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Precision Planting’s latest invention is a suite of tools for automating soil sampling and testing. On Aug. 3, the company announced 3 new tools for agronomists under the name Radicle Agronomics.
In this episode of the Strip-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by the Pluribus Lite from Dawn Equipment, Precision Planting’s Dale Koch and Doug Wright discuss the components of Radicle Agronomics, how Radicle Agronomics works with the company’s existing products, what farmers can expect from Radicle Agronomics and much more.
See Precision Planting’s Radicle Lab and GeoPress in action in this video from Precision Farming Dealer.
The Strip-Till Farmer podcast is brought to you by Dawn Equipment.
Dawn Equipment, a family-owned company in Sycamore, Illinois, has a reputation for responsive customer service and American-made quality products that goes back to its origin nearly 3 decades. The company has grown to more than 40 employees and numerous products, earned awards for innovative design plus a growing number of patents, but it has not lost its commitment to U.S. made products. And customers and dealers can still call to speak directly with sales and engineering staff. Dawn has redefined several market segments like strip-till and active hydraulic control of planter and attachments. Dawn was the first company to make a remotely controllable planting product. Dawn continues its commitment to innovation, to customer service, and to active response to the changing needs of America’s farmers. Visit them at www.dawnequipment.com.
Full Transcript
Michaela Paukner:
Welcome to the Strip-Till Farmer Podcast, brought to you by the Pluribus Lite from Dawn Equipment. I'm Michaela Paukner, technology editor at Strip-Till Farmer. In today's episode of the podcast, Precision Planting's Dale Koch and Dough Wright join me to discuss Radicle Agronomics, the company's recently announced suite of tools for automating soil sampling and testing.
Dale Koch:
My name's Dale Koch. I am a product lead here at Precision Planting. I lead teams from the research phase all the way to the productionization of new technology products here at Precision Planting. So my team in this case, for the Radicle Agronomics suite of tools, consists of engineers, scientists, agronomists, all working together to bring technology to market.
Doug Wright:
My name's Doug Wright. I have the privilege of leading our commercial team globally at Precision Planting, so all of our sales and marketing and product support, sales support personnel around the globe, part of the team that I lead, and with that comes both the practical, the day in and day out of running a sales organization, but also longer term strategy. What do we need to be thinking about three or five years down the road, and taking steps to be sure that we're developing markets that we think we can serve well, but we haven't really moved into yet, or are still in their infancy, like international, for example. We are a global company. Probably 20% of our business comes from international today. It's growing faster than our company overall will continue to, so there's still a lot we need to do and to learn to really serve growers around the world more effectively than we are today.
Michaela Paukner:
Precision Planting just announced Radicle Agronomics in early August for professional agronomists. Can you explain what it is?
Dale Koch:
Radicle Agronomics is a completely new branch, let's say, of Precision Planting. It's an ecosystem, a suite of tools designed specifically for professional agronomists. It's tools that make their lives easier, that give them a chance to focus more on the issues that really matter to their farmer customers. It gives them more time to be out in the field looking for problems, talking to their customers, diagnosing those problems, making recommendations, and eliminating some of the busy work that can suck their time otherwise. The mission with those tools is to help provide better data, so more accurate, more precise data, such that they're equipped to make better decisions and recommendations with their farmer customers.
Michaela Paukner:
Can you walk me through the different tools that fall under the Radicle Agronomics branch?
Dale Koch:
Radicle Agronomics is launching three new tools as part of this ecosystem. The first, and the cornerstone, is the radicle lab. Radicle Lab is a first. Radicle Lab is the world's first fully automated soil laboratory. So today, you have a soil laboratory that might take tens of thousands of square feet, it takes dozens of trained technicians and chemists and soil scientists. We've condensed that all down into a 10 foot by 10 foot footprint, and the team required to run that is a team of one, and it doesn't need to be a chemist, doesn't need to be a soil scientist, doesn't need to be a trained technician, but really, anybody can run this soil lab.
So as simple as loading the samples onto a rack and pressing a green button, the idea is that this soil lab is as easy to use and as reliable as a dishwasher or a microwave, and really puts the agronomist in control of the workflow and at the center of the workflow, giving them the ability to increase efficiency when it comes to the handling of samples. So today, an agronomist is going to be spending quite a bit of time in the record-keeping and handling of the samples, as he or she takes those samples in the field and brings them back to the shop, and does the paperwork, the record-keeping to make sure all that data, all those samples end up associated with the right place in the field. And so all of that is eliminated with the Radicle Lab.
And so that's the concept, is that it takes something that is robbing their time today to spend on matters that really make a difference for their customers, puts the control in their hands. And then last but certainly not least is the automation of processes that happen in the lab today, where you have a lot of human hands touching those aspects of the soil analysis process. So because of fully automating that, we are reducing the errors that can happen because of someone having a bad day and that affecting some part of the lab process, whether that's the tracking of data within the lab, the tracking of that sample within the lab. Whether that's the drying process, the grinding process, the grinding process, the mixing of chemical reagents, all of that requires human hands, and we've taken all of those pieces and fully automated them.
Really, the third piece is a partner to Radicle Lab that goes with the agronomist to the field, and that's called GeoPress. So GeoPress is like a set of helping hands for the agronomist. It's mounted on an ATV or a UTV or whatever vehicle you're taking to the field with you, and the goal is again, to eliminate the tedious and manual and error prone steps that an agronomist takes in the field as part of the sampling process, so it does a few things. Number one, after the agronomist takes the sample, so pulls the cores, whether that's with the hydraulic probe over manually, after the agronomist takes the cores, you first drop those cores through a grinder on GeoPress to make sure they're perfectly mixed and homogenized together.
At that point, you dump that mix in, and this is just in a matter of seconds that's through. You dump that mixed and homogenized soil into a funnel. You press the start button. At that point, that soil drops into our purpose-built Geotube container, so this is replacing the traditional sample bag. And what it is, it's a geo-tagged container that holds that soil sample. So the GeoPress takes that, it uses RFID technology and essentially stores the location that that sample was taken on the Geotube. It stores that location on the Geotube. The GeoPress takes a cap and caps off that tube, and then drops it and gets it ready for you to put it in a box or whatever container you have on your UTV to store your full samples in.
Now, the majority of those steps all happen that while they're driving from one point to a next, so again, this is about saving time, making the field experience for an agronomist as efficient as possible, such that they can focus on getting good samples, such that they can focus on looking at things in the field like they do to look for issues and concerns that they might talk to their customers about whether it's washouts or hard pans they're probing, and really to give them a helping hand and to ease that part of the sampling process. At that point, when you leave the field, you've got to box full of full Geotubes.
And so you take those full Geotubes back to your shop, and you very simply just load them on a rack on the Radicle Lab. You don't have to put them in any special order, because once they go into Radicle Lab, that RFID tag is going to be read and reassociated with that point in the field that you collected that sample at, and the data's going to flow from one spot to the next, from the field to the lab, and then ultimately, back on the office for you to make your recommendation. But GeoPress is your partner in the field that goes with Radicle Lab.
Michaela Paukner:
Okay. So when somebody's signing up for this who's an agronomist, they're going to get GeoPress, the Radicle Lab, and the software all together, all of the time?
Dale Koch:
Exactly.
Michaela Paukner:
Have you guys released a cost for the package yet?
Dale Koch:
Sure. Our introductory pricing for this fall is planned to be lease arrangement, so the Radicle Lab combined with GeoPress is an annual lease at $750 a month. We then have a per sample cost as well, which is planned to be $5.50 per sample. That is an introductory cost.
Michaela Paukner:
Does that include the servicing that may need to happen, and the training in that?
Dale Koch:
Yes, all of that is built into that cost.
Michaela Paukner:
Okay. And why did you guys decide to go with the lease arrangement versus having the agronomists purchase everything outright?
Dale Koch:
Yeah. That was really based on feedback that we got from the agronomists. As we showed agronomists who we had confidential agreements in place with, we showed some early prototypes of it, and they said, "Look, we didn't get this business to own a lab." And frankly, they were intimidated by the technology in some ways, the sophistication that's inside of this lab. And so they said, "We want you to own this and service it, and ensure that it's getting good results. We like what you're doing, we like the efficiency gains. We like the simplicity, we like to control. We like the workflow improvements, but I don't want to own this."
And so we said, "Okay. Well, I think what would work, how would it work if we would own it and it's a lease to you? We provide the service, we provide the training, we're in charge of making sure that this thing is getting good results day in and day out." And so as we talked to them, that seemed like a much more natural arrangement for our agronomist customers to really be able to focus on the things that matter to them, and that is spending time in the field, spending time with their customers, spending time doing the value added activities, like making [inaudible 00:12:44].
Michaela Paukner:
Exactly, because like you said, owning it comes with a whole new set of responsibilities that aren't necessarily a benefit to helping them do their job, or helping farmers.
Dale Koch:
Exactly.
Michaela Paukner:
So what does it take to set up the Radicle Lab in the agronomist place of business, and is there specific training that they'll need?
Dale Koch:
Radicle Lab, it is a scientific instrument in a lot of ways, and needs to be treated as such, so it does require air conditioning. It requires an air conditioned space, maintained at about 70 degrees. But then beyond that, it simply needs a source of compressed air, it needs a garden hose hookup. We're doing all the filtration within the Radicle Lab, and then just a regular wall outlet plug-in for power. And at that point, it is ready to go. There would be some small amount of training, but it's certainly not days, let alone weeks, of training that are required to run this. In really an hour's time, an agronomist could be set up and ready to ready to run with Radicle Lab.
Michaela Paukner:
Wow. So when will Radicle Lab be available to agronomists, and is it available to any agronomists?
Dale Koch:
We are this fall going to be doing a commercial beta, so we're in the very final stages of testing, with just a handful of units we plan to have out this fall of 2022. Next year is really our, our first production release, and we will start selling units in late spring, early summer for the fall sampling and analysis season.
Michaela Paukner:
Okay. And then will it be limited to any certain geography, or is it open to anybody?
Dale Koch:
Geography-wise, we're going to start in the Midwest. Part of the unique nature of this product and this new ecosystem is that we've packed all the sophistication of a world class lab into Radicle Lab. And so the agronomists that we've talked to have said, "Hey, love the idea, but I sure don't want to service that sophisticated instrument," and so Precision Planting, under the banner of Radicle Agronomics, is going to be providing the service of these units for anything beyond just regular consumable replacement, let's say.
And so in the early days, we'll focus on geographies closer to us as we continue to develop out that service strategy, but certainly, we feel like there's a worldwide market for this type of device, especially in places outside of the US, where access to world class laboratories is actually much more challenging. And so certainly, our reach is beyond the local vicinity, and even beyond the country borders.
Michaela Paukner:
Yeah. I imagine having such a small footprint and then relatively minimal requirements to operate it would make it really attractive for some of those areas, like you said, that don't have access to a big lab.
Dale Koch:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Certainly. Nutrient management in general is a really big challenge. As we talk to farmers as we have for decades now, the conversation that keeps coming up is, "Look, just below my land cost on total cost of farm and acre is my nutrient bill, is my fertilizer bill," and so what they then go on to say is that, "I don't understand completely where all those dollars go." And that is just as true in the United States or in other countries where farming has gotten very sophisticated as it is in countries where farming is less sophisticated. So there's a huge opportunity, both for farmers to help them identify areas in their fields that are lower producing because of lack of nutrients, and also areas where there are over applications because of lack of good measurement processes.
And the great thing about nutrient management is not only is it good for the farmer's pocketbook, but it's also good for the land. Environmental pressures and raising awareness of the effects of things like fertilizer on the environment is something that we continue to, just as an industry, need to grow in our stewardship, and Radicle Lab and its small footprint, its versatility, and its capability to scale across geographies we believe can be at the center of helping both farmers achieve greater profitability, as well as well as holding a critical role in supporting the environment.
Michaela Paukner:
Talking about the farmers, what do you think that they should know about Radicle Lab and Radicle Agronomics?
Dale Koch:
Over the next couple of years, their agronomists might approach them and describe to them what they are getting into in owning and operating a Radicle Lab, and for some of those farmers, it might be relatively transparent to them, where they continue getting similar soil test results, and have a similar workflow with their agronomist. For other farmers, it might differ in the cases let's say where farmers don't have as much visibility to their soil test results. Part of the Radicle Agronomics ecosystem, one of the three parts that we launched is the software suite that is purpose-built for nutrient management, nutrient visualization, as well as the tools to make calculations and recommendations.
The great thing about this is it allows the farmer to be more in the loop in those conversations, to have clear access to their soil test results, because it's just a button click away for the agronomist to send that to them as soon as those those results are in, if you will. So I think having a greater visibility and tie-in to the nutrient management process is I think what farmers could see in the early days. The other thing that we talked about here in our launch event recently was we continue to be pretty intrigued about opportunities to measure soil in a more granular, more dense way, and so we shared some examples of higher density sampling.
So today, the average field was tested on a 2.5 acre grid, and as we did some of our testing, we went all the way down to 1/16 of an acre grids for first test fields, and showed some pretty big numbers as far as opportunity. The challenge, and one that we continue to research on, is how do you collect all that soil practically? There's a reason we're not doing that today. It's just it's too costly to collect and process all that soil, and that's something that we continue to press into. That'll be an aspect that we'll continue to talk to our agronomist customers, in the case of Radicle Agronomics, and the farmers who will ultimately be impacted by that as we look down the road.
Michaela Paukner:
And so far as you've gone through testing for Radicle Labs, what feedback have you gotten from agronomists so far?
Dale Koch:
We've gotten some great feedback. Any business person loves having more control in a way, to where you are less dependent on other parties to get your job done. And so that is one aspect that has really resonated with them, where they can come back from the field, from a day of sampling, load up their couple 100 samples onto the rack, press the button. Maybe they prioritize one field where a farmer or the co-ops really waiting for those results, and within minutes, those results start rolling in. The best case today for that is 14 hours turnaround, but in all reality, in most cases it's more like three days a week or more that you're going to see.
So having that level of control of that entire workflow, and not only at the prioritization of samples and getting samples through faster, but also having a suite of software that ties everything together, where the data flows from the sampling process to the lab, and back into the software for post processing. That, again to the point earlier, takes out a lot of steps that they otherwise are going to have to go through to get to the point where they're ready to write recommendation on those results. Control, efficiency gains, and simplification are really exciting to them. And I think last but certainly not least is the automation, the appeal of taking the human hands out of it, where every agronomist has gotten results before that are just off and there's really no explanation for it. And so taking those potential error introduction points out of the equation is certainly appealing as well.
Michaela Paukner:
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Doug Wright:
We spent a lot of time thinking about that over the last couple of years, as these products entered into their final development phase, and we have a very effective, very robust precision equipment dealer network that do a great job with all the products that we've introduced up until now. This particular initiative, Radicle Agronomics, hinges on the product and services, the output of these products, being in the hands of those that growers trust for fertility recommendations, and that isn't our dealer network. A limited number of our dealers actually have robust agronomic services. They're doing soil sampling, they're doing crop consulting, they're doing recommendations and scouting.
They would be candidates for this initiative. The vast majority are not, and a lab doesn't automatically make someone a trusted advisor for a grower when comes to this very large expense that they have infertility every year. So we will be bringing this to market and selling these products under the Radicle Agronomics umbrella to crop consultants, and they are the most natural business partner to be able to use these tools, and roll that into their existing business to provide better recommendations to growers. So it'll be a parallel channel, if you will, going to market, and not going through our traditional dealer network.
Dale Koch:
The reality is that we have been deeply invested in nutrient management tools for a number of years. And so as you look at our first product in the space, FurrowJet, which is a near furrow starter application tool to conceal, which is a two by two nitrogen application tool, and then vApply, which is a rate control system for planters, we have been investing in research and nutrient management space for quite some time, and honestly, that's part of what birthed this initiative.
But as I look at that, I certainly see tie-ins between our dealers that are selling those pieces of equipment and the agronomists now that will be giving nutrient recommendations. I do see a synergy there, and whether that is whether that's the agronomist pointing to opportunities to take applications the next level, whether that's going from a broadcast to a band situation, or whether that's going from a very simple liquid control strategy to a more sophisticated one like you could get with the vApply system. I certainly see a tie in there, but suffice it to say, nutrient management has been important to us, and a focus to us for quite a number of years now.
Michaela Paukner:
So when you look three to five years down the road, how does Radicle Agronomics fit your strategy for that time period?
Doug Wright:
Radicle Agronomics is quite a reach for us. As our name suggests, we've been living on the planter when it comes to new ideas and equipment development for some time. And we're not done with the planter yet. We still have some pretty interesting ideas in our R&D pipeline that we think will continue to improve growers' experience and outcomes with new technology, but our whole company and the way that we think is all about finding ways to serve the grower better. And by serving, we mean helping them do what they do more effectively, more profitably, more sustainably. And as we look at all the variables in the environment in which growers operate in, we find a lot of opportunities for improvement that aren't specifically planter-related.
As we looked at opportunities through the eyes of a grower, one of the largest expenses that grow typically incurs after land is their fertility applications, fertilizer, and we think that there's a big opportunity for us to bring our innovation and precision orientation towards the whole range of soil fertility unctions and tools, starting with soil sampling. Very labor-intensive, very costly, and to some degrees, is a limiting factor in our ability to efficiently, cost-effectively represent the nutrient requirements of growers' fields because we can't take soil samples as densely as we would like. A lot of soil sampling protocols today call for one sample, which is a couple of cores, but one sample for every 2.5 acre grid in the field. That is one couple millionths of the actual soil that's being pulled, and we're that as proxy for the 1.5 acre grid.
I think there's an opportunity if we can figure out how to do that more cost-effectively, through mechanization or otherwise, to do a better job or more dense job of pulling samples and representing the field. We've learned that there are lots of variability and error that can get introduced into the typical soil lab process, whether that is at a university or a commercial lab setting. We have our own chemists, we have our own chemistry lab. We recently had someone join us that's considered to be one of the preeminent soil scientists in the country, comes out of academia and commercial as well. He's working to help us figure out how we can make adjustments to that as well. And we've introduced our automation and mechanization into that space with the Radicle Lab that we just announced, and as it turns out, we think we have a lot to offer in this soil fertility space.
Michaela Paukner:
You had mentioned that you're not done with the planter yet, you still have products in R&D in the pipe, so why is now the time to expand away from the planter and focus on something like Radicle Agronomics?
Doug Wright:
We don't look at it as expanding away from the planter, quite honestly. As Precision Planting has continued to grow as a company, we grow as an employee base as well. For example, for Radicle Agronomics specifically, we will actually be building a parallel sales organization in addition to a parallel distribution channel, so we're not diverting resources that would otherwise go to supporting the planter market, planter products that we've got, or our existing Precision Planting dealers by going down this path. We've added chemists, we've added data scientists, soil scientists, other agronomists to support this initiative, but it doesn't really detract from our focus on planters.
We think what we've announced today is really just an initial announcement of some well-tailored products, we think, to begin delivering some of the benefits that we foresee this space could really, really benefit from, but we have many more ideas and products in the pipeline, so this will be a significant initiative. So may initially feel a little odd, or one-off, this will be a major part of our business going forward. One of the things that we've learned in the last few years is that unlike other aspects of the agricultural space, the United States has some of the most developed and mature soil sampling and soil analysis capabilities on the globe.
And as we look at some of the markets that we are already in, the opportunity to bring precision soil sampling and soil analysis to bear for greater agricultural outcomes is huge. For this particular space, Radicle Agronomics might be as big or bigger globally, internationally than it would be in the state, so we have a long runway here. We're very excited about what we announced, and then I would just suggest people that're interested, stay close. There'll be refinements to what we announced, improvements and whole new avenues that will be going down in the coming years.
Michaela Paukner:
It sounds like a really exciting future ahead, and quite the cliffhanger there was saying it sounds like it's almost a building block of some things that are to come.
Doug Wright:
I would say that's true, yes. It's consistent with who we are, how we view the world, how we try to serve the agricultural space, but what we introduce today is foundational, and we think to just got several more stories to build out over the coming years.
Michaela Paukner:
If there's somebody listening to the podcast who's interested in being part of the group that's going get that first production release of Radicle Labs, what should they do?
Dale Koch:
Yeah, absolutely. Give us a call here at Precision Planting, and that's 309-925-5050. Give us a call and just ask to talk to somebody from the Radicle Agronomics team, and we'd love to talk to you. It's just really exciting for our team to be able to tell the world about this. It's something that's been in development for six years now, we've got dozens of pending patents. We've got just a really dedicated team of scientists and engineers and agronomists that have been working hard over the number of years to bring this to market. We're just excited to release it to the public. We're excited to continue to get feedback, we're excited to continue to get feedback, excited to see how this can change business for agronomists, how it can change their lives, as well as the effects that it will ultimately have on farming both here in the US worldwide. But it's an exciting week for us here at Precision Planting and within the Radicle Agronomics team.
Michaela Paukner:
Yeah, for sure. It's really never been a better time to be mindful of your nutrients and what you're spending, and then also, the impact that that's having on the environment and your land and all of that.
Dale Koch:
Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a win-win. Whenever you can have a win-win in any relationship, it's a good place to be. A win for the farmer profitability, and a win for the environment.
Michaela Paukner:
Thanks to Doug Wright and Dale Koch for joining me for today's conversation. The full transcript of this episode is available at striptillfarmer.com/podcasts. You'll also find a link to a video that shows what the components of Radicle Agronomics look like, and the web story for this episode. And many thanks to the Pluribus Light from Dawn Equipment for helping to make this Strip-Till Podcast series possible. From all of us here at Strip-Till Farmer, I'm Michael Paukner. Thanks for listening.
