

• 2011: Mo Hailong, director of international business for Dabeinong Technology Group and a legal U.S. resident for 10 years, was spotted crawling through Iowa corn rows, pocketing biotech seed. The incident spurred a multi-year FBI investigation. Hailong and several CCP cohorts were arrested in 2013, boarding a plane for China. Hidden inside their luggage, under microwave popcorn bags and Subway napkins, were hundreds of seed samples. No matter: Hailong had already mailed over 1,000 lb. of seed corn (Pioneer and Monsanto) to Beijing. He was sentenced to 36 months in prison.

Mo Hailong’s prosecution was a tip-of-the-iceberg bust.

(Photo public domain)

• 2013: Weiqiang Zhang obtained a doctorate in rice genetics at LSU and got a job at Ventria, a Kansas-based biopharmaceutical corporation, as a seed breeder, where he stole seed samples representing $75 million in research. Zhang used USDA letterhead to send counterfeit invitations to six colleagues in China, welcoming them on a tour of Ventria and several more ag stops. The delegates made the rounds (including Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, Ark., where Zhang’s main accomplice, Wengui Yan, worked as a geneticist) and were nailed just before flying home with hundreds of rice seeds in their bags, hidden inside envelopes slipped inside a Best Western remote control pouch and within the folds of an Arkansas Democrat Gazette newspaper. Zhang was sentenced to almost 10 years and Yan to one year.

Weiqiang Zhang, left, and Wengui Yan, nailed in an Arkansas/Kansas seed tech case.

(Photo public domain)

• 2017: Haitao Xiang worked for The Climate Corporation (Monsanto) estimating soil properties via satellite imagery. On May 24, 2017, Xiang announced his forthcoming resignation, and roughly two weeks later, on June 9, after completing an exit interview, downloaded a proprietary algorithm, the Nutrient Optimizer, onto an SD card, and drove from St. Louis to Chicago O’Hare. Xiang was caught at boarding with the SD card in a carry-on bag. He was allowed to leave for China; the FBI wasn’t certain, at that point, what was on the card. After a return to the U.S., in 2019, Xiang was arrested. Despite seizure of the SD card, Xiang presumably had stashed other copies of the Nutrient Optimizer, and possibly delivered those to CCP contacts. He was sentenced in 2022 to 29 months.

However, outright ag technology theft is only one facet of the CCP’s duplicity. Next up, agroterrorism.

Lie and Deny
In July 2024, Zunyong Liu, a plant pathology scientist from Zhejiang University, flew into Detroit from Shanghai on a tourist visa. He claimed to be on a vacation to visit his girlfriend, Yunqing Jian, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan (UM) in Ann Arbor. (UM maintains roughly 4,000 Chinese students, roughly half the university’s foreign population.) Both halves of the loved-up couple had expertise with a nasty biological pathogen, Fusarium graminearum, a strain that causes head blight and annually inflicts billions of dollars in crop losses. Both had contributed to major academic papers on Fusarium.

Zunyong Liu’s four baggies of smuggled plant material.

(Photo public domain)

U.S. Customs officers gave Liu the squeeze—and out spilled a chain of lies and half-truths. He claimed to have no “work materials” with him, but inside a small pocket of Liu’s backpack, officers found crumpled tissues concealing a filter paper with a “series of circles drawn on it” and four plastic bags containing red plant fibers.

Liu doubled down, insisting on a setup, and claimed the material was planted in his carry-on. As investigators tightened the screws, Liu folded, admitting he was transporting Fusarium for research at UM.

While searching Liu’s iPhone, Customs agents found a pdf in a WhatsApp folder: 2018 Plant-Pathogen Warfare under Changing Climate Conditions. The article referenced Fusarium as a destructive disease and pathogen for agriculture.

When FBI agents questioned Liu’s girlfriend, Jian , she denied all knowledge of Liu’s smuggling or intentions. She lied—repeatedly. As agents asked for her smartphone, Jian began “manipulating” the device as it was seized. The phone contained multiple communications with Liu (deported back to China) that had been wiped clean, but the remaining messages were damning and showed direct involvement in Liu’s illegal activity.

Yunqing Jian both knew about her boyfriend’s smuggling efforts, and had personally smuggled biological material into the U.S.

(Photo public domain)

Additionally, her phone contained a telltale work assessment form from January 2024 that included a pledge of loyalty to the CCP: I adhere to the four basic principles , support the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CCP), resolutely implement the party’s educational guidelines and policies, love education, care for students, unite colleagues, love the motherland, and care about national affairs…

Adding deep layers to the cake, Jian had personally smuggled biological pathogens into the U.S. on prior occasions, and had given another Chinese national, Xia Chen, explicit instructions in how to conceal and code pathogens in postal mail: “There are usually no problems. Rest assured. I have mailed these before.”

Pleasures and Pathogens
Days after the arrest of Yunqing Jian (sentenced to time served in November 2025 and deported to China), another Chinese national, Chengxuan Han, a scientist at a laboratory in Wuhan, was nabbed by U.S. Customs agents on June 8, 2025, at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after a flight from Shanghai. Han was traveling on a J1 work visa to do research at the University of Michigan, specifically at the lab of Professor Shawn Xu of the Life Sciences Institute.

Chengxuan Han: “Hello! This is a fun letter with interesting patterns. I hope you can enjoy the pleasure within it.”

(Photo public domain)

Why was she apprehended? Han mailed four packages, which she labeled as “plastic plates,” but which contained plasmids and petri dishes of C. elegans with genetic modifications (a nematode prohibited from import by USDA) from her Wuhan lab to the UM lab. The packages were intercepted by U.S. Customs. Inside one package was a book with a peculiar envelope slipped between the pages. The envelope held a handwritten note with 28 shapes and a “labeling scheme” for each shape. The note stated: “Hello! This is a fun letter with interesting patterns. I hope you can enjoy the pleasure within it.”

From the get-go, Han denied mailing any packages. Pressed by investigators, she then admitted mailing packages, but insisted the contents only included paper cups and a book. Later, Han acknowledged the biological material, but insisted it was part of a sequencing game she devised with clues given for each plasmid “for fun.”

Confronted with more evidence, Han fessed up, according to an affidavit submitted by FBI agent Edward Nieh: “Han admitted that she had sent packages containing nematode growth medium (NGM), in the petri dishes, and plasmids, in the envelope. Based on my training and experience, it is unlikely that the petri dishes contained solely NGM because NGM is readily available and inexpensive in the United States. CBP Officers conducted a manual review of Han’s electronic devices and found Han had deleted the content of her devices three days prior to her arrival to the United States.”

Han was sentenced to time served, roughly three months, and deported back to China—free to mail more pathogens to the U.S.

Scot-Free: Have A Nice Flight
Who, specifically, were the intended recipients of Han’s “fun” packages at the University of Michigan?

Enter three Chinese citizens, all research scholars holding J-1 visas at the Shawn Xu laboratory: Xu Bai, Fengfan Zhang, and Zhiyong Zhang. As soon as authorities made the connections, the threesome bailed.

On September 29, 2025, the trio was terminated by UM after refusing to participate in an internal investigation. Three weeks later, the men were arrested at JFK International Airport at the departure gate for a flight to Beijing.

The handwritten “matching game” of Chengxuan Han, along with one of eight smuggled petri dishes.

(Photo public domain)

Bottom line, despite the arrests, all three got away scot-free. In February 2026, DOJ dropped the case against Bai, F. Zhang, and Z. Zhang . Smuggling charges were dismissed at DOJ’s request. The three researchers flew home to China. “The dismissal came as a pleasant surprise,” stated John Minock, their attorney. “We don’t know the details. What we were told was there was some kind of intervention by the Chinese consulate in Chicago.”

Underwear of Man-Made Fibers
Generally, panties laced with E. coli, mailed 8,000 miles to a CCP plant pathology researcher in Indiana by a technology company in China, tend to draw U.S. Customs attention.

In June 2023, Youhuang Xiang, a card-carrying member of the Chinese Communist Party with a doctorate in plant physiology, received a J1 visa to study genome editing in wheat plants and resistance to fungal diseases at the Department of Biology at Indiana University (IU) in Bloomington. Among his specialties: Fusarium graminearum.

On March 28, 2024, Xiang received a package from China. Per shipping documents, the package was listed as “Underwear of Man-Made Fibers, Other Womens,” and shipped by Guangzhou Sci Tech Innovation Trading.

Youhuang Xiang: Deported for smuggling biological material into the U.S. Ironically, Xiang (kneeling, far right) was a 2024 National Fusarium Head Blight Forum Poster Competition third-place winner.

(Photo U.S. Wheat & Barley Scab Initiative)

Tracked and questioned by U.S. Customs and the FBI, Xiang played innocent. Denial and more denial: I never worked for the CCP and if any of the labs I worked at in China were funded by the CCP, I don’t know anything about it.

The package, he initially declared, was merely a jacket. However, Xiang later admitted the “clothing” contained plasmid DNA derived from E. coli bacteria and was mailed to him for use in his research at IU. He pleaded guilty to smuggling E. coli and was sentenced to time served (four months) and deported.

And the band played on.

Midnight In Michigan
The funnel is in place. In a typical year, 250,000-300,000 Chinese students (roughly one-third of all foreign enrollees) attend U.S. universities, with almost all in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and all vetted by the CCP. “Every Chinese student who China sends here has to go through a party and government approval process,” a senior U.S. official told Reuters in 2018. “You may not be here for espionage purposes as traditionally defined, but no Chinese student who’s coming here is untethered from the state.”

A 2019 FBI report states “the vast majority of students and researchers from China are in the United States for legitimate academic reasons.” However, the FBI’s determination is damning, considering the “vast majority” potentially leaves tens of thousands in the active espionage category.

Camp Grayling, where five Chinese University of Michigan students were caught at midnight photographing military vehicles and facilities.

(Photo U.S. Army)

The FBI report also asserts: “the Chinese government uses some Chinese students … and professors to operate as non-traditional collectors of intellectual property.”

“These Chinese scholars,” the analysis notes, “may serve as collectors, wittingly or unwittingly, of economic, scientific, and technological intelligence from U.S. institutions to ultimately benefit Chinese academic institutions and businesses.”

A cursory look at Chinese researcher/student espionage activity beyond agriculture, just over the past few years, is striking.

• In 2020, two Chinese University of Michigan master’s students, Jielun Zhang and Yuhao Wang , were apprehended while photographing military infrastructure at Naval Air Station Key West (NASKW), in Florida. Zhang was sentenced to a year in prison; Wang got nine months. Also, days prior to Zhang and Wang’s arrest, another Chinese national, Lyuyou Liao , was arrested at NASKW for entering and taking pictures, and sentenced to one year. (Significantly, another Chinese university student, Zhao Qianli , while on a summer exchange program in 2018, was caught photographing and videotaping at NASKW. He was sentenced to a year. His host university in the U.S. was not publicly disclosed.)

• Saw-Teong Ang, a University of Arkansas engineering professor, was indicted in 2020 for wire fraud after accepting U.S contracting funds related to NASA and the Air Force while making false statements and not disclosing CCP ties. Ang got a year in prison.

• Zhengdong Cheng, a professor at Texas A&M, was charged in 2020 with wire fraud for hiding relationships with Chinese corporations and universities, while accepting a NASA grant. Cheng was sentenced to time served after 13-month prison stint.

• Song Guo Zheng, a professor of internal medicine at Ohio State University and Pennsylvania State University, was sentenced to three years in an immunology fraud. After hiding affiliation with a CCP-influenced university, Zheng attempted to flee the U.S. in 2020, according to DOJ: “He was carrying three large bags, one small suitcase and a briefcase containing two laptops, three cell phones, several USB drives, several silver bars, expired Chinese passports for his family, deeds for property in China and other items.”

Zhengdong Cheng, a Texas A&M professor, was sentenced to time served after 13-month prison stint for hiding CCP relationships and obtaining grant money.

(Photos Texas A&M University)

• After Texas A&M University began questioning CCP influence at its lab facilities, and attempted to find out how many faculty members were involved with Chinese recruitment, the answer was stunning. From the Wall Street Journal , Jan. 30, 2020: “… they were astounded at the results—more than 100 were involved with a Chinese talent-recruitment program, even though only five had disclosed their participation.”

• Former University of Florida professor Lin Yang was indicted in 2021 for making false statements in 2019 regarding a $1.75 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “Our indictment alleges that Yang engaged in acts of deliberate deception so that he could also further the research goals of the Chinese Communist government and advance his own business interests,” said U.S. Attorney Lawrence Keefe. Yang fled the U.S. in 2019, prior to the indictment, and has not returned.

• In August 2023, five Chinese University of Michigan students (Zhekai Xu, Renxiang Guan, Haoming Zhu, Jingzhe Tao, and Yi Liang) were caught at midnight photographing military vehicles and facilities at Camp Grayling, a Michigan National Guard site. They graduated and left the U.S. before charges were filed in October 2024.

• In April 2026, Tianrui Liang, a Chinese university student visiting the U.S., was charged with photographing military aircraft at Offutt Air Force Base, near Omaha, Neb. Liang said the pictures were for his “personal collection.” According to the FBI, Liang also drove to Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota prior to his Nebraska stop. Liang is currently in federal custody.

And the kicker for U.S. agriculture? The number of CCP-approved Chinese students in U.S. colleges, according to the White House, is set to climb to 600,000 per year. Simple math: If the CCP taps a mere 1% for espionage and theft, that means 6,000 spies/moles on American campuses. Every percent higher means an exponential leap in technology thieves.

Coerce, Coopt, Compel
China openly flaunts its policy of theft. The CCP, in 2017, announced it would force all citizens and companies to steal trade secrets via a national intelligence law: “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work” if directed. The blanket law includes students or researchers. Coerce, coopt, and compel.

The CCP has executed the most expansive technology heist in history, tapping all fields of U.S. industry, business, and production, including agriculture, as evidenced by a 2017 report by the U.S. Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property estimating a loss of $255 billion to $600 billion to the U.S. economy each year, and fingering China as the “principle IP infringer.”

“It is the CCP’s goal to steal, glean, obtain, transcribe, and photograph anything of value from the U.S., and the agriculture sector is right at the top,” says Col. John Mills.

(Photo public domain)

In 2019, Joe Augustyn, a 28-year veteran of the CIA, stated, “We know without a doubt that anytime a graduate student from China comes to the US, they are briefed when they go, and briefed when they come back.”

“They don’t just come here to spy ... they come here to study and a lot of it is legitimate,” Augustyn said . “But there is no question in my mind, depending on where they are and what they are doing, that they have a role to play for their government.”

Previously cited national security expert John Mills, echoes Augustyn. “It’s my opinion that many are either working for the Ministry of State Security (China’s CIA-FBI hybrid organization), and 100% are fully aware of their obligation to the CCP … Part of their presence here, granted with CCP permission, is a promise, often a quid pro quo, to assist the CCP in getting whatever is needed.”

“I’d say most all U.S. industries have been asleep, certainly including agriculture,” Mills adds. “The CCP gave us a blueprint and announced they were going to take over certain high-tech industries, and agriculture was right there on the list. They literally told the world what they were going to do. If a gang of thieves tells you they are going to steal your farm, you should believe them.”

Seed, digital tech, or machinery, the CCP has jammed fat fingers deep in the American ag pie. They play for keeps.

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer

Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust

Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing

Georgia Watermelon Heist Explodes into Epic Night of Pandemonium

Sisters of Farm Fraud: How 4 Siblings Fleeced USDA for $10M

When Conservation Backfires: Landowner Defeats Feds in Mindboggling Private Property Case

Cold-Busted: Frozen Deer Decoy Nabs Poachers and Cocaine in Spectacular Sting

Sticky Fingers: USDA Fraudster Steals $200M in Stunning Scam

Broadband is Transforming How an Arizona County Uses Ag Tech

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:03:25 GMT

Imagine a future where autonomous tractors navigate the roads and fields as farmers give commands from miles away. This future also allows farmers to optimize water usage. Precision and efficiency take on entirely new meanings. A county in Arizona is working to make that future a reality.

The dry, hot, sand-colored landscape of Yuma County, Ariz., sprinkled with fields of bright green lettuce, is getting a boost from high-speed internet.

Today, farming is a matter of precision. With better internet comes better precision. According to the Association of Equipment Management , precision agriculture adoption leads to a 5% increase in crop farming productivity, a 5% reduction in water use and a 7% reduction in fuel consumption.

Turning the “Winter Lettuce Capital” into a Global High-Tech Testing Hub

Known as the “ Winter Lettuce Capital of the World ,” the Middle Mile Fiber Network and broadband system will bring better internet. This will ultimately help farmers implement the latest technology. Like roots from a plant, underground fibers now stretch throughout the county connected to 32 broadband towers that reach to the sky.

“It is exciting; there’s been a lot of products and things [such as water sensors] that I’ve wanted to do out on the farm, but without the ability to have permanent or productive internet services, I’ve been reluctant,” says Mike Pasquinelli, a local farmer and president of the Yuma Fresh Vegetable Association .

Yuma produces about 90% of the leafy greens for the U.S. in the winter. They’re hoping with the broadband system more companies will be attracted to test technology in Yuma.

“In our intense agricultural system we have the ability to farm year-round, so there’s a lot of advantages for companies to come in, test new products and develop new products,” Pasquinelli says.

Broadband Network is Fueling Yuma’s High-Tech Agricultural Future

From autonomous drones and tractors to water monitoring, the broadband system will allow agriculture to connect.

“Farming is not the farming of yesterday. This is not your mom and pops farm,” says Jonathan Lines , a Yuma County supervisor who helped get the project up and running. “This is a high-tech business for food production here in the United States.”

When it comes to herbicide and pesticide applications, the broadband system will allow for farmers to apply a much smaller droplet using a drone rather than an airplane or helicopter. Tractor and tech updates can be made in the field instead of having to be taken out of production and connected to a computer.

“It is a large game changer for our community as well as our county. If we want more sensors and more automation, we need the bandwidth to do it,” Pasquinelli says.

Gov. Hobbs Backs Broadband Network to Modernize Arizona Agriculture

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs is in full support of the broadband network. In November 2025, Gov. Hobbs visited Yuma for a ribbon-cutting ceremony and to sign two bills. SB1320 and SB1661 are both meant to help support the project in some capacity:

SB 1320 updated the legal definition of “implements of husbandry,” otherwise known as farm equipment, to include autonomous equipment. This allows for the autonomous farm equipment like tractors to drive short distances on public roads.
SB 1661 created a legal structure for the broadband service district authority. This authority would be in charge of things such as facilitating the expansion and maintenance of broadband infrastructure.

Pasquinelli says these bills, along with the broadband project, will be helpful for Yuma farmers as they continue to navigate this technological boom. When the broadband network and autonomous technology are in full force, they can help Yuma farmers address labor challenges.

“The farm workforce is aging, and it’s more and more difficult to get labor out of Mexico, so automation is going to be really key as the workforce diminishes,” says Paul Brierly , director of the Arizona Department of Agriculture .

$6 Million Broadband Project Hopes to Attract Younger Workforce

The broadband network might also be able to solve the aging workforce by attracting more university students. Brierly believes with the research and investment tied to the network, along with Yuma’s landscape, it can be a hot spot for young scholastic minds.

“With climate change, more of the world is having to produce food in arid climates, so what we solve in Yuma County, and in Arizona, will apply and be useful all around the world,” he explains.

The project is set to cost around $6 million and the broadband network is expected to be up and running by the end of summer in August.

“Not only does that allow Yuma County farmers to use the latest technology but also this is going to be the most connected production area in the world,” Brierly says.

The Grain Weevil Robot Takes On One Of Farming's Most Dangerous Jobs

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 21:33:40 GMT

From the depths of a grain bin, a robot is doing the dangerous work once performed by farmers. As it scurries across the grain, the Grain Weevil breaks up hardened surface crust and ridges, leveling out the grain and improving airflow. From outside the bin, the farmer can now remotely control the robot as it completes the once-dangerous task.

“Cleaning out grain bins and leveling grain is by far the most dangerous thing we do, so to be able to stay physically out of the grain as much as we can, that’s a huge improvement in safety,” says Zach Hunnicutt, a farmer from Giltner, Neb.

The History of the Grain Weevil

The Grain Weevil’s story begins in 2020 when Chad Johnson and his son, Ben Johnson , started working on a project to teach kids workforce skills through innovation, such as building robots. When a local farmer saw what the duo had created, he asked if they could build a robot that would keep him out of the grain bin.

From there, the father-son duo made a 3-D printed robot, complete with duct tape, and showed it to a group of farmers gathered to watch the “Silo” movie. The Johnsons took that feedback home, and in 2021, they officially started working on their Grain Weevil business.

“We knew that’s when we were going to be able to turn this little project into a startup, and now into a company that has over 100 robots deployed,” Chad says.

After five years in business, they’ve sold more than 100 Grain Weevil robots – each with the goal of making it safer for farmers when working with grain in storage. Along the way, they’ve had the support of Ag Launch for marketing, testing and getting the product to market.

“We built this robot to help keep farmers and workers out of the grain when there’s a situation where they could get hurt, entrapped or any of the dangers that go along with it,” Chad explains.

How Technology Can Involve the Next Generation

While the Johnsons have been working together in the garage since Ben was a child, seeing their partnership expand into a company has been surreal.

“It’s great, we get along very well … you couldn’t ask for any better situation than to be able to build robots with your kid,” Chad says.

Now, the Johnsons’ invention has opened doors for more parents and their children to work alongside one another. Hunnicutt is a fifth-generation farmer growing corn, popcorn and soybeans. He says it’s a challenge to include young children when working with grain because of the risks.

However, with the Grain Weevil, the robot is controlled from outside the grain bin, away from the danger.

“Without having to physically enter the grain is a pretty neat thing to be able to do, still keeping them working, but not putting them in danger,” Hunnicutt says.

Hunnicutt draws comparisons between operating the Grain Weevil and video games .

“They have a lot of similarities to video game controls, so I think it’s pretty instinctive to someone who’s played any kind of video game,” he explains.

According to Purdue University , there were 22 fatalities in confined spaces such as grain bins. Now, the Grain Weevil robot, which looks like a bug with augers instead of wheels, is working to keep farmers out of harm’s way.

How One Mississippi Farmer Turned Data Into $330K in Fertilizer Savings

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 20:19:18 GMT

As the planter rolls across a Mississippi Delta field, row by row, it’s making split-second decisions on how much fertilizer to apply, where to apply it and where to apply nothing at all — a task that’s doesn’t require any second-guessing.

The decisions aren’t happening by instinct nor by habit. The planting and fertilizer decisions on this farm are all driven by data.

For Adron Belk, who farms in the Delta’s rich soils of Sunflower County, that shift — from gut feel to data-driven execution — isn’t just about efficiency. It’s about survival in a tight-margin environment, and ultimately, about profitability.

“This whole field, see how it’s calling for 8 gallons right there? It tells it the target. We’re looking for 8 gallons of fertilizer, and it’s putting out real close to 8 gallons,” Belk says as he’s making a planting pass through the field. “There’s areas in the field where it calls for none. So where it calls for none, it actually cuts it off on its own.”

On this farm, data doesn’t sit in a spreadsheet. It moves. It acts. It makes decisions in real time as equipment moves across the field.
That level of precision means decisions aren’t just guided by data, but automated with every pass.

“Where our phosphorus and zinc levels are low, the starter system turns on and it applies it. And where the phosphorus and zinc levels are adequate, it cuts it all and don’t put anything,” he says.

A Farm That Functions Like a Test Plot

Every acre Belk farms doubles as a testing ground. Every pass is an experiment. Every season is another opportunity to learn something new.

That mindset even extends to what he plants.

“I have never planted cotton on my own. My dad was a cotton farmer until 2007, when he quit growing cotton. We’re going to plant just a little bit this year though, about 130 acres. We’re going to get it custom picked. We’re just really planting the cotton to get a little bit of experience with it on a very, very small amount of acres. I believe it’s the tool I need to have in my toolbox for the future. And right now, I don’t have that tool,” he says.

At a time when many farmers are moving away from cotton, Belk is moving toward it.

“Some would say I’m just a glutton for punishment, I guess,” Belk says as he laughs.

A First Generation Farmer

Belk’s approach to farming didn’t come from following a playbook. In fact, it started with the opposite.

“I’m a first generation/second generation farmer,” he says. “My dad does farm, but we do not farm together.”

That decision for Belk to farm on his own was intentional from the start.

“My dad came through the 1980s. He just had a passion for it — worked really hard, started off with with almost nothing,” Belk explains. “And he did really well, and he knew all the lessons that he had to learn from being on his own, and mainly from messing stuff up on his own and learning. He knew how valuable that was. And he just really wanted us to always enjoy each other’s company and never have work come in between us or our family.”

So when Belk wanted to farm, his father gave him guidance — but not a safety net.

“He said, ‘I’ll give you all the advice you want,’ but he said it’s going to be beneficial if you do it on your own,” Belk remembers.

Belk took that to heart, starting his own farming operation by renting a few hundred acres while still in college. And like many young farmers, he learned by trial and error.

“I have made a lot of mistakes, and if I would have been farming with my dad, I probably wouldn’t have learned from those mistakes. I probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to make them to learn on my own,” Belk says. “The mistakes I’ve made have taught me more than the things that I’ve done right, for sure.”

No Silver Bullet — Just Small Gains

While Belk admits he’s learned the hard way and made plenty of mistakes, in an industry often searching for big breakthroughs, Belk focuses on incremental wins.

“I think in farming, we’re all looking for that silver bullet that is going to get you 15, 20 bushels more per acre. But most of those big yield gains like that have already been discovered or have already been done, and so it’s very hard to find those silver bullets,” Belk says. “So, we are really tailoring our farm to finding the 2-, the 3-, the 5-bushel [per acre] differences,” he says.

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That mindset is what led him deeper into data.

“We started really trying to look at data. And when we first started, I thought we were doing it right. I thought were interpreting things the right way. And then realized that we really needed to be going a little deeper,” he says.

Data Into Decisions

That realization led Belk to work with Chad Swindoll, founder of J19 Agriculture, to bring a more advanced level of analysis to the farm.

“He is very honed in on how to analyze data. And working with him has really brought a whole new perspective to ‘Not only now that we have this data, how do we analyze it? And then once we analyze, what do we do with it?’” he says.

For Swindoll, that last question — What do you do with it? — is where many farms fall short.

“There’s lack of implementation on the farm,” Swindoll explains. “There’s a lot of technology that’s available. I mean, we’re with the United States. We’re a very sophisticated production agriculture, but the execution and implementation piece on taking the information that the technology will provide — and then using it to really make a decision beyond just something that looks cool or sounds cool — but really driving change on the farm, that’s very lacking,” he says.

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When Swindoll started working with Belk, he quickly realized Belk is different in not only the way he farms, but how he thinks about farming. What sets Belk apart, Swindoll says, is his willingness to act.

“He does a very good job of collecting the things that we need to make those decisions, and then if if the information is telling us we need this or that, he does,” Swindoll says.

Swindoll says Belk is a good executive, and that ability to not only know what needs to be done, but then implement it, is something that’s fueling Belk’s success.

“That’s something that I try to emphasize and talk about a lot in our industry and with my customers and non-customers. The farmer is the CEO, and an executive’s job is to make decisions,” Swindoll says. “And so we can get hung on a fence and make no progress. At some point, you have to move. And to be a good executive, it goes back to having the right pieces of information and the willingness to act.”

Swindoll says it also takes courage to do something different than what everybody else is doing.

“It’s not easy, because some of the things that we’ve found over the years are contrary to what we have been taught or told,” he says.

A $330,000 Turning Point

That willingness to trust the data — and act on it — led to one of the biggest financial shifts on the farm.

“About three or four years ago, we started really letting the data, we started analyzing the data and looking at it. And what we started seeing is, we were spending a lot of this money on fertilizer, and we didn’t really know if we’re getting a return out of it,” Belk says.

The result was a major change in how fertilizer was applied and how much was used.

“Three years ago, we cut about $330,000 out of our fertilizer budget that I would not have done without good sound data that we trusted,” Belk says. “Now, it took me a little while to get to that, to understand it. Then having J19 really run statistical data and showing us what was real and what was not. When you realize you cut $330,000 out of a fertilizer budget, and you still made the equivalent yields, that’s pretty eye-opening,” he says.

Finding Yield in the Details

While something like fertilizer savings have added major cost-savings to their farm, sometimes, the biggest gains come from the smallest adjustments. That includes what the data told them about tire pressure.

“Because we grow everything in the Delta on a raised bed, in between the tires it really pinches that row. We started noticing where we would run 20 lb. of air where the tire would kind of squat, it was pinching the row more, and we were getting more compaction under the tractor,” Belk says. “In some cases, it was costing anywhere from 10 to 17 bushels of yield on the rows just up under the tractor,” he says.

That prompted Belk to boost tire pressure to 30 lb. or air.

Rethinking the Playbook

On Belk’s farm, the field itself has become the ultimate teacher.

“That field is our textbook,” Swindoll says. “That’s kind of how we do this. If you read something in a book and it doesn’t line up, I think it was William Albrecht who said, ‘If you observe nature, and the textbook doesn’t agree, then you throw the textbook away.’ And we’ve had to do that in some cases.”

That philosophy carries through every decision Belk makes.

“Actually, my dad always told me, ‘Never tell somebody who asks you why you’re doing something, to tell them because your daddy did it.’ You know times change. I mean, we’re in a whole different world right now than we were even 5 years ago, especially 10 years ago. And so I feel like agriculture is changing very fast. I feel like we’ve got to learn to adapt and adopt really fast. Doing all this stuff has allowed us to stay kind of current with the changes in agriculture. It’s allowed us stay current with new products, with new things,” he says.

The New Equation for Farming

Farming has always involved risk. Whether it’s weather, markets or input costs, none of it is guaranteed.

But on this Mississippi Delta farm, the approach to risk is changing. It’s no longer just about taking chances. It’s about measuring them. Testing them. Understanding them. And ultimately, deciding which ones are worth it.

Because in today’s agriculture, that difference between guessing and knowing, may be what separates farmers who keep up from those who get ahead.

Farmer Builds Drone Company, Eyes Historic Breakthrough in Agriculture Tech

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 11:54:09 GMT

The farm machinery bedrock is shifting. Tractor. Planter. Drone?

“There is historic change coming to agriculture and it’ll occur in every single part of farming,” says North Carolina producer Russell Hedrick. “We’re starting an era where you literally won’t find a farm with a planter that doesn’t also own a drone, because the savings and functions are incredible.”

“Agriculture drones are a key to farm survival, all backed with simple, verifiable numbers that show a giant difference in dollars,” he adds.

Emphasizing a monumental shift, Hedrick has responded with Carolina-based Revolution Drones. “U.S.-made farm drones built by an American farmer who understands the unique needs of other American farmers.”

Gamechanger
“A lot of people are not paying attention,” Hedrick contends. “Even with the best navigation systems that we’ve ever had in the history of farming, anytime you drive a ground rig in a row crop field, you lose money.”

“I understand people don’t have time to learn new things,” Hedrick says. “I also understand the desperate need guys have now to cut costs, and running your own drone is a profitability gamechanger.”

(Photo by Revolution Drones)

“On soybeans, with every pass made, university research shows 1.4 to 2.5 bushels per acre lost. For example, if beans are $10 a bushel, and you lose 1.5 bushels, that’s $15 an acre gone when you run the rig one time. If it’s 2.5 bushels, that’s $25 an acre to run that ground rig.”

Therefore, according to Hedrick’s math, if a farmer with 6,000 acres of soybeans runs a ground rig just twice, and loses 1.5 bushels per acre in damage, the cost is $90,000.

However, Hedrick asks, what if the same farmer spent $51,000 for a spreader, spray tank, batteries, chargers, controllers, and a drone capable of covering 750 acres per day?

The 6,000 acres would take eight days to cover and conserve $90,000 in crop damage: “That farmer paid for his drone in eight days and still had $39,000 left in savings,” Hedrick explains. “This is a gamechanger like nothing else out there and its impact is only just starting to be realized. Every agriculture operation in America is going to own its own drone.”

Simple Economics
In 2021, Hedrick dipped a toe in agriculture drone use. On his Catawba County ground, just outside Hickory, in classic western North Carolina foothill country, he hired a custom applicator to put out fungicide on several corn fields, utilizing check strips to measure efficacy.

“The value of drones on the farm, as high as it is today,” Hedrick says, “will soon go up to levels not even imagined yet.”

(Photo by Russell Hedrick)

In 2022, he hired another custom applicator with a stronger drone for foliar passes in test plots to gauge a return.

In 2023, he bought his own drone, made in China, and learned the ropes. “Having someone custom spray versus owning your own drone is two different universes. I was done with paying and watching someone else. It was time for me to make the learning effort and save major money.”

However, Hedrick hit hurdles—repeatedly. “The No. 1 problem I ran into, and it’s the No. 1 problem I hear from guys today coast to coast, is drones built in China are built for farmland in China. The fairest statement I can make is, ‘They don’t know how we farm in America, and don’t understand the vastness of our fields and the necessity to cover hundreds or thousands of acres in day in a timely manner.’ I pointed out these shortcomings to the companies and asked for help. I always got the same answer: ‘We’ll take care of it.’ But nothing happened. I got fed up waiting.”

Hedrick’s solution? Build it himself. He started Revolution Drones . “Need a certain type of tractor? Some company builds that. Need a certain type of combine? Some company builds that. Agriculture machinery has always met farmers with what they need—except for drones. As a farmer, I decided to meet and exceed the needs of my fellow farmers, and at the same time, bring the manufacturing and production to the U.S.”

“Agriculture drones are a key to farm survival, all backed with simple, verifiable numbers that show a giant difference in dollars,” Hedrick notes.

(Photo by Revolution Drones)

Farm innovator to the core, Hedrick already had access to software production through co-ownership of Soil Regen . He partnered with Gteex Drones in Brazil, another farmer-led business,

“Our goal is going to be to be transparent with our customers. We say that we’re made in the U.S., and after that, we say what percentage that is. So, currently, we can build up to 60% of our parts in the U.S. Literally, that means if there’s 200 parts to a drone, and I say it’s 60%, then 120 of those pieces were built right here with American workers from Illinois to Indiana, to Iowa to North Carolina to Georgia. No selling data and we build all our own software, period.”

Drone utilization in agriculture is about to go nuclear, far beyond present use, Hedrick insists. Why? Simple economics.

“Not Even Imagined”
Custom aerial application rates vary, but often run $12-$14 per acre. Likewise, custom drone applications can hit $14-$16 per acre.

“I understand people don’t have time to learn new things. I also understand the desperate need guys have now to cut costs, and running your own drone is a profitability gamechanger.”

The math is undeniable, Hedrick contends. Agriculture, he believes, is at the get-go of historic technology change, echoing the breakthroughs of yesteryear, whether steel plow or mechanization.

“We’re starting an era where you literally won’t find a farm with a planter that doesn’t also own a drone,” Hedrick contends, “because the savings and functions are incredible.”

(Photo by Revolution Drones)

Initially, drones were viewed as a hammer searching for a nail: a single-use tool. However, drones will become a farm’s Swiss Army Knife, Hedrick insists, with an ever-increasing capacity to house more blades and tools.

“This is only starting and it’s not just about fertilizer and pesticide. We currently have drones with 30-gallon capacities, and much bigger ones are coming. We’re able to cover well over 1,000 to 1,500 acres a day with a drone. We even have heavy lift drones to deal with breakdowns in the field. When a pivot tire goes down, a drone will lift and carry a replacement out there to the section. A motor down? It’ll carry a motor. A blizzard? A drone will carry hay bales to your cattle.”

“Farmer-owned and operated drones are going to be absolutely standard in row crop operations. If a guy has a tractor, he’ll have a drone. If a guy has livestock, he’ll have a drone.”

And autonomy? Drones are tailor-made for AI technology. “You hear about autonomy all over the farm, but a lot of it is theoretical and down the road. Not so with drones. This is coming fast and its concrete. The value of drones on the farm, as high as it is today, will soon go up to levels not even imagined yet.”

Push to Profitability
In 2024, during the deadly and catastrophic impact of Hurricane Helene, Hedrick was on the scene in the worst-hit areas of North Carolina, at the forefront of relief supply delivery to stranded families—via drone.

“That was another example of how much we learned about the expansion of drones in all areas of life. In farming, that expansion is going to change the future of all our operations, because drone technology is going to push agriculture to profitability,” Hedrick concludes. “That’s how dramatic the drone impact will be.”

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

When Conservation Backfires: Landowner Defeats Feds in Mindboggling Private Property Case

Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer

Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust

Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing

Weather or Management? Unveil the Variation Causing Your Yield Swings

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 18:30:23 GMT

Farmers can’t control the weather—but they can control which practices they repeat. Acre Almanac, an AI-driven platform built by western Minnesota farmer and Bushel co-founder Ryan Raguse, uses years of your field history to identify what most likely drove yield variability across your operation—so you can tell whether a 5–10 bushel swing came from conditions or decisions.

When Ryan Raguse took over his family’s farm after his father’s death from cancer, he had the historical yields, but he couldn’t ask anyone the questions to reveal the decisions that led to those outcomes.

“I started to build this just for myself, but then I realized everyone has fields they wonder what led to 5 or 10 bushels. And while you have university studies or other field trials that tell you X, Y, Z adds up to this many bushels, this is giving you your own private almanac,” Raguse says.

You need three things to get started:

Field boundaries
Planting dates
Your APH

After those three data layers are input into Acre Almanac, any number of other variables can be added in its modeling to identify what led to different yield outcomes. All data remain private to your account—nothing is shared or aggregated.

“What it does is regression testing to tell you what drove your variance in your yield, and then over time, you can detrend things,” he says. “For example, you can tell whether a practice added more bushels or if it was just good weather. You can normalize every variable across your farm and just pick one you’re testing—it allows you to analyze it across your entire farm all at once.”

Examples farmers can compare include running cultivators at an angle, tillage depth, or spiked vs. solid closing wheels, and more.

(Acre Almanac)

For Raguse, he’s been able to see how early soybean planting pays off across his western Minnesota acres.

“This year, I’m thinking about planting all my soybeans first, instead of my corn,” he says. “In farming, everything is an if-this-then-that statement. So, if all my fields were ready at the exact same time, I would prioritize planting my soybeans. But as I can, I’m putting my soybeans in early because the data shows there’s going to be an outsized benefit.”

He says the goal of Acre Almanac is to answer questions that previously weren’t easy to answer unless you had a career of firsthand experience.

“My dad didn’t keep the best records. So I was calling the co-op, the seed person and anyone who could help me piece together the history of the farm,” Raguse says. “That’s where this idea came from to uncover this generational knowledge that was impossible to otherwise extract. We’re creating a private almanac that can be passed down digitally.”

He adds, “Maybe it was 95% dependent on weather one year. But you hear that all the time and you hear about the ‘secret sauce’ — so this really is about understanding the depth of your decision-making and what’s making a difference.”

Could Your Future Tractor Run on Corn? John Deere Thinks So

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 16:38:14 GMT

As the ag economy searches for the next evolution of demand, Deanna Kovar says the future tractor might not just sip diesel, it could run on E98 ethanol grown by farmers themselves. In an exclusive interview with Farm Journal , Kovar said the tractor is still in trials and testing, but John Deere is debuting the E98 tractor, and engine, during Commodity Classic next week.

Kovar, president of the Worldwide Agriculture & Turf Division, Production & Precision Ag for John Deere, says the company is actively testing an ethanol-powered tractor in Iowa and other locations. While diesel remains the dominant fuel across production agriculture, Deere engineers are exploring whether high-ethanol blends could offer a cleaner, farmer-driven alternative.

“We’re not just thinking about diesel,” Kovar says. “We’re also considering how might we fix this problem another way. And that’s an ethanol tractor.”

A Tractor Fueled by the Farm

With so much talk about E15 and what that would mean for added domestic corn demand, Deere is taking it a step further for farm equipment. The concept centers on E98, a fuel blend made up of roughly 98% ethanol (the remaining 2% is denaturant). Unlike traditional diesel engines, an E98-powered tractor would burn clean enough that it would not require diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) to meet emissions standards.

That’s a notable shift in an era where emissions systems add cost, maintenance and complexity to modern equipment. But for Kovar, the opportunity goes well beyond simplifying aftertreatment systems.

“The idea that we could use E98 to run a tractor, it’s so clean you don’t need diesel exhaust fluid to run it,” she says. “It would allow a farmer to grow the fuel that they put in their tractor to grow next year’s crop.”

That means corn grown in the field could be processed into ethanol, then returned to the farm as fuel — creating a tighter, more circular production system while generating more demand for the crops farmers already grow.

From Concept to Cornfield

One of the farmers helping test that concept is Tim Burrack of Arlington, Iowa, who recently shared his experience on “AgriTalk”.

Burrack first heard about the ethanol tractor while traveling and speaking with Deere representatives.

“They were talking about this tractor they had built that ran on 100% ethanol — or actually 98%, because ethanol is denatured,” Burrack says. “And I said, ‘Well, I’d sure like to have that tractor on my farm.’”

Before fall harvest ended, Deere delivered.

For five days, Burrack put the prototype to work, four days on a grain cart and one on tillage. The tractor, which Burrack says looks like a traditional John Deere 8R, is rated at 350 HP. Burrack says Deere has built only a handful of the prototypes, with one reportedly operating in Brazil and another in Iowa this past fall.

“I’m really thankful I got to run it, and I’m extremely impressed by it,” he says.

Unlike today’s high-horsepower diesel machines, the E98 tractor uses a spark ignition engine, a major departure from the compression ignition systems farmers are accustomed to.

“If you can imagine this, though, having 350 horse using electronic ignition, we’re not used to that in agriculture anymore at that large scale,” Burrack says.

In the field, however, he says performance spoke for itself. Hooked to an 1,100-bushel grain cart, the tractor handled full loads during harvest without issue. On tillage, Burrack says it performed “really well.”

Fuel consumption, he notes, ran about 1.65 gallons of ethanol to equal the energy performance of one gallon of diesel, which is consistent with the lower energy density of ethanol compared to diesel fuel.

The prototype isn’t perfect. Burrack says cold-weather starting remains a challenge, and Deere engineers are still refining the system.

“They know the problems they’ve got to resolve,” he says. “But I think John Deere is committed to making this work.”

The Infrastructure Hurdle

Kovar emphasizes the biggest barrier to adoption isn’t necessarily the engine itself.

“I don’t think it’s the engine technology that limits how long,” she says. “I really think it is the infrastructure.”

For E98 to become viable at scale, the industry would need:

Reliable production and distribution channels
Fuel retailers equipped to handle high-ethanol blends
On-farm storage and dispensing systems
A coordinated effort from fuel companies and equipment manufacturers

“There is a ton of infrastructure that would need to follow to allow an E98-type fuel to flow and be on [the] farm,” Kovar says. “Are the fuel companies ready to deliver it to the farm? Do we have the on-farm ability?”

If that system were in place, she suggests, the technology could move more quickly. Without it, adoption becomes a longer-term play. Kovar wouldn’t give an exact timeline on how long it could be before it’s commercially available to farmers, but she says the technology in the equipment will more than likely be ready before the infrastructure to support it.

A Local Fuel Loop

Burrack emphasizes the close, convenient loop the idea creates.

“Just imagine, within 20 miles of my farm, I can grow the corn, take it to the ethanol plant, they’ll make the fuel and all the liquid fuels that I need will be made right here,” he says. “I think it’s a transformation of equipment. And John Deere needs some encouragement to keep moving, but it actually works.”

Diesel isn’t going away anytime soon. But as Deere continues testing, and farmers like Burrack put E98 prototypes through real-world paces, the idea of tractors powered by the very crops they harvest is moving from thought experiment to field trial, and possibly, one day, to a field near you.

Watch the complete interview with Kovak on YouTube.

Copper Thieves Cuffed by New Farm Security Innovation

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 13:01:51 GMT

Copper theft, at the bull’s-eye of agriculture crime since at least the 1990s, finally has a heavyweight foe on the farm—a watchman that never sleeps.

Amid the highest copper prices in history and 30-plus years of ag equipment destruction, Cop-R-Lock provides unprecedented theft prevention, contends Bobby Rader. “It’s as close to having a human being standing at your pump site, even in the most rural areas, as you can possibly get.”

Copper hit an all-time high of $5.96 per pound in 2025, triggering a blitz of theft across farms, substations, construction sites, telecommunications infrastructure, and numerous other industry hubs. Copper larceny sucks over $1 billion from the U.S. economy each year.

“From seed to water to machinery, we’ve got phenomenal innovation in every area of agriculture, except in the ag crime space,” says Rader, Chief of Police for Porterville, Calif. “Cop-R-Lock is the answer and there’s never been anything like it.”

Insult to Injury
A red metal plague is raging. Copper wire is easy to steal, and easy to sell at a scrapyard’s backdoor. Ground zero of copper theft arguably is central California’s Tulare County, often ranked as the No. 1 ag-producing county in the U.S.

Each year, Tulare and its surrounding Central Valley counties grow tens of billions of dollars in thirsty crops demanding water. The region is covered by pumps and irrigation systems housing a massive volume of copper wiring. Throw a proverbial rock, hit a pump. Drive a quarter mile in any direction, pass two or three pumps.

“This is not the California you see on television,” explains Rader, who led Tulare County’s Agricultural Crimes Unit for almost 16 years. “This is cowboy and ag country. This is rural America. It’s a place where drug addicts, particularly meth or heroin users, prey on pumps and steal copper. There’s an incredibly high amount of agriculture production here, and therefore, it’s a magnet for copper thieves.”

Tulare County is a flat valley maze of citrus and tree nut groves, i.e., plenty of pumps and farm sites just feet off the road with no line of sight for producers, landowners, or passersby.

“Up to now, copper theft has been easy,” Rader describes. “A criminal drives around at night, pulls 10’ off the road, and rips all the copper from a well, and nobody sees them and nobody hears them and nobody interrupts them. There is no immediate consequence, and the theft might not be discovered for days.”

“Cut off the ability to hide in the dark unaffected by consequence,” Rader says. “The opportunity belongs to the farmer and law enforcement now.”

(Photo by Farmblox)

Copper theft occurs year-round, but peaks from November to March, when fields and groves are often unmonitored and pumps are shut down. “It can easily happen during summertime and irrigation season, but generally, it happens over winter, when guys aren’t checking their pumps. If you’re a copper thief, you can go out at night and hit five or six pumps in one area, and nobody’s going to know about it for weeks. Law enforcement can’t get involved until it’s far too late.”

The copper theft burden shouldered by farmers is extraordinarily heavy. A thief hitting a small pump system might yield a mere $150 return in recyclable value, yet easily inflict $5,000-$7,000 in damage to the farmer-owner. However, if the given site houses multiple pumps and panels, the damage skyrockets to $100,000-plus. Insult to injury, the thieves often return and steal from the same sites after repairs.

“The worst I’ve ever seen at one site that I’ve personally investigated was about $150,000,” Rader notes. “That was the cost for the electrical contractor to come to the site, repair everything, and put new wire back.”

Multiplied across county and country, copper theft costs are staggering.

No more, Rader insists. The blue-collar lawman, raised in farm fields and shaped by a career at the frontline of ag crime, has developed a ferocious solution.

“Cut off the ability to hide in the dark unaffected by consequence. The opportunity belongs to the farmer and law enforcement now. Cop-R-Lock .”

Consequences Before Damage
What is Cop-R-Lock? Rader’s self-engineered tech innovation to protect farms from copper theft in real-time via a trigger wire attached to a sensor. The system protects a well system before theft and damage begin.

“A sensor is installed at the pump site. A trigger wire is integrated into the conduit systems at pump and panel, on the inside and outside,” Rader says. “That creates consequences immediately triggering Cop-R-Lock when anyone starts to cut the conduit or open the panels.”

The consequences are immediate and two-fold. One, extremely bright lights and a screaming siren go off. “It’s an absolutely overwhelming volume and creates a physiological response of stress in a thief.”

“We’ve got phenomenal innovation in every area of agriculture, except in the ag crime space,” says Rader. “Cop-R-Lock is the answer and there’s never been anything like it.”

(Photo by Farmblox)

Two, mass notifications are triggered. “It’s all controlled by an app. Whoever you put in the contact list is going to get the alert of the precise location where the attempted theft occurred. It can be anybody including family, employees, and local law enforcement. Everybody knows right away the system is being tampered with.”

“Literally, it shrinks the thief’s window down to minutes instead of hours, and it also ensures weeks don’t go by without someone knowing about the theft attempt.”

The tech, with a price tag under $4,000 per unit, extends beyond pumps and irrigation, and protects fencing, vehicles, batteries, and more.

“Run a trigger wire through chain link fence, or run it through multiple pieces of equipment, or anything else on a farm. Any cutting of that wire means instant notification to the owner. Noise, lights, notifications, and consequences—before damage.”

Genesis
After almost two decades trailing outlaws, Rader has seen every shade of ag crime. When he helmed the Agricultural Crimes Unit, 10 p.m. calls from frustrated farmers were a steady part of the job. “I’d hustle out and try to help, so furious over what some meth-head had done to another hard-working farmer. I grew up in these fields. I’m an agriculture guy and I care. These criminals steal several hundred dollars in copper, but leave behind tens of thousands in damage for a farmer. Or they leave behind a farmer who suddenly can’t irrigate and loses even more money. The whole thing drove me crazy.”

In early 2024, Rader was drowning a pot of leaded coffee at 3 a.m., wrestling his frustrations while considering how to stop a serial copper bandit who wrecked a chain of sites across Tulare County.

“I kept asking myself for a simpler solution. What are we missing? I’d searched the internet for years for something that instantaneously cut off opportunity, but there was nothing out there except another form of the latest, greatest game camera alarm.”

Prior to law enforcement, Rader was a contractor. Translated: His back pocket contains a mix of mechanical and electrical know-how. “I was standing by my kitchen counter, holding a coffee cup, and it hit me like a bolt.”

Rader grabbed a napkin and pen, and drew a blueprint. Two hours later, he transferred the scrawl to a notepad: Cop-R-Lock was born.

Assisted by a local engineer, Rader built five prototypes on a shoestring budget and filed for a patent. “I needed help and that’s where FarmBlox stepped up. They understood what farmers are going through and recognized how bad copper theft it. They jumped on it and turned it into what we have today, which is a protection tool for any farmer across the country or world.”

“We mail Cop-R-Lock to farmers and they either install it or get an electrician to do it,” Rader adds. “It’s an amazingly simple system to install and very easy to operate. One thing for certain, copper theft is not going away. The thieves are coming, but we’re ready with a tool that cuts off opportunity right from the get-go.”

At the Heart
Methods for copper theft prevention vary by farm, ranging from steel cages, wire frames, fences, and concrete poured around conduits. Rader’s innovation is common-sense technology, he insists. “It’s simple and strikes at the heart of the problem. We’re taking away a thief’s opportunity.”

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:

Outraged Farmers Blame Ag Monopolies as Catastrophic Collapse Looms

Family Farm Wins Historic Case After Feds Violate Constitution and Ruin Business

County Shuts Down 15-Yr-Old’s Bait Stand on Family Farm, Threatens Daily Fines

Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer

Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust

Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing

Farmer Unearths Lost Treasure, Solves WW2 Mystery

How Does Autonomous Machinery Stack Up Against Labor Costs on Midwest Row Crop Farms?

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 19:32:13 GMT

A first-of-its-kind academic analysis looks at labor rates and current autonomous solutions to spur a discussion on the tipping point for when the technology pays. Published by Chad Feichter, ag economist at Purdue, and PhD student Josh Strine, the recently released study looks at large-scale autonomous farming equipment and a Midwestern 50-50 corn/soybean farm.

“We were puzzled by what could potentially be the returns to these large autonomous machines because it seems that’s at least the trend of where we’re going,” Feichter says. “Also the idea there’s a labor shortage seems to be what’s motivating the conversation.”

The economists started with an economic farm-planning model originally developed at Purdue 60 years ago, updated it and plugged in a series of factors:

Labor rates
Production costs
Field size
Machinery/subscription costs
Equipment efficiency

The takeaway: Comparatively, autonomy is still an expensive alternative to average farm labor rates. Per the analysis, autonomy pays off when the labor rate is greater than $44 per hour.

“Currently, with where labor rates are, the autonomy solution across the board isn’t probably what we need in the immediate term, based on what we understand about how autonomy works and the productivity of autonomy,” Feichter says. “But if there’s a farmer who cannot find labor, autonomous machines will allow those acres to be farmed.”

Feichter says the current technology platforms installed on large-scale machines aren’t a one-for-one substitute for a human operator for a few reasons.

Profitability of autonomy hinges on three things:

the cost of autonomy subscriptions
the field efficiency of the machines
how much human supervision they still require

Co-author Strine says the ROI of autonomy is operation-specific to how the efficiencies of autonomy are realized. Their analysis included wide ranges in the variables to explore likely scenarios with today’s technology so as efficiencies improve there can be a comparison.

“Right now, the efficiency of the autonomy isn’t an advantage versus humans,” Strine says. “Maybe they will quickly get to 100% human efficiency, and it’s possible that it will surpass just having somebody driving that tractor. However, right now, oversight hours are required and the on-road transport is required.”

Where could autonomy pay off the soonest—Fiechter says it’s where high value tasks, in field efficiency and tightness in labor intersect.

“There are really high-value tasks, where you could potentially alleviate the labor challenge in the short run,” Fiechter says. “Maybe harvest is one of those where we would really see a benefit of having autonomous machines, whereas in planting time, it may not be quite as important.”

Manufacturers Report No Humans Have Been Displaced by Autonomous Tractors

Craig Rupp founded Sabanto, which sells autonomy systems to be outfitted on mid-range hp tractors.

“I had an epiphany after 50 systems,” Rupp says. “I’m not solving the labor problem. Farmers may buy as if we’re replacing labor, but they keep the labor, and it’s about quality of life. It’s about not spending 12 to 16 hours a day when they get behind or have to work weekends. And they are using autonomy to scale their operation—they are taking on more acres.”

Earlier this year Sabanto published a case study looking at seeding 10,000 acres with a traditional 4WD high-horsepower set up versus running three Sabanto outfitted tractors. The company’s analysis did not include labor costs, but evaluating the investment and operational costs, Sabanto says a traditional setup costs $18.88/acre the three Sabanto equipped machines cost $6.27/acre. You can read the whole report here.

His company has sold more than 200 systems in the past two years.

“We’ve put no people out of work,” Rupp says. “Farmers will adopt autonomy for labor when it’s the last choice they have.”

Michael Porter, large tractor marketing manager at John Deere, shares an anecdote from a customer over the Thanksgiving weekend.

“A great example this year is we had two machines running on Thanksgiving, and they literally ran while the farmers had their Thanksgiving dinner,” Porter says. “And the next day, when they got back out there, they had a couple hundreds acres already tilled so they can continue moving on with that fall field work.”

The quality of life autonomy adds to as well as the agronomic value of timely field work are added values manufacturers point to for being benefits of adopting these systems.

“That’s something that’s hard to quantify, football games on Friday nights, dinner with the family, all those things that’s a big part of it. Those quality of life things, they’re really hard to quantify, but people experience them, and once they experience them, they don’t want to go back,” Porter says.

John Deere autonomous systems cost between $40,000 and $45,000 for the kit, plus dealership install and yearly subscription fee, which is $10,000 for unlimited acres for tillage, for example.

Dinen Subramaniam, product launch manager for Outrun at PTx Trimble, has lead their team to deploy autonomous grain cart systems and tillage systems in Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and Georgia.

He shares a story from a customer in Nebraska who it’s a father-son farming duo, and the OutRun grain cart allows the father to truck grain while the son harvests supported by the autonomous grain cart. That 3,500 acre farm has been able to finish harvest in 20% to 25% less time.

“It’s really about the flexibility of the deployment of labor that autonomy gives you,” Subramaniam says. “Like having a grain truck driver rather than a grain cart driver, or having someone who can take a five hour break during tillage and let the autonomous system run.”

AGCO’s PTx OutRun tillage solution is $44,000 for hardware plus a $9,000 annual cost. OutRun’s modular model also includes autonomous grain cart operations, with additional tasks in development. A combined tillage/grain cart setup costs $55,000 for hardware and $15,000 annually.

Subramaniam also highlights agronomic benefits for fall field work getting done timelier when autonomous systems are used.

“Instead of straining into December with harvest trying to get that crop off the ground, autonomy can help reduce late harvest yield loss, which can be a 3% to 5% reduction,” he says. “We talk about an ideal harvest season, but the reality is there are always weather delays, mechanical delays, and more.”

There’s a trickle down effect of timely harvest, fall tillage and fall application.

“From a tillage point of view, we’ve also learned that there’s other benefits as well from better incorporation of crop residue, getting to tillage sooner so that that crop residue can break down,” he says.

The Purdue economists agree this is a space to watch as what’s possible with technology and the escalating labor issues intersect.

The Future of Agriculture: A Partnership Between a Farmer’s Experience and AI’s Intelligence

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 17:35:46 GMT

By Malwinder Singh Malhi: Ludhiana, Punjab, India
A student recently asked me two powerful questions that capture the future of farming and artificial intelligence: “Sir, can AI help us grow rice with less water? If yes, then why should we fear the future?”
I appreciate his optimism—and he is right. His questions reflect the wisdom we need today.
If AI can help us grow rice with less water—and it certainly can—then AI should make us excited about the future, not fearful of it.
Yet this perspective is not widespread. Globally, people are more anxious than enthusiastic about AI. A Pew Research Center survey across 25 countries found people were roughly twice as likely to express concerns about AI than excitement. Ironically, some of the strongest concerns come from the United States, the very country leading much of then AI innovation.
In India however the conversation feels different. Especially In rural areas, we don’t fear that AI will take our jobs. Instead, we see AI as a support system, a tool that augments our work, not replace it. AI is more likely to create new roles – in data collection, machine operation, crop monitoring, digital advisory services, and precision agriculture.
In short, we see AI as an assistant, not a threat.
I’m already using AI on my 25-acre family farm in Punjab. We recently finished our rice season and are now growing wheat for food, producing high-quality potato seed for other farmers, and cultivating corn for silage.
In our rice paddies, AI-powered sensors guide irrigation, helping us conserve water. In our potato fields, AI-connected sprinkler systems analyze real-time data to optimize irrigation and fertilizer application.
In both crops, AI has given us clear benefits:we grow more using fewer resources.And this is just the beginning. AI-enabled tools and small robotic implements will soon support farmers in spraying, weeding, and scouting for pests and diseases. They will provide timely information about prices and markets and help us navigate labor shortages.
What AI will not change is the farmer’s fundamental role. We will always plant seeds, care for crops, and harvest food. Our traditional knowledge will remain vital. But AI will increasingly enhance our decision-making and efficiency.

I often say the farmers of the future won’t just operate machines. We will also operate data. And AI will help us convert that data into practical knowledge and insights.
For example, a simple image taken with a smart phone can now detect nutrient deficiencies, pests, and plant diseases.. A young farmer recently told me: “We used to lose precious days waiting for experts to visit. Now AI tells me the problem and solution in minutes.”
As Global Farmer Network colleague V. Ravichandran says it perfectly: “ I have a plant doctor in my pocket .
With AI, Indian agriculture can achieve higher and more stable yields, reduced chemical usage, healthier soils, climate-resilient cropping patterns, and overall improved sustainability. Most importantly, it strengthens food security for the world’s most populous nation, home to roughly 1.5 billion people.
AI is not a robot replacing farmers. It’s a decision-support tool.Jobs will evolve, not disappear. We will still need farmers to collect data, operate machines, monitor fields and convert AI insights into real-world improvements.
This potential is already drawing young people toward agriculture. During a recent AI-training program at a rural school, I saw tremendous enthusiasm, especially among the girls.They were confident, curious, and ready to embrace this new era.
Our future farmers are teaching us something important:The partnership between human intuition and machine intelligence is not something to fear. It is something to welcome with confidence and hope.
Dr. Malwinder Singh Malhi is a 3^rd generation farmer in Ludhiana, Punjab, India where he grows rice, wheat, potatoes, peas, along with fodder crops of oats, rye grass and mustard.Malhi has over 30 years of experience working with farmers on the transfer of agricultural technologies to increase productivity. Malwinder Malhi is a member of the Global Farmer Network. www.globalfarmernetwork.org

Living Sensors Turn Soybeans into Fungal Disease Detectives

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 21:06:49 GMT

For Aidan Kleinschmit, trying to get the upper hand over white mold disease in soybeans used to involve a frustrating amount of guesswork.

White mold can lurk in soybean fields undetected for weeks, causing significant damage before any visible symptoms appear. Kleinschmit says his annual struggle with the disease turned a corner this past season when he decided to trial the use of CropVoice from InnerPlant.

“I remember they sent out an alert on a Saturday night about white mold being detected, and by Monday we had decided we were going to treat,” recounts Kleinschmit, who farms in northeast Nebraska with his dad and brother.

“That put us way ahead of the white mold, because by the time you see it some damage is done,” Kleinschmit adds. “You might get disease suppression from a fungicide at that point, but you’re going to have some yield loss.”

Early Detection: A Game-Changer For Disease Control
The proactive treatment Kleinschmit made included whole-field fungicide applications as well as some targeted spot spraying with a drone over 500-plus acres. The payoff was evident in yield results Kleinschmit saw at harvest.

“We sprayed one entire field in our bottom ground, and it made about 86 bushels per acre,” he says. “That was well over, probably 25 bushels better, than what some of the other fields in our bottom ground yielded.”

Gary Schaefer, chief commercial officer at InnerPlant, says the big takeaway with CropVoice is the tool gives farmers real-time disease detection, informing decisions on whether to spray a fungicide. This directly addresses the ambiguity that farmers like Kleinschmit have long faced with disease management decisions.

“CropVoice is designed to deliver ROI by either saving costs in years when spraying isn’t necessary, or by enabling timely, effective action during heavy disease pressure, significantly improving the efficacy and financial return of fungicide applications,” Schaefer says.

While Schaefer doesn’t say what the return-on-investment for using CropVoice is, he contends that for every dollar a farmer spends on technology or an input “they should get at least $3 back,” a number Kleinschmit affirms as being on par for his expectations.

A ‘Cell Phone Tower’ for Soybean Fields
CropVoice is the first product InnerPlant has designed for farmers. How the technology works hinges on a seed biotech trait the company has developed that turns soybeans into living sensors that detect disease at the molecular level. The soybeans emit a fluorescent optical signal within 48 hours of a fungal infection – before any visible symptoms appear.

The company is placing its soybeans in sentinel plots that act like an early alert system in a defined geography. CropVoice analyzes the data coming from the plots 24/7. If a foliar disease moves into the plots, farmers and retailers working with InnerPlant are alerted that the disease is in their area.

Schaefer says to think of the sentinel plots as working like a network of cell towers for farmers whose fields are the cell phones.
“What you’re subscribing to is the network of cell towers that gives coverage for a broad area,” he explains.

For 2026, InnerPlant is placing 100 sentinel plots in fields across Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and South Dakota to achieve the cell tower network effect for farmers in those states. Each plot will range in size from one-eighth acre to one-fourth of an acre.

Cultural Practices Play An Important Role
The soybeans grown in the sentinel plots mimic the cultural practices representative of soybean growers in each state. The strategy ensures highly relevant data for farms that are enrolled in InnerPlant’s program, which is implemented through strategic partnerships with retailers, Schaefer reports.

Farmers enroll their soybean acres in the InnerPlant network for a fee ($6 per acre for 2026). Retailers facilitate the process, mapping fields into the company’s program for retailers’ continuous monitoring throughout the growing season.

Participating farmers get weekly scouting reports, which include a disease score indicating risk levels in their area along with a detailed map showing any disease progression in their area. In addition, the company provides real-time disease alerts that are pushed directly to farmers via text anytime CropVoice detects a disease in the sentinel plots in thearea.

“The plants will turn on to any fungal pathogen,” Schaefer reports. He says end-of-year scouting reports from 2025 in Nebraska and Illinois revealed the detection of between five and seven different fungal pathogens in the company’s plots.

Kleinschmit says the proximity of the sentinel plots to his soybean fields and the early text alerts are two of the factors that sold him on enrolling a portion of his acres in the program.

“We’re only going to spray acres that we think are going to be affected by white mold at this point. I thought the technology really gave us a good benefit there,” says Kleinschmit.

“There are so many variables and moving parts in farming, so if there’s a way to help minimize the guesswork to help us make a good decision, I’m going to look into it and try it,” he adds.

Other technologies are also being explored by researchers for early soybean disease detection, such as hyperspectral imaging for charcoal rot and the Sporecaster smartphone app from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The latter predicts white mold risk based on weather data and field conditions.

Expanding the Network: Coverage for 2026 and Beyond
InnerPlant expects to scale up to more than 500,000 soybean acres across Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and South Dakota in 2026 and plans to expand beyond those states over time.

To learn more about the technology, farmers can connect with participating ag retailers or reach out directly to InnerPlant.
Schaefer says the companyis hosting demos this winter, offering a firsthand look at this real-time, plant-based technology that could redefine how farmers address key diseases in the future.

He adds that InnerPlant will start field testing a corn fungal sensor in 2026, aiming to expand the plant-based disease detection technology to even more farmers and geographies in the coming years.

InnerPlant is partnering with local ag retailers to introduce CropVoice. The 2026 retailer network includes:

Illinois
Sun Ag

Iowa
Agriland
FSC
NEW
Nutrien

Nebraska
Aurora Cooperative
CHS
Hwy 75-Chem
Norder Supply
Nutrien
Rawhide Fertilizer, LLC

South Dakota
CHS
Nutrien

From Risk to Revolution: McCarty Family Farms Named 2025 Leader in Technology Award Winner

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 17:47:48 GMT

On the open plains of western Kansas, where the horizon stretches wide and the wind almost never stops, sits a dairy operation built on grit, risk and the belief that bold decisions can change everything. Today, McCarty Family Farms is known across the industry for its scale and cutting-edge innovation, but its story starts 1,500 miles away in a tie-stall barn in northeastern Pennsylvania.

“We’re fourth-generation family dairymen, originally born and raised in northeastern Pennsylvania,” says Ken McCarty, one of the four brothers who own and operate McCarty Family Farms.

For more than a century, the family milked cows in the Northeast. But in the late 1990s, their parents made a decision that would redefine the family’s future: sell nearly everything, load what they could haul and move halfway across the country to Kansas.

“All that credit is due to our parents,” Ken says. “They have a big vision, and they have some serious intestinal fortitude. My brothers and I talk about this often, and we’re not sure we would have that faith and that courage at that age — to risk it all, pick our families up, move 1,500 miles and bet it all on us. Thankfully, it works out so far.”

In 1999, the family sold just over 200 cows and their equipment to head West. The brothers say they arrived somewhat naive, and that may have been their saving grace.

“When we left Pennsylvania, we sold 212 milking cows and just our equipment,” says Clay McCarty, one of the brothers who owns and operates the farm today. “We came out here a little naive, which is good. We’re so convinced we succeed that we don’t know how to fail. And that’s good, because the first five to seven years, we’re one mistake away from failure — probably closer to extinction than we ever realize.”

Building a Culture of Commitment

Despite long days, tight margins and constant uncertainty, the McCartys found support in the people who took the leap with them.

“We’re just determined we’re not going to fail,” Clay says. “We’re very fortunate. A lot of our guys who start with us in 2000 are still with us in 2025. We’re able to create a culture early where guys are willing to sacrifice — and they see us sacrificing, working 20-hour days.”

(McCarty Family Farms)

A Second Big Leap: Processing Their Own Milk

In 2012, the McCartys took another bold step and built their own milk processing plant — a move nearly as risky as the family’s relocation.

“In 2012, when we start that, we have no idea how to run a milk processing plant,” Ken says. “But we believe it’s the right thing to do for our partnership with our customer, the right thing for our farm and our family — and thankfully, it works out.”

The plant, built in partnership with Danone North America, allows the family to add value to their milk and reach markets far beyond Kansas. The McCartys have four dairy farms today, and Danone says McCarty Family Farms’ partnership is vital, supplying milk that helps churn out Danone’s yogurts and other products.

The relationship between McCarty’s and Danone is also a model for Danone’s farmer partnerships and involves initiatives to improve sustainability, such as water conservation and soil health projects.

(McCarty Family Farms)

Innovation as a Way of Life

Since establishing their operation in Kansas, McCarty Family Farms has grown to milk around 20,000 cows across multiple states and now employs nearly 250 team members. But what truly sets the operation apart is how deeply the family embraces technology, not as a trend but as a necessity.

“When it comes to technology, we don’t jump into anything lightly,” Ken says. “We spend a lot of time vetting technology, working with industry experts, people smarter than us. And we’re always searching for technologies that can fill a gap in our business.”

Those gaps — labor shortages, market competition, demands for traceability, animal welfare and sustainability — are pushing the family to innovate continually.

“As labor becomes a bigger challenge, as markets become more competitive, as demand for increased traceability or enhanced animal welfare or optimized sustainability grows, all of that forces us to look for innovation,” Ken says. “A lot of that comes through technology, whether it’s genetic evaluations, breeding strategies based on genomics, methane capture or feed additives that reduce enteric emissions and drive down our carbon footprint.”

Ken says the ability to collect granular, cow-specific data and then act on it is fueling the operation today, and the next frontier is already in sight.

“I think a few things are really going to push our farms and our business to the next level,” Ken says. “Machine learning and artificial intelligence — using those tools to create predictive analytics and tell us what’s going to happen to a cow before it happens — and robotics. Our farms run 24/7/365 in a diminishing labor pool. Robotics allow us to keep scaling and run our farms how we want, when we want, and turn labor into a more fixed cost.”

Looking Ahead: Water and Labor Still Loom Large

For all the technological gains, two challenges remain front and center.

“Front of mind in northwest Kansas is water,” Clay says. “It’s Kansas, Nebraska, Texas — this whole Ogallala Aquifer. How we manage that moving forward massively affects how our operations run. And if you look across the nation, the big bear in the room is labor. It’s hard to get, and there’s a lot of noise around immigration.”

A Fifth Generation Steps In

Still, the McCartys remain optimistic in part because the fifth generation is already stepping into the operation, tech-savvy and ready for the challenges ahead.

“We’re trying to bring back the fifth generation,” Clay says. “We’re a pretty young group. Ken’s in his early 40s, so there’s a lot of life left in us. We’re going to have to continue to diversify and be innovative and adopt the technologies that come our way.”

(McCarty Family Farms)

A Family That Redefined What a Dairy Can Be

From a small Pennsylvania barn to a high-tech dairy powerhouse on the High Plains, the McCarty family doesn’t just operate a dairy; they redefine the possibilities of modern milk production. They blend tradition with technology, risk with resilience, and vision with action.

For their continued leadership and groundbreaking commitment to innovation, McCarty Family Farms is the 2025 Milk Business Conference Leader in Technology Award winner.

WinField United Deploys Artificial Intelligence To Improve Its Agronomic Adviser Retention

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 16:45:18 GMT

It takes new solutions to fix problems otherwise yet to be solved. And that’s what WinField United sees as the opportunity to use artificial intelligence to help with team member retention. Specifically, as explained by Leah Anderson President, WinField United and SVP, Land O’Lakes, Inc, one in four retail sales agronomists in their system (Winfield United and its retail owners) churns out of the system every year.

To support their retail agronomists with decision-making and product recommendations, WinField United partnered with Microsoft to take its 800-page Land O’Lakes Crop Protection guide and build a copilot called Oz (named for the abbreviation for Ounce).

When prompted, Oz delivers fast, mobile-friendly responses. It is currently in its pilot phase with expected availability across the entire WinField United network next year.

Anderson says the project has two goals:

Support retail agronomists in their recommendations
Support decisions with a focus on return on investment

“This is about helping our agronomists be as productive and effective as they can be with the time they have,” Anderson says.

She says the Crop Protection Guide has been a valuable resource and making it more accessible with the technology will bring more value from the data sourced from the company’s Innovation Center, Answer Plots and more.

“Especially in this moment when farmers are under so much financial stress, there isn’t an ability to waste a dime on a product spend that’s not going to yield an ROI,” she says. “It’s about how we get the information in the hands of retailers and agronomists and farmers faster, better, so that they have more confidence as they’re making those decisions on their farm and managing their crop every year.”

More AI To Be Embedded In the Business

Anderson says this is phase one for Oz and signs of more of what’s to come from how WinField United uses artificial intelligence. Regarding tools for agronomists, she sees adding predictive analytics, emerging pests and more products and technologies. She sees how AI will be applied on the business side of WinField United as a distributor with logistics and predictive tools for inventories.

“We’ll continue to work on the overall efficiency of how product is flowing and moving,” she says. “We’ll work on getting to a point where, you’re confident the right thing is in the right place at the right time for the right purpose, even before you get the call from the retailer saying they need it.”

And AI has the potential to help transform the logistics of the business to meet the current demand. Speaking to how U.S. farmers typically plant their acres of corn and soybeans in a three-week timespan, the supply chain is “overbuilt” for that small time window.

She continues, “in order to make sure that ultimately farmers have everything they need, all of us, whether it’s retailers or distributors or basic manufacturers, we’re all doing everything we can to build really big piles of stuff and get it out into the country to be ready for whatever it is that the grower’s going to need. My observation about that is that it’s pretty inefficient today. The reality is, there’s too many piles of stuff, and they’re too big. And a lot of times, the piles just get returned back at the end of the season.”

WinField United will experiment in how to use AI to drive more efficiency in their supply chain.

“It really bloats a lot of people’s balance sheets, working capital, with too much inventory. We’re paying too much to store stuff,” she says. “There’s lots of inefficiency that comes from not having a really good demand sensing capability and appropriately designed forecasts. Everybody does their best today. This isn’t being critical in any way, but you think about what AI can start doing for us to be better modeling demand and forecasting, so that we can be smarter about how big those piles of stuff really need to be, and where they need to be.”

She concludes saying AI isn’t about replacing people or talent but rather doing business differently with an aim of doing it better.

“This gives us an opportunity, to show people the power of AI being an and–not an or–not a replacement, but an enhancer,” she says. “And so there’s a piece of this too just getting comfortable with what AI can be and what it can do for all of our shared businesses.”

Farmers Ask How To Set Up A Hybrid Chisel To Achieve Maximum Tillage Results This Fall

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 22:11:35 GMT

Ken Ferrie gets a lot of questions this time of year from farmers on how to do a good job of setting a tillage tool. “Farmers want to know what depth to go after, where to run it, when to use the cutters and shanks,” says Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist.

But before he can answer any of those questions, he says farmers need to be able to tell him what kind of system they use. Most commonly in central Illinois, row-crop growers are going with either conventional horizontal tillage or conventional vertical tillage.

Conventional Vertical Tillage: In this system, farmers often use a disk ripper or a chisel plow to work the soil in the fall and then finish it in the spring with a vertical harrow prior to planting.

Conventional Horizontal Tillage: Because you’re going to make your seedbed with horizontal tillage in the spring – using something like a soil finisher, disk field cultivator or high-speed disk – how deep you run the tillage tool this fall is important but not critical.

“With conventional horizontal tillage, it comes down to how fast do you want to pull the tool – more so than how deep you want to go – how much coverage you want of your corn stalks,” Ferrie says. “For a lot of people, they’ll find that spot where they have the horsepower to pull it at the speed they want, using their front-end cutters like we have here to try and get that coverage. That’s an OK approach, because you’re going to build your seedbed in the spring with a soil finisher.”

In a new video, Ferrie demonstrates how he sets the up a hybrid tillage tool for both horizontal and vertical tillage.

Achieving Full-Width Shatter
Ferrie says with vertical tillage if the fall pass is your primary tillage that you’re doing – where you’ll chisel or rip in the fall and then run a vertical harrow in the spring before planting – that requires a bit of a different result with the fall pass.

“We have to get what’s called full-width shatter from shank to shank,” he says.

To achieve that, Ferrie sets the tillage tool a bit differently. “I’m going to suck these disks up as high as I can to make sure flow still goes through the rig, so you’re not plugging up. But I don’t want these disks doing much work. I want the shanks doing all the work,” he says.

(Crop-Tech Consulting)

“This tool is doing a good job of laying things down level, and the amount of residue on both sides is somewhat equal. From the road, you would not know this tool is set differently for these two different types of passes,” Ferrie says.

You have to get behind the tool and down into the knife tracks to see what kind of shatter or soil fracture you’ve achieved.

After making the conventional horizontal tillage pass, digging behind the shanks reveals a humped soil bottom and solid berms in the video. These are problems Ferrie says you would be able to address next spring before planting, using a disk or soil finisher to shear off the berm.

In this photo, Ken Ferrie shows berms that have not been shattered but could be fixed next spring with horizontal tillage using a disk or soil finisher.

(Crop-Tech Consulting)

In contrast, a vertical tillage system requires more extensive shatter. The columns between knife tracks have to be fractured all the way down and across, leaving no solid berms. Otherwise, you’ll get a lot of chatter and bounce in your planter as you go across the field.

“We’ve got to shatter this thing in that 6” of this column. It needs to be busted up and shattered so it’ll disperse when we hit it in the spring,” he says, showing shattered berms in the photo below.

For conventional vertical tillage, the tool is set deeper to achieve full shatter from shank to shank, ensuring soil is well-tilled for a spring seed bed. Ferrie demonstrates here how easily the berms collapse as opposed in a conventional horizontal tillage scenario.

(Crop-Tech Consulting)

“In the conventional vertical system, we went down an inch to an inch-and-a-half more, so we could get the shatter so these points don’t make it all the way to the top. Digging behind the knife shanks here you see the columns in the middle, but the difference is these columns are fractured. So I’ve got these columns fractured, and I’m going to be able to come in here in the spring and buff this thing off to get a nice seedbed to plant into,” he adds.

Your next read: Drought Conditions Require Careful Attention To Fall Tillage Practices

Bitcoin Set to Revolutionize US Agriculture?

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 12:49:20 GMT

Pebble to landslide, Bitcoin is approaching agriculture and its impact will be seismic, echoing the benchmarks of farming history, including cotton gin, steel plow, mechanization, and biotech crops. Or will it?

Only 10 years back, on the turnrow or at the seed house, the mention of Bitcoin elicited mockery. Five years back, laughter. Now? The derision is replaced by inquiry.

Cryptocurrency, as a store of value to a medium of exchange, is on an economic collision course with agriculture, set to change American farms forever, contends a growing chorus of voices within the ag chain.

“Bitcoin is an absolute agriculture necessity going forward,” says producer Zack Smith. “People just don’t realize it yet. Soon, they will.”

First Bird to Fly
Bitcoin was created in 2009. In the eyes of critics, it was a lie agreed upon, or a pyramid built to topple. However, 16 years beyond Bitcoin’s birth, the online currency, thriving beyond the fat fingers of government, is among the fastest adopted technologies in world history.

In extreme northcentral Iowa’s Winnebago County, a stone’s throw below the Minnesota line, Smith works 1,200 acres of row crops and raises a small amount of livestock. He doesn’t flinch at the “first bird to fly takes all the arrows” maxim, whether innovating via wide-row corn, strip intercropping, stock cropping , or Bitcoin.

“Bitcoin is the currency of the future, and that includes agriculture,” says Iowa grower Zach Smith.

(Photo by Stock Cropper)

“It’s just a matter of time for Bitcoin in agriculture, and I don’t mean far off. In 10 or 15 years, Bitcoin could be a normal part of a farm transaction. It’s a question of when critical inertia hits, but Bitcoin will be utilized by folks in agriculture in the near future.”

“The people at the top of agriculture in power, the CEOs, big-time commodity traders, and agribusiness, are looking at Bitcoin as a hedge against dollar debasement,” he continues. “Again, it’s coming fast.”

Out of the chute, Smith sees Bitcoin as a store of value. “Look what’s happened to land. So many outside investors have entered the market, producing inflated land values that make no financial sense with the value of what is being produced.”

“That’s where I see Bitcoin making its first impact. As investors discover there’s something better than land and just as finite, something you don’t pay property taxes on, something you don’t have to maintain, something that is portable, I think land prices will drop closer to utility value, allowing young farmers better opportunities to compete in the market.”

At present, income surpluses are akin to snowflakes in hell, but Smith urges producers to prepare for change. “For those who put their fiat money into Bitcoin, and are patient, I believe they’ll be able to buy two to three times the land in the near future they would have otherwise.”

“The money printer isn’t stopping,” he adds. “Bitcoin is the offramp to the debasement problem.”

Jumping the Treadmill
A lone voice a decade-plus in the past, Vance Crowe has long been a proponent of Bitcoin in agriculture. Host of Ag Tribes and founder of Legacy Interviews , Crowe is adamant: Bitcoin is transformative for farming.

“Just a few years ago, people reacted negatively when I talked about Bitcoin. That’s been replaced with genuine questions and consideration. Bitcoin is going to become deeply embedded in how the business of agriculture functions, and people who’ve been trying to preserve the value of their dollars are going to move those dollars out of land and into Bitcoin. Guys who’ve gotten a 6-7% return on land are looking over at Bitcoin and seeing a 65 percent return every year for the last 15 years. The wake-up is happening in real time.”

“Five, 10, or 15 years, it’s going to completely change agriculture’s game,” says Vance Crowe, regarding Bitcoin.

(Photo by Legacy Interviews)

In March 2025, President Trump signed an order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve . Three months later, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to develop plans toward the use of cryptocurrency as a mortgage loan asset .

“It’s only a matter of time before ag lending starts realizing it’s a lot better to collateralize loans with Bitcoin, than to do so with cattle or maybe even land,” Crowe projects. “If you collateralize a loan with cattle or land, if that person doesn’t meet their obligations, the lender must assess, load, or sell. Only then does a lender get the money. Bitcoin bundles all of that into a 10-minute fix. Ag lending will become heavily enmeshed in Bitcoin.”

Government maintains the exorbitant privilege of seigniorage, i.e., printing reams of bills with no backing. Need more, print more. Conversely, Bitcoin is limited to a 21-million cap. Finite.

No central issuer; no board of directors; no CEO; and no marketing department. Just a vehicle, according to Crowe, carrying unprecedented opportunity for agriculture. “Farmers have been put in a position where they spend as much of the money they have coming in as possible, both for tax reasons, but also because the value of their dollars always goes down.”

(For a basic primer, see What is Bitcoin? The Explanation That Clicks )

“Bitcoin provides an unprecedented option where a farmer can say, ‘I’ve made this money and I don’t want to risk its value. I’m putting it in Bitcoin.’ That provides a way to jump off the treadmill of constantly buying new tractors, building more sheds, or constantly growing.”

Fundamental change is knocking, Crowe contends: “Five, 10, or 15 years, it’s going to completely change agriculture’s game.”

Proverbial Lightbulb
Raised in hardscrabble 1980s row cropping in southcentral Nebraska’s Adams County, Kevin Kimle watched his father barter. Side of beef for a farm repair; load of pigs for a used semi.

“It’s in our agriculture muscle memory: a means to trade in a different currency,” says Kimle, now an Iowa-based entrepreneur and agriculture economist, and founder of BitCorn . He serves as Rastetter Chair of Agricultural Entrepreneurship and director of agricultural entrepreneurship programs at Iowa State University.

“I view Bitcoin as one of the most important inventions in human history,” says Kevin Kimle.

(Photo by BitCorn)

“We’re at the beginning of a transition to a Bitcoin standard not only in the U.S., but globally, and I think agriculture is a natural first mover on the leading edge of that transition.”

Practically, what does that mean to a farmer? A seventh saved, according to Kimle . As in, annually turning a seventh of a crop to Bitcoin, generating at least two crops worth of Bitcoin by the end of seven years.

He still owns farmland in Nebraska and began researching Bitcoin in 2021. “I’m about four years into this. But my own simulation, if I had sold 10% of my grain for Bitcoin instead of dollars, I’d have four years of crop in Bitcoin today.”

In summer 2025, Kimle set up a business bridge between Bitcoin and traditional agriculture— BitCorn —intent on giving farmers tools, basics, and the means to make transactions.

“The proverbial light bulb went off. At BitCorn, we’re providing a place where a farmer can learn Bitcoin. Agriculture is packed with incredibly innovative entrepreneurs, and their ideas are going to take us down the Bitcoin road.”

Bitcoin trades 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year. “I view Bitcoin as one of the most important inventions in human history,” Kimle explains, “in the ballpark with the wheel, plow, printing press, electricity, and anything else.”

Our Children’s Money
Dennis Campbell is at the helm of Crystal Creek Enterprises, in east Iowa’s Clinton County, working with corn, soybeans and some wheat acres. Crystal Creek manages a portfolio of 10,000+ acres of owned, rented and custom farmed land.

“There’s a way to wake up and say, ‘I can buy $500 worth of something that’ll hold value as good as or better than land,’” asserts Dennis Campbell.

(Crystal Creek Enterprises)

Starting in 1854, Campbell’s forefathers scratched dirt outside Grand Mound, within proximity of the Mississippi River. His farming bloodline reaches back to Antebellum America, but although Campbell shepherds past legacy, his eyes are locked on the horizon. Internationally renowned for emerging technology, Crystal Creek is a consistent mecca for visiting ag delegations from Africa, Australia, Europe, and South America since 2013. In 2025, Campbell opened a BitCorn node on his farm. He jumped in the Bitcoin pool in 2023.

At present, Campbell estimates 85% of U.S. farmers take zero notice of Bitcoin. “They are nose to the grindstone, trying to juggle work, debt, equipment, and family, all while things get worse financially. I don’t know any more than anybody else, but I believe Bitcoin, at a minimum, is becoming a major tool in the toolbox to protect ourselves against an out-of-control government.”

“Just look at crop insurance, alone,” he continues. “You can spend $45 to $55 an acre insuring 250-bushel an acre APH corn. That’s crazy. I sure as hell won’t make 50 bucks an acre this year. Even if Bitcoin only gave some independence back on crop insurance, that by itself is enough for me.”

Does Campbell see growers investing a seventh of a crop in Bitcoin?

“We’ve got to put a portion of our proceeds in. If I could do that and have sufficient comfort to lower my 85% revenue harvest priced option insurance policy to 70% and lower my cost from $50 bucks to $20, that’s quite a savings account. Every year, regardless of how tight our belts are, we need to allocate a percentage of proceeds above and beyond our principal payments for land and green or red paint into something that can’t be debased and diluted by runaway government spending by 535 people in Washington, D.C.”

In 2025, Dennis Campbell opened a BitCorn node on his Iowa farm.

(Photo by Crystal Creek Enterprises)

Debt and the next generation loom large in Campbell’s view of Bitcoin.

“We’re spending our children’s money now and that’s what debt is. That’s what debt creates—a burden on future society and on future fruits of labor. It’s madness and we all talk about land as the best store of financial resources, but land is difficult to accumulate at a fractional pace. It’s not easy to wake up and say, ‘I’m gonna go buy 80 acres today,’ but there’s a way to wake up and say, ‘I can buy $500 worth of something that’ll hold value as good as or better than land.’ Bitcoin.”

Adios to the Rulebook
“The smartest thing somebody in agriculture could do is go down and borrow a bunch of money against traditional collateral and use that money to buy Bitcoin.”

Bold words. However, Matt Gilbert maintains Bitcoin future for agriculture is inevitable and backs his contention with receipts. Raised in the vast fields of Texas cotton country, Gilbert is an esteemed entrepreneur with specialization in mergers and acquisitions. He calls balls and strikes.

“Before my lifetime ends, the old playbook will be obsolete, and those prepared today will lead the charge into tomorrow’s agriculture economy,” says Matt Gilbert.

(Photo by Gilbert & Associates)

“Modern farmers invest heavily in equipment, infrastructure, and resources, yet the real paradigm shift lies in leveraging advanced financial tools. Up and down the agriculture supply chain, whether you’re manufacturing machinery or distributing fertilizer, nearly every participant depends on traditional lines of credit,” Gilbert explains.

“Financing in dollars is trapped in a cycle of diminishing returns—a negative loop. But using Bitcoin as a store of value creates an entirely positive feedback loop. If you’ve held Bitcoin during any four-year window since its inception, historically your purchasing power has multiplied, matching up to nearly 12 times what a dollar-based payment could achieve. This shift isn’t incremental—it’s transformational for agricultural economics.”

Adios to land or physical assets as necessary collateral? Yes, Gilbert says. “Choose any era in history: mass-market automobiles, television, the arrival of the Internet. Bitcoin’s adoption curve is exponentially steeper than any previous innovation. It stands alone as an asset that appreciates with unrivaled velocity, fundamentally altering the financial landscape for growers and agribusinesses.”

Agriculture trade is conducted via the U.S. dollar, which loses at least 3-5% per year in value. Tack on the price of inflation, and farmers see 10%-plus of dollar value slip away, annually. “Those numbers are incredibly disheartening,” Gilbert details. “For example, if someone got paid for a crop in 2023, sat on a little of the money, and decided to spend it in 2026, they’re going to have somewhere between 25-40% less purchasing power with the dollars they saved. That’s a giant problem. Bitcoin solves that problem.”

Bitcoin’s adoption rate has been phenomenally steep.

(Graphic by BlackRock)

“The implication for farmers and ag professionals is clear: Understand the currency paradigm shift, because the money you’re using, the dollar, is undermining your business more than you realize,” he says.

“My advice to those in agriculture is to leverage the advantages of both systems; pay expenses in dollars, but demand income in Bitcoin—the most secure and robust cryptocurrency. Weak currencies burden, but robust currencies liberate. It’s time for agriculture to pivot toward strength.”

What about buying farmland? Tokenization, Gilbert posits. “It’s already happening. Commercial real estate has been tokenized in the last couple of years. Agriculture assets are going to follow. Tokenization is the future, not theory. It’s reality. Commercial properties have already been fractionalized on the blockchain (the network Bitcoin runs on), and agriculture is next in line.”

Think apartment complex or condo in New York City. The building can be bought by tokenizing the real estate, meaning multiple people buy a portion. One buyer in Kansas; another in Indiana; more elsewhere, all purchasing 500 square feet apiece via the blockchain.

“Imagine democratizing rural assets. A family in Iowa, an investor in Mississippi, and stakeholders from across the nation jointly tokenizing a farm. The blockchain ledger transparently records every transaction, making ownership, lending, and risk radically clearer and more efficient than ever before. This will overhaul deed registries, middlemen, banking, and title services, drastically cutting costs and speeding processes.”

Markets also benefit, Gilbert believes. A futures contract is typically bundled in lots of 100, whether hedging crops, fuel, or fertilizer. Bitcoin splits the bundle into fractions of 1 million. “Instead of the current way things are primarily done, which is 100 units equals a contract, Bitcoin breaks that into a million pieces instead of 100 pieces, which means a far more level playing field for the person in agriculture versus the person in finance.”

The next 15 years will be telltale, Gilbert predicts. “Having studied the Bitcoin space since 2013, I’ve witnessed digital currency realize in a decade what it took the dollar more than a century to accomplish, without systemic debasement. Within the next fifteen years, financial rules governing agriculture will be rewritten, marking a generational inflection point. Before my lifetime ends, the old playbook will be obsolete, and those prepared today will lead the charge into tomorrow’s agriculture economy.”

What is Money?
Bitcoin naysayers abound. Ponzi party. Bernie Madoff special. Dot.com crash all over again. Sam Bankman-Fried unleashed. Cinderella at midnight .

Pitfalls? Certainly. Black swans. Always.

The Trump administration has generated strong support for Bitcoin, but the perspective of subsequent administrations is unknown. What about the Bitcoin blockchain—how secure will it be in years to come?

However, bolstered by steady gains and landmark promise, the past 16 years of Bitcoin have shown otherwise, contend Crowe, Kimle, Campbell, Gilbert, and Smith.

A handful of years in the past, Smith was a Bitcoin scoffer. Scam. Scheme. Trainwreck.

No more. He now sees Bitcoin as bell cow.

“It’s a question of when critical inertia hits, but Bitcoin will be utilized by folks in agriculture in the near future,” concludes producer Zach Smith.

(Photo by Stock Cropper)

“Whether Bitcoin is a store of value or medium of exchange in farming, it’ll be one or both,” Smith concludes. “Over the last 10 years, I’ve asked myself the hard question, ‘What is money?’ The best answer is to make the effort to find out for yourself. Go to Amazon and buy a copy of The Bitcoin Standard . Might be the most valuable $20 you’ll ever spend. Why? Because Bitcoin is the currency of the future, and that includes agriculture.”

For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told

How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer

Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust

Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing

Farmer Unearths Lost Treasure, Solves WW2 Mystery

3 Ways To Protect Your Ag Business from Cybersecurity Threats

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 14:57:59 GMT

Agriculture is in the bull’s-eye for threat actors trying to access business information. But as Chris Sherman says: “Our keys in the visor mentality” has many farmers trusting too much and putting too much at risk.

Sherman is the founder of Tech Support Farm, an IT and cybersecurity consulting business who works with farmers, co-ops, custom harvesters and more ag businesses to shore up their systems, lock down their sensitive information and stay attuned to emerging risks.

The FBI has listed agriculture as a critical infrastructure for cybersecurity.

So where do most farmers leave themselves vulnerable to hackers? Sherman shares these:

1. Email

Sherman points to email as the No. 1 priority for farmers on where to start in taking cybersecurity seriously.

“The amount of information and data we are sending via email leaves every farmer at risk — from our FSA staff, agronomists, banks and more,” he says. “Emails can be intercepted, all contents can be exposed, and no one is the wiser. It would be like a rural mail carrier, and when he drops the mail someone stands there opening it, reading it and closing the envelope and putting it back in the mailbox. Foolhardy to be using the free email services such as Gmail, Yahoo and others.”

Here are four steps to shore up your email:

Get a domain
Get a commercial email provider
Get a filtration software (which monitors what comes in)
Get a DMARC compliance service (which manages outbound emails, so no one spoofs you and encryption is done properly)

As an example of why this should be prioritized, Sherman tells the story of a farm business working on a land deal.

“A dad and son were just about ready to sign, and the dad got an email from the bank, at least it appeared to be from the bank, but it was a spoof encouraging them to e-sign,” he says. “And everyone signed, and it drained the bank accounts and blew up the deal.”

2. Be aware of your personal information shared, and embrace “herd immunity”

All to often, farmers don’t have passcodes on their phones.

“That’s like leaving your credit card at the bar,” Sherman says. “For some reason in agriculture we are running multimillion dollar businesses on residential-grade infrastructure.”

He says by the nature of the business, enrolling in government programs, immigration workforce programs (such as H-2A) and more, make your address, phone number and email readily accessible.

“It’s a wealth of opportunity for threat actors. We can’t leave our doors and windows open,” Sherman says. “So you have to protect yourself, and encourage your friends, neighbors and business partners to do the same. If we are all reducing our individual risk, we are reducing the overall risk.”

3. Use high-quality passwords

Sherman says good passwords are must-have on all your accounts, including your Wi-Fi.

“Too often, farmers have their password just be a duplicate of the network name. Or if a farmer’s favorite tractor is a John Deere 4450, 4450 is his pin for everything,” he says. “When we are on the internet, it’s like being in the big city, and you have to act accordingly.”

Scientists Team with NASA to Grow Crops in Space as Zero Gravity Yields New Discoveries for Farmers on Earth

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 20:42:34 GMT

As humans set their sights on living beyond Earth, one surprising challenge is emerging: how do we grow healthy crops in the uncharted environment of space?

Purdue University researchers, in partnership with NASA, are answering this question by experimenting with tomato plants aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Their groundbreaking work could pave the way for future space colonies—and even improve agriculture back on Earth.

From Earthly Challenges to Space Solutions

Plants, like humans, are susceptible to diseases caused by microbes, bacteria, fungi, and viruses. On Earth, these problems are manageable, but in the confines of a spacecraft or a Martian colony, a sick crop could spell disaster.

Stranded astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) struggles to survive on Mars in “The Martian” motion picture that first came out in October 2015.

(20th Century Fox/The Martian)

Dr. Anjali Iyer-Pascuzzi, a professor of Botany and Plant Pathology at Purdue, has spent years collaborating with NASA engineers to develop the Advanced Plant Habitat—a growth chamber designed to give plants their best chance to thrive in space.

“For decades, NASA sent plants into space, but always in containers that weren’t ideal for growth,” Dr. Iyer-Pascuzzi explained. “With the Advanced Plant Habitat, we’ve finally created an environment where we can truly study and support plant development beyond Earth.”

Tomatoes Take Flight: Engineering Meets Biology

The journey from concept to space-ready experiment wasn’t easy. Denise Caldwell, a Purdue PhD candidate, described the difficulty of translating biological needs into engineering solutions.

“We faced problems like how to keep seeds in place and how much water to use,” Caldwell said. “I grew this successfully 22 times and so I felt confident that what we were doing was going to work.”

Their efforts paid off when, in December 2023, their tomato experiment launched to the ISS. By early 2024, astronauts began testing the system in space—an apex moment for Caldwell. “Watching from home with my children as the experiment began was surreal. We were learning how plants behave in ways we never could on Earth.”

Last week I saw plants for the first time in 4 months. I might have gotten a little teary. We get fresh fruit and veggies via our cargo vehicles and they provide welcome pops of color and scent, but it turns out this does not compare at all to seeing living plants and smelling… pic.twitter.com/AfxHemAUbz
— Loral O'Hara (@lunarloral) January 24, 2024

Unlocking New Knowledge for Earth and Beyond

One of the most exciting discoveries from the experiment is how microgravity reveals hidden aspects of plant biology.

“When you take away gravity, you start to see pathways and genes and functions that you normally wouldn’t see on Earth,” said Dr. Iyer-Pascuzzi. “So, for me as a scientist, that’s the really cool thing because we have this plant hormone that now we’re seeing connections, in space, when we remove the gravity, that we didn’t see here.”

These lessons have the potential to help farmers on Earth by unlocking new scientific knowledge about plant growth and resilience.

One key insight is that plants seem less concerned with the lack of gravity, as long as they receive the right light, nutrients, and carbon dioxide. However, some natural plant defenses are suppressed in space, meaning extra care will be needed to prevent disease.

Looking ahead, Dr. Iyer-Pascuzzi is optimistic: “Is it possible to grow crops on Mars? Absolutely—if we provide the right conditions.”

Stranded astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) discovers his potato farm has been destroyed as he struggles to survive on Mars in “The Martian” motion picture. (20th Century Fox/October 2015)

(20th Century Fox/The Martian)

As Purdue’s team continues to analyze data from the ISS experiment, their work represents a giant leap for both human and plant kind. Their research isn’t just shaping the future of space travel—it’s also helping us better understand and improve agriculture right here at home.

Reference:

For more on Purdue’s space plant research, visit Tomatoes in spaceflight: A giant leap for human and plant kind.

FBN Spins Out Its Crop Protection Business, Focuses on Marketplace and Technology

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 15:01:57 GMT

Last week, just a few hours after Corteva announced its spin out dividing seeds from crop protection, Farmers Business Network (FBN) announced it is separating its businesses. Moving forward FBN will focus on its digital marketplace for farmers, and the newly launched Global Crop Solutions will be an independent supplier of crop protection products.

FBN leaders say the timing is coincidental. Their motive for the timing was brought about by the new fiscal year. But they offer both of the announcements together could be a sign of a trend of vertical integration getting unwound in the name of efficiency and focus.

“We’re doubling down, allotting capital on digital innovation for FBN’s future,” says Diego Casanello, CEO of FBN. “FBN’s core business is a digital commerce and fintech platform. We want farmers to be able to buy, finance, and market everything they need while sitting in their combines. These are technology challenges, so the core competence you need to be successful at FBN is different from managing the supply chain of the crop protection business.”

In the past 14 months, FBN has been refocusing its business. First, it spun off its insurance business, then its Gradable business into a joint-venture with ADM. Now with its crop protection business spin out, Casanello says the FBN marketplace will feature GCS products, such as Willowood USA branded products, via a strategic partnership, and GCS products will explore distribution beyond the FBN marketplace.

“The big unlock for GCS is the opportunity to serve the entire retail and co-op industry,” Casanello says. “It frees GCS of any channel conflicts and hits the ground running with one of the largest portfolios of products in the industry. And it frees FBN from similar constraints as we move to an open marketplace architecture. We are onboarding new sellers and their portfolios every week. We provide them the tools to manage pricing, marketing, and placement. FBN is open for business and we’ve had significant interest from additional partners before and after the announcement.”

FBN’s Marketplace Strategy

Currently, FBN says it has 120,000 farmer members in the U.S. and Canada. The business provides a marketplace with farm inputs and supplies, financial services and data-driven intelligence.

FBN co-founder Charles Baron says the FBN marketplace has expanded its product range to include crop protection, seed (with additional partner news coming soon), fertilizer, livestock products, veterinary pharmaceuticals, farm supplies and more.

“To farmers, there’s no change in their experience. And over time, we’ll bring an even broader assortment of goods,” Baron says. “You’ll be seeing announcements from us every two weeks or so about the suppliers coming on the platform. It’s one of the most exciting times in our history.”

The leaders say farmer use of e-commerce has increased every year since they launched, and in 2025 FBN served a record number of customers. “Farmers are really focusing on value right now and maximizing every dollar,” said Baron. And per their analytics roughly 35% of U.S. farmers visit FBN.com to browse inputs, apply for financing, or look for information.

The Future of GCS

As a newly formed independent crop protection supplier, GCS has a portfolio of 250 registrations on post-patent products. The company will specialize in sourcing, managing first mile logistics, developing new products and regulatory aspects.

To lead the business and its team, Amy Yoder, most recently EVP of FBN’s livestock division, is incoming CEO.

“Global Crop Solutions launches today as an independent powerhouse,” said Yoder, in a press release. “For the first time, our extensive portfolio and efficient global supply chain are fully available to all partners— from retailers, to distributors, to co-ops. Our independence unlocks immense growth potential and allows us to be the most reliable and collaborative partner to the entire agricultural industry.”

Take It Outside: Onetime Indoor Ag Pioneers See Opportunity Out In The Field

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 12:16:33 GMT

For the past year, the team at Soil Action has been working toward building an artificial intelligence driven product to sense soil nutrition in real-time. Whereas other companies have attempted to revolutionize soil testing before, co-founders Jack Oslan and Nate Storey say the AI tools available today are making what was once difficult or nearly impossible, possible.

“Soils are unknown and misunderstood,” Storey says. “We can use AI to understand soil better, and our goal is to come up with the instruments to solve the problem.”

Soil Action’s solution in progress includes building models and training models pairing near infrared spectroscopy with AI. Its goal is to reengineer the traditional process of sampling, shipping, agronomic recommendations, prescription files and applications while making it all in real-time. They are doing on-farm demonstrations this fall.

Before founding Soil Action, these two businessmen first met 12 years ago co-founded indoor agriculture startup Plenty. Storey’s time at Plenty was applying his laser focus on yield with innovation in algorithmic nutrition.

“I went into indoor ag because it was an area with the largest opportunity to drive yield. I have a lot of interest in yield,” he says. “In indoor, you can control everything and measure it–everything can be known in those systems and control every part of the process: root zone temperature, gas composition, and more.”

Now, Storey and Oslan want to bring those learnings outside and into the field.

“We got really good at understanding how to take an algorithmic approach to yield. It’s about understanding the yield equation, breaking it apart, optimizing individual aspects, and restacking them,” Storey says. “In row crops, the soil is the most important part, and to solve the yield equation we have know the variables that correlate and then begin to manage.”

What Does The System Look Like?

Currently, the beta version product is housed in a 3”x6” steel tube which can be mounted on any style of implement or equipment to automatically take measurements 4” to 6” deep every 50’.

(Soil Action)

“The real end goal is to have every equipment cab be mounted with an AI enabled agent to give you real-time measurements of what’s going on in your field,” Storey says. “It’s an AI agent focused on optimizing yield.”

The first testing was conducted in northern Iowa.

“We’re building our models on data collected from the field, and we’re using deep learning to ingest all of the information and help understand correlations,” Oslan says. “We can see everything that’s there, but we don’t understand everything that is there. That’s a focus for our work right now.”

“Holy Grail of Soil Sampling”

When it’s ready to be commercially available, Soil Action aims to provide results measuring two forms of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Other crop nutrients will be added in the future.

“Every expert we talked to said we couldn’t use NIRS in soil sampling, but the physics said we could,” Oslan says. “We took two intensive weeks using sand and manipulating it for measurements with NIRS, and our deep learning models can untangle data in a way classical statistical methods cannot. Now, it’s about how fast we can solve for soil nutrients with these newer tools.”

Soil Action says it aims to provide the equipment to farmers for a hardware fee of $10,000 paired with a subscription for the analysis on an annual fee basis.

Yield Lab Institute's Incubator Program Reimagines AgTech Investment

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 22:00:00 GMT

With a new international reach and rooted in agriculture, the Yield Lab Institute is launching HARVEST AgTech (Harnessing Agricultural Research and Venture Ecosystems for Sustainable Technology.)

This program is building from the foundation of the previous Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator IN2 program, which since 2014 has supported 77 startups. Twenty-six of those companies have worked with the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and went on to raise $290 million in funding, and five exited via acquisition or merger.

“IN2 is pleased to continue its commitment to agtech innovation by supporting this next chapter with YLI in St. Louis,” said Sarah Derdowski, IN2 program manager at NREL, a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory, in the announcement. “We’re confident this step will empower YLI and its partners to expand investment in agtech, create more opportunities for innovators, and help build a more resilient, adaptable future.”

The mission of HARVEST going forward is “empowering the global agriculture startup community through research collaborations, field testing, and direct funding opportunities, promising innovations can reach the market faster.”

HARVEST AgTech will bring on two new technical partners: North Carolina Plant Sciences Initiative and University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources. Additionally, the incubator will have a partner network with 12 regional ecosystems across the U.S. and international reach in Argentina, Brazil, Israel and the United Kingdom.

“YLI is honored to have this unique opportunity to build on the incredible foundation of the IN2 agtech program and continue to invest in high-potential innovations through the newly established H.A.R.V.E.S.T. AgTech program,” said Stephanie Regagnon, executive director for the Yield Lab Institute, said in the announcement. “YLI will learn from IN2’s success and ensure the core elements of the proven model stay intact including an internationally recognized external advisory board, a robust process for selecting cohort companies, and an expansive network of partners to refer companies into the pipeline. YLI and our partners also plan to expand the program in very meaningful ways in year one.”

Additional partners supporting the program are Breakthrough Energy Discovery, NREL Foundation and the Missouri Technology Corporation.

5 Questions to Consider Before You Invest in New Technology

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 13:46:12 GMT

Investing in new technology can be one of the biggest decisions you make on the farm. With so many new tools, systems and innovations hitting the market, it can be tempting to purchase the latest and greatest gadget with the hope that it will be a smart investment. But as enticing as new technology can be, the decision to make a big purchase should never be made on impulse.

Before you go signing on the dotted line, Stephanie Plaster, Extension farm management outreach specialist, and John Shutske, UW-Madison professor and Extension specialist in biological systems engineering, recommend asking yourself five key questions that can help determine whether a new purchase is truly the right fit for your farm.

1. What Issue Are You Hoping To Solve?
“The first question you should ask yourself is, what issue or challenge are you hoping to solve?” Plaster explains. “Understanding what is driving your decision to invest can help you evaluate whether this will be worth both the financial cost and the inevitable discomfort of the adoption transition period.”

While new equipment can make productivity and efficiency easier, technology is rarely plug-and-play. It requires time to learn, integrate and adapt. If you don’t clearly understand the benefits it provides and how those benefits justify the cost, you may end up investing in a solution that doesn’t truly address your needs.

2. What Are Your Skills And Interests?
Your strengths and preferences can make or break a technology investment. Knowing what you and your team are comfortable with can determine how smoothly a system is adopted and used. Technology that aligns with your skills and interests reduces frustration, speeds up integration and increases the likelihood the investment will deliver the results you are expecting.

“This might seem like a silly question when considering autonomous equipment, but it could make or break the success of the technology adoption or change management process,” Plaster says.

If you’re comfortable with software, data analysis and troubleshooting, certain systems might be a perfect fit. If not, you may want to choose technology with strong dealer support.

“Playing to your strengths and minimizing your weaknesses is a solid strategy,” Plaster adds.

3. Do You Have Reliable Internet Access?
Many of today’s technologies require consistent connectivity for updates, monitoring and troubleshooting. Without reliable internet, systems may not run as expected. That’s why verifying your internet connection beforehand is essential so the technology can perform as intended from the start.

“Do you have broadband internet access you consider both accessible and affordable?” Shutske asks. “By formal definition, we’re talking about a speed of at least 25 megabits per second for downloading and three megabits per second for uploading data.”

For farms in rural areas, this may require exploring alternative solutions like fixed wireless, satellite or cellular-based services before implementing connected technologies.

4. Is There Adequate Service Infrastructure?
Even the most advanced equipment will eventually need service, whether it’s routine maintenance, troubleshooting or unexpected repairs. According to Shutske, having access to knowledgeable technicians and reliable support can make all the difference between a smooth operation and days of downtime.

“It’s really important to ask questions of your technology supplier or vendor,” Shutske says. “Our research shows that it’s proving to be a real challenge for local technology companies who want to hire excellent people with technology skills to work in and service agricultural areas.”

He encourages farmers to ask vendors about their staffing, average response times, remote troubleshooting capabilities and how they support customers during the startup phase.

“Will they be able to support you remotely if a service technician cannot come out and travel to your farm?” Shutske asks. “Reliable service infrastructure is essential for smooth operation and maintenance.”

5. How Comfortable Are You With Your Finances?
Ultimately, the decision to invest comes down to the numbers. Not just whether you can afford the purchase today, but whether it will pay for itself and support the long-term health of your operation. A piece of technology that looks appealing on paper can quickly become a financial burden if it doesn’t deliver measurable returns.

“It’s critical to identify if the farm will have the capacity to achieve financial and production performance goals and objectives,” Plaster explains. “That means knowing your current financial position, understanding key measures like ROI (return on investment) and IRR (internal rate of return), and calculating how this purchase will affect cash flow and debt load.”

She notes that salespeople, lenders and accountants will all use different financial language. Therefore, the more familiar you are with the terms and metrics, the more confidently you can make an informed choice.

Build a Decision-Making Framework
While these five questions are a strong starting point, Plaster emphasizes the value of a structured decision-making process.

“To make informed decisions, it is essential to have a clear strategy,” she says.

Tools like a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and gap analysis can help you evaluate current performance, identify areas for improvement and determine whether new technology is the best path forward.

By weighing the problem you’re trying to solve, the skills you bring to the table, your infrastructure and your financial readiness, you can approach a technology investment with clarity and confidence.

Farming Doesn’t Follow All the Business Models, Unique Opportunity for Startups

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 17:26:50 GMT

It could be said success in business is driven by timing and people. And AgLaunch provides agricultural startups with the nexus of both.

With its AgLaunch365 accelerator, early-stage startups have programming paired with the coast to coast network of AgLaunch farmers.

It’s a story Michael Rhys and the team at Barnwell Bio experienced firsthand. Their company spun out of the same technology platform used for municipal waste monitoring during COVID-19, except they are applying it to biosecurity and animal welfare.

Rhys says there is no other program like AgLaunch in existence.

“The farmer buy-in was really important to us along with the product feedback and guidance farmers can give us on the feature roadmap we want to add to Barnwell,” he says. “What’s great about the AgLaunch network is the level of inclusion along the way and the how the farmer network shares their feedback in real time and we’re able to iterate with them quickly because of their candid insights.”

Barnwell Bio collects aggregate samples from animal byproducts, analyzes them for a broad array of pathogens and then shares the assessment of potential health risks with farmers and their veterinarians.

“We see an opportunity to change the sentiment in animal health from being reactive to proactive,” Rhys says.

Michael Rhys, CEO, Barnwell Bio

(Ashley Benham)

Two-Way Street

Just as the startups receive benefits from the AgLaunch programming, as do the farmers. Fundamental to its approach it getting startups on farms in field trials, the farmers who take part in those field trials can earn an equity stake in the companies.

One of the original farmer members to the AgLaunch network is Grant Norwood, a Tennessee row crop farmer. He was part of the farmer network who proved the concept of Aglaunch earlier this year and cashed out an early investment in an irrigation technology startup.

“Farming is a business that doesn’t follow all the business models,” Norwood says. “And if you are coming from non-ag background, the farmer is your insight early on to how to best finish development and finish designing the product. We share knowledge to how ag markets work and to purchasing models. For a startup company it can be a big jump ahead to have that insight that would otherwise take them several years on their own.

Norwood has done field trials with sensors, hardware, and biological startups. And he’s proud to be part of the network he says is “where inventors meet farmers to solve agriculture’s problems.”

While the group started in Tennessee, it has since expanded into the midwest and pacific northwest.

“We’re a diverse group growing a lot of different crops and raising a lot of different livestock. But we are like-minded in helping startup companies bring their ideas to agriculture,” Norwood says.

AgLaunch has officially opened applications for the 2026 AgLaunch365 Accelerator. Applications are due by September 15, 2025.

AgLaunch365 aims to provide the proving ground startups need to help reshape how food is grown, animal are raises and land is stewarded.

For founders who would like to learn more, AgLaunch is hosting short Q&A webinars:

• August 4, 1-2pm CT: Registration link.

• August 14, 12-1pm CT: Registration link.

• August 25, 12-1pm CT: Registration link.

Biodiversity Index in the Field: A Look at Diagnostic Microbiome Tests for Soil Health

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 21:04:11 GMT

In the past few years, about a handful of companies have emerged with tests to measure a soil microbiome of fields, give a biodiversity index and help farmers understand the effects of inputs on soil health.

All of these companies recognize the complexity of a soil’s biology, and they aim to bring new tools to advance regenerative agriculture. Different from chemical and physical soil tests, which are often used to gauge what the soil needs (for example, rates of nitrogen), microbiome tests can provide insights on what the soil can supply (for example, nitrogen fixation or decomposition processes).

And these companies see the microbiome soil tests as complements — not replacements — to traditional soil testing.

Biome Makers

With a goal of delivering agronomic insights, Biome Makers built its BeCrop technology pairing soil microbiome knowledge and machine learning. The company, which is based in northern California, currently services farmers across 2.2 million acres and six continents. The BeCrop Test provides a report on nutrient cycling, health and biodiversity to be used to improve yields, monitor nutrient cycling, and predict disease risks. ( biomemakers.com )

EarthOptics

Launched as Pattern Ag and now part of EarthOptics, this platform claims to provide farmers a predication of key field agronomic outcomes with more than 90% confidence. The company uses DNA sequencing to provide soil biological test results. It also offers a premium program combing the soil microbiome results, with sensor data, yield data and satellite imagery for soil fertility and crop planning. ( earthoptics.com )

RhizeBio

Based in North Carolina, RhizeBio says its test uses a proprietary bioinformatics pipeline to translate raw soil DNA sequencing data into soil health reports both informative and easy to use. The results can be bucketed into three groups: biodiversity, bioindicators and risk analysis. The RhizeBio report provides biodiversity data including the number of species within the soil’s microbiome, community evenness, primary members and functionality. This gives insights on a soil’s capacity in stress environments such as droughts, disease, disturbance rating and nutrient cycling potential. ( rhizebio.com )

Trace Genomics

Recently acquired by Canada-based Miraterra, Trace Genomics was founded in northern California and has a soil analytical lab in Ames, Iowa. The Trace Genomics testing uses DNA sequencing to provide insights on the soil microbiome. The technology combines soil science, genomics and machine learning to output a measurement of a soil’s bacteria and fungi. Combining those measurements with chemical properties, growers receive information on a soil’s health and productivity. The company also offers a year-round sampling program to help guide seed selection, input selections, fertility products and biologicals for 70 crops and more than 225 pathogens. ( miraterrasoil.com/trace )

Flying High and Digging Deep — Precision Ag from the Sky to the Soil

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 19:48:24 GMT

Josiah Garber found tar spot lurking in one of his cornfields the last week of June. The southeast Pennsylvania corn grower says that was a first for his farm.

“I’d never found it in July before, much less the end of June. I think the pressure this year is going to be intense with all the moisture around,” predicts Garber, who’s based in Lancaster County, Pa.

Tar spot commonly overwinters as spores in plant residue. During the subsequent growing season, rain and high humidity can promote spores which can be splashed onto corn plants and then develop into what is often called homegrown tar spot.

Tar spot spores can also become air-borne in a field and blow into new fields.

How significant tar spot infections become in any given season depends on the disease triangle – the interplay between a susceptible host, a pathogen and the environment.

A Two-Pass Program Is In Place

Garber’s plan to address tar spot – along with any other disease pressure that’s present – is to make two fungicide applications 21 days apart. This year, the first one went on the crop with a ground rig just before tassel and the second application will be made right after tassel, which was underway last week.

“This is the first time we went with a fungicide application this early, but I’m glad we did since we found the tar spot,” Garber says.

For the past five-plus years, he has been investing in two fungicide applications annually, with both made post-tassel.

“We found that that pays, and once we saw that it would pay, it just became part of our program,” Garber told David Hula and Randy Dowdy during their latest Breaking Barriers with R&D podcast, available now on Farm Journal TV. This episode offers farmers some serious actionable insights to help improve ROI.

To achieve good coverage with the ground rig, Garber says he applies a fungicide/water tank mix at 20 to 25 gallons per acre.

“We’ve been working really hard on our applications, trying to cover below the ear leaf to get optimum performance,” he says. “That’s our goal.”

Droplet Size Impacts Coverage And Efficacy

The goal of getting fungicide placed in the crop where plants can readily use it is what Matt Crabbe shoots to achieve with aerial applications. He typically uses 2 gallons of water per acre as the carrier, depending on the products being sprayed.

“I hear a lot of times people talking water, water, water, but a lot of water can go to the ground and take the product with it if you’re not careful,” cautions Crabbe, owner of Crabbe Aviation, with locations in North Carolina and Virginia.

“Because you’ve got bigger droplets with the plane, you’re putting out a little more volume, and it’s not going to necessarily stay with the plant like I found it does with the lower volumes,” he tells Dowdy and Hula.

To help ensure product stays on plant leaves, Crabbe usually applies products like foliar fungicides at 3’ to 8’ above the crop canopy, maintaining a consistent speed of between 150 and 160 miles per hour.

“I try to keep the application in that range, because our test results show that sets up the droplets at the right size for optimum coverage,” he says.

Get As-Applied Maps For Your Records

Dowdy asked Crabbe whether he provides customers with as-applied maps for their reference and records, post product applications.

“You know, there’s a lot of people that want to overlay yield maps, and then some people just want to trust but verify the good old Ronald Reagan way,” Dowdy says.

Crabbe says modern technology is making as-applied maps easier to provide to growers than in previous years.

“If you place an order on my website, I can press ‘done’ when I finish spraying a field and the system will give you a look at the as-applied map,” he explains.

Crabbe recommends farmers ask their aerial applicator directly about their mapping system as many now have digital platforms where you can get a password to access your specific maps and view application details immediately after completion.

Hear more about getting the biggest bang out of your fungicide buck from Dowdy and Hula on YouTube at Breaking Barriers With R&D: Flying High and Digging Deep — Precision Ag from the Sky to the Soil and on AgriTalk, with Host Chip Flory:

Your next read: Is 600-Bu.-Per-Acre Corn in the Cards This Year for David Hula, the Reigning World Record Holder?

New Chassis For Application: Terrana Biosciences Emerges From Stealth Mode

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 10:40:00 GMT

The saying in real estate is location, location, location. And that applies for technology being unveiling by Terrana Biosciences.

Emerging from stealth mode after four years of development, this Flagship Pioneering company is taking the RNA expertise of cousin company Moderna, and creating crop protection solutions in parallel but distinctly different than cousin company Indigo Ag.

“Terrana is coming out of the Flagship Pioneering ecosystem in Boston, and Flagship has a long history of working on RNA,” Ryan Rapp Terrana Biosciences co-founder and CEO. “Probably the best known RNA company is Moderna, but we have a whole host of other ones within the ecosystem, and it’s helped allow us to have all this knowledge about RNA, but apply it to solve problems in agriculture.”

Rapp says RNA is a natural solution to deliver proteins and RNA molecules that can solve many agronomic issues.

“Plants have natural RNAs inside of them that have been evolving with plants for thousands of years. They’ve been largely ignored, because when people are thinking about RNA in plants, they’re usually trying to find things that are making plants sick,” he says. “What Terrana does is we actually look at all the things that everyone else has not had the time to look at and we begin working with those and what we’ve developed from that is a class of three products: prevent, protect and improve.”

Still in pre-commercial phase, Terrana is working on its portfolio of biological RNA-based products that can work like a chassis to carry and deliver protein building information directly to the plant. Protective effects provided by such technologies include anti-insect, nematicidal, antibacterial, and one key solution Terrana is focused on is antivirals.
“We’re looking at some of the vegetable species where today there are severe problems with viruses in the in glass houses and protected culture, particularly like tomatoes,” Rapp says. “We’re working to create viral products that can deliver resistance to several different viruses that when you get them, you kind of have to destroy the whole crop in the greenhouse.”

(Terrana Biosciences)

While the company’s first development focus is specialty crops, Rapp is eyeing opportunities in row crops as well.

“Think about Asian soybean rust in Brazil. You’ve got farmers that are growing three crops of soybean a year down there and spraying up to 16 times. We believe with the way that our technology works we could potentially reduce that to one spray per cropping cycle. So it’s basically three sprays per year,” he says.

New solutions to previously uncontrolled pests, improved application efficicacy and climate resilience are all benefits Rapp says are possible.

He points to cherry orchards in the Pacific Northwest requiring chill hours–hours below 45 degrees Fahrenheit. And farmers have observed warmer winters, which leads to poor flowering, poor fruit set and poor quality fruit.

“Farmers don’t have good options today—they could cut down the cherry trees, move north to Canada, or replace trees with new genetics,” he says. “Terrana’s product lets us do something completely different. We could go in during the summer, spray those trees with our RNA based product, and actually attenuate or turn down the amount of cold hours that they need so that they can go back to being productive farms that are setting high quality fruit. This keeps those flavor profiles, keeps the cherries that consumers have come to love, and gives the economics back to the farmer.”

Terrana is aiming to have commercially available products in the next few years, pending regulatory approval, that can be applied as sprayables or seed treatments. And the company says its RNA-based biologicals can be stored at ambient temperature and will be formulated as stand alone applications or for tank mixes.

First of Its Kind: Farmers Reap Yield From Early Tech Investment

Tue, 03 Jun 2025 21:47:02 GMT

In a proof of concept moment, AgLaunch and 42 of its farmer network members, announce they have cashed out an early investment in an irrigation technology startup.

“We believe that first, farmers have to be at the center of any new innovation in agriculture,” says Pete Nelson, executive director of Ag Launch Initiative. “We set out with the premise of having farmers in the middle that could have a play in the ag tech sector, and we could probably grow companies better by putting capital, data and farmer influence on what the problem is.”

Nelson explains the AgLaunch engages startups very early, in pre-commercial stages.

“The core business is a group of farmers being able to identify problems in agriculture that need technology solutions and then searching for those solutions,” he says. “So we have these early stage companies now selected by farmers — think kind of [a] crowdsource. Our farmers are all voting up and down and then scaling those through an accelerator process focused on agriculture. Then they go into up to two years of field trials to help these companies. And farmers are taking actually stock in those companies as part of this whole ramp up through selection and field trials.”

First started in 2015, AgLaunch recognized while typical venture capital returns could be in seven or eight years, in agriculture the time frame could be closer to 12 or 15.

“But one of the companies we worked with very early with five farmers doing field trials in 2017 was an irrigation company doing predictable work mainly on pivots. We thought that company would grow in the U.S., but they are doing a great business in South America, and we had an opportunity to cash out with about a 5x on the effort we put in,” he says.

Of the checks farmers received, the lowest amount was in the hundreds and the highest was $9,000.

“This is the first time that we can tell in the world where a systematic process that farmers know how to get involved in is open to every kind of farmer, regardless of crop, gender, background, type of farm, this is the only time there’s a system like that that has been able to monetize these services in a holistic way,” Nelson says. “So we’ve delivered a check back to farmers for essentially a new farm product. That’s the proof point that we needed to take this all to the next level, and nobody’s done this in the world. Today, the AgLaunch portfolio is 39 companies in the pipeline, so it’s just the beginning of delivering cash returns,” Nelson says.

How can you get involved?

“What are the only things that aren’t going to change over the next decade in agriculture? They are farmers and eaters. And we’re in this unique environment where everything else is at play,” Nelson says. “We’re going to build a network of farmers that can help bridge how we farm now to how we farm in the future, and that becomes sort of the gateway toward how we think about innovation and what we’re building together.”

AgLaunch has forged partnerships with Ag Ventures Alliance in Iowa and The Pacific Northwest Ag Innovation Cluster in Oregon to form a national network.

Specifically, Ag Ventures Alliance and AgLaunch have formed a joint venture, Farmers Innovation Network , in which any farmer can get involved.

“Our tactic is to build with the farmers,” Nelson says. “If we get all the right farmers into this network at the right terms, then we’re actually building the ag tech system, which I would say right now is flailing.”

Going against the grain, Nelson says he and the AgLaunch team are ready for the next big win.

“We’re gonna have a few more solid base hits over the next 18 or 24 months,” he says. “But what we’ve also gotten better at doing is picking better companies as our reputation has grown up. So the farther along in general, the bigger ones are still going to be out in that five to seven years, because they’ll just have been coming in over the last two or three years. There’s even massive potential as we keep growing to get bigger checks and to tie the outcome of the technologies even more closely to the long-term outcome of the farmers.”

Heads Up: Space Weather Could Disrupt GPS Signal This Week

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 17:01:55 GMT

The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration has updated its expected arrival of a G4 severe geomagnetic storm. Initially expected to be observed June 2 to June 3, it’s now potentially ending earlier by June 2.

These space weather events can disturb the Earth’s magnetic field and at this severe level cause “more frequent and longer periods of GPS degradation.”

“If you’re finished planting, have no spraying to do, or otherwise too wet to get into the field, this solar storm may not matter for production agriculture even for the most susceptible states,” says Terry Griffin with Kansas State University. “Given the time of year, several hundred thousand acres of peanuts are left to be planted in Georgia (74% planting progress as of last week). Without RTK (not just GPS but sub-inch accuracy RTK), a 11% yield penalty is known at planting due to uncertainty of AB line when digging, the topic of my current research. In Kansas, corn was 85% planted as of last week and most crops have been planted on schedule or ahead of the 5-year average, but spraying and other midseason operations are still vulnerable.”

He adds Kansas winter wheat harvest usually begins mid-June so it won’t be affected by this storm.

Are these events normal?

Griffin says accurately predicting solar storms is more difficult than terrestrial weather.
“One analogy is to think of predicting geomagnetic disturbances on Earth as compared to the familiar tornado season. We know that in Kansas every April and May we can expect tornadoes in our area; when we may have a tornado watch, sometimes a tornado warning, and less common for an individual homeowner to be directly affected by a tornado,” he says. “Geomagnetic disturbances are similar: every 11 years we should expect a variety of “watches” and “alerts” due to increased solar activity before quieting down for about the next seven years until activity ramps up again.”

However space weather brings an even greater level of uncertainty for what the precise impacts on Earth will be. Just because there’s activity measured from the sun, it doesn’t always arrive at Earth in a predictable pattern.

“Activity on the sun does not always arrive at the Earth, observed coronal mass ejections (CME) can go in the opposite direction or even be a “near miss”, just like a tornado,” he says. “Instruments can detect CMEs several minutes after they occur, and even when material is coming toward the Earth it may take a few days before we know if we’re being affected.”

What can farmers do?

“GNSS outages caused by solar storms should be expected to be the norm, at least during solar sunspot number maximums that occur about every 11 years,” Griffin says. “At the very least, farmers should expect GNSS outages associated with solar storms during sunspot maximum; spanning maybe three years of the 11 year cycle.”

Griffin says solar storms can occur any time of year, and he points to some historical evidence suggesting increased frequency of geomagnetic disturbances near the spring and fall equinoxes.

Farm Journal reached out to Griffin first thing Monday morning for an update. He said the solar storm “arrived a day early...it was moving really fast” and would likely be over by Monday afternoon. He did not hear from any farmers about GPS outages or issues with satellite lock on their farm equipment as of Monday morning.

NOAA did record a G4 level solar event in space occurring on Sunday, June 1, however, by Monday morning at 8:45 am EST it had weakened to a G1.

Griffin says farmers should check the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center hompage (www.swpc.noaa.gov) on a regular basis this summer before heading out to spray or do other field work.

“That May 10th event (last year) was not a once in a lifetime event,” Griffin warns. “We need to keep our eyes open for the next one.”

The “next one” could happen anytime in the next 12 months, or not at all, he believes. Griffin says we’re in the middle of what some scientists call the “battle zone” of solar activity and the current conditions are expected to last for the next year. Once we get to next summer, Griffin says, scientists are projecting a “quiet period” for the next six or seven years before space weather and solar storms start to ramp back up in the early 2030s.

“The previous solar cycle we were in was really quiet, and the one we’re in right now is normal,” he says. “We need to be ready for these events.”