The Smart Farm Era Is Here—and It’s Changing How America Grows Food - Dick Pavelski and Andy Diercks, Food + Farm Exploration Center

If you still picture farming as dusty tractors and endless manual labor, think again. Today’s agriculture runs on GPS-guided equipment, drones, real-time soil sensors, and data systems that look more like Wall Street trading floors than old barns. In this episode, lifelong farmer and innovator Dick Pavelski and Andy Diercks of the Food + Farm Exploration Center pull back the curtain on precision agriculture—the technology, data, and processes that are transforming how we grow and deliver food.

We break down the technologies making precision agriculture possible, from variable rate irrigation to “see and spray” weed control, and how data is being used to make decisions at the square-meter level. We also examine how these shifts are influencing agricultural careers, the skills now in demand, and why public understanding of modern farming is critical. Plus, discover the Food + Farm Exploration Center and its role in showing students, families, and policymakers what modern farming really involves.

Listen to learn:

• What a farm looked like 40 years ago, and how that image compares to a modern precision operation
• How GPS guidance, drones, and 300 weather stations help farmers make square-meter-level decisions
• The crossover of technologies and skills between manufacturing and precision agriculture
• The biggest challenges in attracting and training the next generation of ag professionals
• How one Midwestern center is bridging the gap between farm technology and public awareness

3 Big Takeaways from this Episode:

1. Modern agriculture is driven by technology and precision. GPS-guided equipment, variable rate irrigation, and “see and spray” weed control have replaced much of the manual labor and guesswork of past decades. These tools work together to improve yields, reduce inputs, and create a more sustainable and efficient farming process.

2. Data is the backbone of today’s farm operations. Farmers track weather, soil conditions, and crop needs in real time—often down to individual square meters—using hundreds of sensors and automated systems. This constant stream of information enables faster decision-making and more targeted resource use than was possible a generation ago.

3. The skills and careers in agriculture are rapidly changing. Large-scale farms now employ specialists in data analysis, equipment maintenance, and automation, while mid-sized operations require workers with diverse technical abilities. The Food + Farm Exploration Center is working to show students, families, and policymakers the realities of these careers and the opportunities they offer.

Resources in this Episode:

• Food + Farm Exploration Center: explorefoodandfarm.org

Other resources:

• Heartland Farms
• Coloma Farm

Connect with the Food + Farm Exploration Center:

Facebook  |  LinkedIn  |  Instagram  | 

Instagram - Facebook - YouTube - TikTok - Twitter - LinkedIn

Transcript

Matt Kirchner: 0:00

Matt, welcome to the TechEd podcast. I am your host. Matt Kirkner, you know, we talk often about the connection between the edge to cloud continuum and every single sector within our economy here on the TechEd podcast. So we chat about whether it's manufacturing, where I made my living for a whole bunch of years, whether it's energy, defense, healthcare, hospitality, retail, it doesn't matter. We find that edge to cloud continuum, smart technology, smart sensors on the edge and cloud computing on the cloud, everywhere across our economy. One of those market spaces that we talk about quite often as being a great example of the edge to cloud continuum is agriculture. And I can tell you that precision, AG, is making huge waves, huge waves in how we grow our food, how we bring it to market. And I had an opportunity several months ago to spend some time at a precision ag operation. I was absolutely blown away at the way these folks were deploying technology in the agriculture process. We're going to talk on this episode of The TechEd podcast all about precision agriculture. We've actually got two guests who are joining us today. We're going to spend the first part of our discussion with one of them, and then we'll bring the other one in for some additional chat as well. Our two guests, first of all, Dick Pavelski, founder of the Food and Farm exploration center, has spent an entire career in precision agriculture and agriculture. We're also going to be joined by Andy Dirks, who is the vice president of Coloma farms and a board member of the Food and Farm exploration center. So going to be a really, really fascinating conversation for anybody who loves technology, for anybody who loves agriculture, and for anybody who loves how we are bringing those two together, and certainly I would count myself among that group. So let's start with Dick. You have just a really incredible history in agriculture. Let's talk about what ag looked like when you first started in it. What were the tools and the processes and the jobs when you first got into AG?

Dick Pavelski: 2:08

Well, I mean, when I was growing up on the farm, farming was kind of defined as being a very strenuous, dirty, dangerous, low paid job, a little automation and a lot of manual labor, very little opportunity for advancement in the organization, unless you were part of the family that was growing up on the farm tractors sprayers had no cabs or air filtering for dust and crop protect and sprays. Tractors and implements had no GPS or guidance. Planners had no monitoring to collect all of the data and things that we do today, knowledge and understanding of soils, plant biology, fertility, plant varieties, weather, pests, water use and other influencing factors and the crops were not understood nearly as well as they are today. And a lot of that was, I think, because the average farmer didn't have a college degree and hadn't been exposed to a lot of that level of knowledge and experience.

Matt Kirchner: 3:04

Yeah, the farmer's role in agriculture obviously changed considerably over the course of your lifetime, over the course of the past decades, and really at an accelerating rate. Now, as you know, I spent a lot of time on farms growing up. My family, we didn't live on a farm. I lived in the city, but both of my parents grew up on Midwestern dairy farms, and so I spent they were actually my favorite places to go and visit. As a kid, I loved going to Six Flags Great America and outside of Chicago, and I love going to my uncle's farms and spending time on the farm growing up and just watching what I saw in one of your operations that you're related to several months ago versus what I grew up around. I mean, it's hardly even recognizable. All some all these technologies that you touched on in your last answer that have changed agriculture. So thinking back to when you first got started, tractors with no cabs, obviously, a lot of the safety issues that we can mitigate in these days maybe weren't mitigated back then. And all the knowledge, all the data that we have in terms of being able to really dial in exactly how we can maximize the yield. Really, really important. So let's talk now about some of those technologies and how they have changed agriculture. If somebody hasn't been on a farm for, say, 3040, 50 years, what are they going to see if they walk into a modern farm in this day and age?

Dick Pavelski: 4:22

Yeah, I mean, things are clearly a lot more sophisticated using many high tech tools. Tractors have cabs. We've got charcoal filtering, full dust control. They're a lot more comfortable air ride seats and a lot of things that we certainly didn't have when I was growing up on a farm, a lot of data collection, GPS guidance, precision guidance on the tractors, data analysis and the equipment itself now collects a lot of data. So you're getting slippage, you're getting fuel usage, you're getting the torque so that you can adjust much more accurately to save fuel and. Do a lot less compaction in the field, because, you know, when it's wet, a lot of soil sensors are out there right now. So it's just, I think primarily it's from a technology and a comfort standpoint, the tractors, prayers cabs are a lot different, but also the amount of data that we collect in real time it's transported or delivered to the office where they can analyze that data, make much quicker decisions, be a lot more precise in water application, be a lot more precise in fertility. Plant samples are actually analyzed now on a weekly basis, so we know exactly what the nutrient requirements are over the plant completely different varieties, and we get a much better understanding of those varieties as they improve. So, I mean, it just requires a whole new level of sophistication and education and skills at the farm

Matt Kirchner: 5:51

level, sophistication, education and skills for sure, you know. And I was spending time up there in central Wisconsin a couple months ago, just to kind of put this into perspective. I mean, if anybody has ever either been in or seen on TV or seen in a movie, you think about like an investment bank, right? And you think about a bunch of financial professionals sitting there monitoring the stock market and tracking all these different companies and looking at their performance and looking at their growth rates and looking at their stock prices. And you walk into one of these data rooms, and it's just filled with all these screens gathering all this data in real time. And I've been around that, and then I walk into a precision farming operation, and you mentioned all this data coming back to the office, TV screens everywhere, monitoring all the things that you just talked about, whether it's moisture in the soil, whether it's temperature, all this information that we have coming back to climate patterns and rainfall, and I mean, all of this stuff, and it's really, really become an absolute science. And I was so, so impressed to see that. I think it's probably an easy question to answer, a loaded question, but was it obvious that agriculture had to change? Why do you think that we've made this incredible move toward precision, AG, and that it's accelerating as quickly as it is.

Dick Pavelski: 7:03

First of all, what you've seen were a lot of screens in an office, but now in the latest version of that, we don't need those screens anymore. It's all available on our iPads and our phones because we're fully connected in the trucks. We now have that in our hand no matter where we are in the world. And really why it had to change is there's more people to feed. They have better diets. Require more food to be produced on less land. It's a much safer food supply because we've got a better understanding of the health risks associated with our diet, and to deal with those risks, food production and handling has improved all the way from the transportation system with refrigeration to what happens in the grocery store before you pick it up, the entire system, all the way from variety development to the grocery store has upgraded along with what's happening on the farm. So

Matt Kirchner: 7:55

in the same sense that we see, perhaps the supply chain that gets more and more efficient be is able to deliver to consumers exactly what they want, exactly what they need, even more efficiently than ever before. And the same thing is happening in agriculture. Let's talk about some of those technologies Dick that you're running into. You touched on a few of them. You talked about charcoal filtering. You talked about this whole idea of using GPS and so on. Now having an iPad that's available at any time anywhere, with that instantaneous data. Really fascinating how some of those technologies are changing. Let's get into some of that GPS guided equipment, maybe seeing spray systems, drones, I know a little bit more on the sensors that you're using. What else should our audience know about the technology that's transforming farming? Well,

Dick Pavelski: 8:39

I think with drones and a lot of the other technology is just a lot more efficient. The strain on the operators, as I indicated earlier, is much lower. The food quality and the nutritional value is kept fresher than it has been in the past. We've reduced waste substantially. We now sell and people consume a lot higher percentage of what's produced on the farm, absolutely.

Matt Kirchner: 9:03

So it's in the same sense that we've eliminated, or at least driven waste out of in many cases, manufacturing through processes like Kaizen and continuous improvement, focusing on the Seven Deadly Wastes as Taichi Ohno taught us so many years ago, understanding where waste manifests itself in a process and driving that out. The same thing is happening in agriculture. Let's talk about, I mean, are there aspects of either soil preparation or irrigation or fertilization harvesting? Are there specific technologies in that process that would interest our audience?

Dick Pavelski: 9:36

Our farm as an example, has got almost 300 weather stations on it, so that we're met. As you know, when you get a rain storm, you can get an inch of rain in one location and a half mile away, you might get two or three tents. They're never even so we've got a lot more precise data for each and every field out there, and now in a lot of areas with variable rate fertility and precision sampling, we. Looking at treating crops, not at the whole field level, but at the square meter level. So the precision is much better. Sustainability is what's really driving a lot of that right now, we understand a lot more about soils. We understand a lot more about the physiological needs of the plants to produce better and more nutritious crops, and now we've got the tools and the sensors to get that data that we can react to and make decisions on in almost real time.

Matt Kirchner: 10:28

Well, that was one of the things that I noticed when I was visiting not too long ago, is just the ability to, I mean, you think about tracking rainfall, and if you think about rainfall over the course of a whatever, 1000 acre farm or 30,000 acre farm, it can be variable, not just across an acre, but to your point, literally, from square meter to square meter. Am I understanding right that you're able to track that rain fell and track the moisture down to that level of precision? Is that what I just heard you say? I mean, we could

Dick Pavelski: 10:56

do that with irrigation water. Obviously, with rainwater, we're looking at rain events. We're still looking at that pretty much on a field by field basis, at this level, or in our case, most of our stuff here is 160 acre fields. They're quarter sections,

Matt Kirchner: 11:10

sure. So a mile by a mile is a section, if my dad taught me right, 640 acres, if memory serves. And so a quarter section would be 160 so you're thinking about a mile by mile section, and you're dividing that by four, so literally, down to that 1/4 of a square mile is where you're measuring the rainfall. And then when it comes to the irrigation side of it, and you reference the sustainability, which totally makes sense to me, right? If I can know, the more specifically I know, square meter by square meter, how much irrigation a specific area of the field needs, then I'm not over irrigating one area and under irrigating the other, and then that all speaks to waste, right? So that's not a one size fits all. We're able to much more precisely use those resources. And is that what you're getting at when you talk about sustainability?

Dick Pavelski: 11:54

Yeah, in addition to the variability of rainfall, different soils will have got different moisture and water holding capacities, different nutrient holding capacities, based on the sand, clay make, makeup of the soil. And those are the things that we're looking at now that we're custom and doing precise applications of not only to adjust to water amounts, but plant needs, and how different soil types will meet those plant needs,

Matt Kirchner: 12:20

fascinating and so now let's talk a little bit about the automation side of it. So how much of this is all automated versus some of the more manual processes that were probably likely again, 1020, 30 years ago?

Dick Pavelski: 12:32

Well, certainly, basically, it's all automated at this point in time. There's a tremendous amount of computing power, not only at the office, collecting the data, analyzing the data, but in the actual sensors and the tractors themselves, as you mentioned, the John Deere seeing spray, they can effectively identify a weed from a beneficial plant and treat just that weed with a herbicide and not the rest of the plants. So we've dramatically reduced the inputs that we're using, fuel savings with monitoring the slippage rates in the tractor, the fuel usage in the tractor, so we're just a lot more efficient than we used to be, 20, 3040, years ago,

Matt Kirchner: 13:14

which means producing more food at less cost. And who wouldn't be in favor of that, and also doing it in a fashion that's sustainable and easier on the environment. And of course, who wouldn't favor that as well? So really, really cool advancements that are taking place. I've referenced Dick a couple times already. Some of the parallels between things that are happening in agriculture in manufacturing. Are you seeing it the same way? You know? How would you say that, AG, tech maybe compares to the automation that we might see in other industries.

Dick Pavelski: 13:43

Certainly, agriculture is a lot more like the manufacturing system now, because we have a lot more control, although it's more difficult in the agricultural scenario, because we're dealing with a lot of uncontrollable outside influences, the amount of solar radiation, the amount of rain, wind, dust, all of those things that affect sensors and the data collection system has certainly gotten much better. And now, I think, because of that difficulty in a lot of areas, AG, is actually leading the other industries in the rapid collection of data, the way that you filter and analyze that data, because it is so to a large extent, inconsistent and uncontrollable things like weather that we're dealing with trying to collect that information, that's

Matt Kirchner: 14:29

a really interesting insight that I'll admit, that I hadn't considered. But having run manufacturing companies for all the years that I did, certainly we had variables in whether it was material or personnel, or you could even get some temperature and environmental variability in the plant depending upon what time of year it was, and so on, but it was all controllable, and it was all fairly understandable. I think you make a really fascinating point that probably should have occurred to me, but didn't. There's so many aspects of agriculture over which you have no control. You're just basically at the mercy. Of weather patterns and so on, as you described it. And because of that, because of the variability in the day to day, that's really put us in a position where, in some ways, agriculture is changing faster and using data more effectively than some of the other market spaces. There's probably a lot that could be learned. In fact, I know from spending time in precision, AG, there is a lot that other sectors could learn from agriculture, from precision agriculture. So fascinating responses to those questions. I know we're going to be fascinated as well. Dick as we pull in Andy Dirks, who's the vice president of Colombo farms, and also a board member there at the Food and Farm exploration center. We've queued that up a little bit already, and I'm sure as we were making the introductions, people are like, Okay, this is really fascinating. Really fascinating. But what is the Food and Farm exploration Center? We're going to get into that now with Andy. So Andy, first of all, thanks for being with us. It's exciting to have you on the TechEd podcast.

Andy Diercks: 15:53

Thanks appreciate being here as well. Like I said, I happen to be sitting out on the patio at the Food and Farm exploration center. So pretty great sight watching how irrigation go around and people go by on the highway. It's

Matt Kirchner: 16:02

very nice. I like it. I don't know that we've ever done an outdoor version of the TechEd podcast. I'd have to think about that. You may be the first outdoor guest, but if we're going to do one, I might as well be somebody who is knee deep, and then some in the world of precision agriculture, because, as we just talked about with Dick Pavelski, so many things that are happening in precision, AG, and so many different elements of precision agriculture that are out of our control and that you have the opportunity to gather data on and try and predict and try and create as repeatable a model as possible. So let's talk about this. First of all, so Dick touched on how technology is totally transforming agriculture and smart sensors and devices and control systems and data acquisition and GPS systems and drones and seeing spray systems and all of this change in technology. Let's talk about the career side. How is that is happening? Are careers in agriculture changing with the rise of some of these new tech and data systems Andy

Andy Diercks: 16:59

not changing fast enough that's really it's a big part of the reason dick and his family built this center is that we can't find enough people to come and use this equipment, repair this equipment on the farm, bring this equipment out of the industries. That's been one of the big advantages of sort of being at the back end of this wave of automation. Agriculture gets to take advantage of all that has happened in manufacturing and the automobile industry and aerospace. So we're catching up in a lot of ways, and that gives us some advantage that we don't have to relearn

Matt Kirchner: 17:26

all the tools again well. And I would think that, as we talk about now, I'm a huge advocate for careers in advanced manufacturing. And we tell young people, 80% of whom, by the way, 80% of Gen Zs, want to work in technology. And we tell them, Look, if you want a tech career, there's a lot of places to go, but manufacturing is one of them. Manufacturing careers are tech careers. What I'm hearing is that agriculture careers are tech careers as well. Is that the way you're presenting it?

Andy Diercks: 17:50

Yes, for sure, especially on a bigger farm, like Dick's right. Dick's a neighbor and a really good partner of ours, but their farm is on another zero. Basically everything that Dick does, you take a zero off it, whether it's a number of employees, number of acres, and so we have very different needs from an employee perspective, right on our farm, I don't have a data scientist. I'm the data scientist, but I'm also the guy that has to go fix irrigation on Sunday afternoon. Nick has different people to do that, and so Dick requires somebody with a really specialized talent, because he may be hiring a group of people to solve a problem on his line for free. Delay, I have to find somebody that's got a lot of skills, a diverse range of skills, because I might need them, and be driving the harvester, driving the sprayer, or fixing some equipment, or doing a variety of things. And so there really it presents a pretty big challenge in that way, that I can't hire just a data scientist. I can't keep them busy enough on our farm to do that, although I'm swamped in Data Management. Dick can do that on scale. And so I live in this we call it Ag in the middle, where I don't have a direct relationship with Frito Lay like Dick does. And so all this technology is really great. It's super expensive. We try to bring as much of it on the farm as we can, but I also have to be able to make that data useful. That could be a real challenge. So we rely a ton on the university here and our interaction with them on how do we make it meaningful? So we can actually make decisions, because it's really easy to collect data, and you get lots of pretty maps and all kinds of things from all this equipment. But a, is it accurate? Because they're going to give you a pretty map no matter what. B, is it actionable? Awesome.

Matt Kirchner: 19:15

So a couple of things that I think you gave us to unpack there. Let's start with this. You mentioned Frito Lay a couple times, and I don't know that we've gotten into the types of crops that the two of you are involved with. So let's start on that side. People might be able to gather if you're talking about Frito Lay, but take the veil off of that question, and what is it that you're farming? Exactly

Andy Diercks: 19:33

whatever. Like potatoes. We grow some for Dick's company, Heartland farms. We have a small packing shed, so we would wash and grade those potatoes and ship them to grocery stores and restaurants. We work with a little potato company. We work with McCain Foods, who is the world's largest French fry producer. They have a pretty good sized plant here in the central sands. Dick is more specialized and so and there's that whole diversity within our industry. There's about 100 potato growers in the state of Wisconsin and. Some of us focus on one or two. Some of us do a few different things, and it allows me to not be very good at all

Matt Kirchner: 20:05

of them. Well, yeah, or at least to be a jack of all trades, or, in this case, an Andy of all trades. So you mentioned that so we understand we're growing potatoes and lots of different applications there. Now you also talked about these orders of magnitude between your farm and Dick. So give us a little bit more color on that. What's a really big farm this day and age, and what's more of an average sized farm in the world of potatoes,

Andy Diercks: 20:26

we're a pretty average sized farm. We farm on about 2700 acres, about a third of that's in potatoes every year. So eight to 900 acres of potatoes. I'm not sure how many dicks grown, but I think it's somewhere in the neighbor of 8000 acres of potatoes. Both of us also farm some of our rotation crops. There are some farms that only grow potatoes and they don't deal with their rotation years. But many of us do some of that. So we're growing field corn, soybeans. Many of us have relationships with the canning companies. So there's, there's a huge range of crops that we could grow in the central sands because everything's irrigated. So there's a pretty strong canning industry. There's cabbage, and we have a neighbor that grows pickles, peppers, squash, zucchini, all sorts of things. If there's a use for it, we can probably grow it here, but it's a matter of finding homes for all the produce.

Matt Kirchner: 21:08

So with all the rotating crops as well, if I'm doing the rough math correctly, we were talking about farms that can be anywhere from five to 10,000 acres, even 30,000 acres or so. This isn't in my case, where my one of my uncles, I think, actually farmed a quarter section. Another one a half a section. And now we're, you know, now we're thinking about literally 10s of 1000s of acres, huge farms at a huge scale, and even yours, you, you know, you kind of, you're a little bit modest in terms of the size of yours relative to other farms. However, 40 years ago, that would be just a behemoth of a farm. When you're talking about that kind of space really gives us an idea of how agriculture has really, really transformed. So you talked also, Andy about careers in ag, you talked about the difference between being a, you know, a significantly large farm where we've got, you know, on staff, data scientists and and so on, using, you know, technology at scale. You're talking about, in other cases, being as we talked about, that jack of all trades and having to have this wealth, incredible wealth of knowledge and understanding, I've got to believe that's part of why you all created the Food and Farm exploration Center, which, by the way, I also had the opportunity to visit there about two or three months ago. Very impressive, very modern. It's a great showcase of what modern agriculture is all about. But for folks that haven't been as lucky as me and haven't been able to come see what you're doing, give us a little bit of a sense for what the Food and Farm exploration center is, and then why you created it. I

Andy Diercks: 22:31

really got to let Dick take this one, because it's his family that had the vision to build it. We just tried to help

Matt Kirchner: 22:37

Dick dive in. Then you tell us

Dick Pavelski: 22:38

about all right, well, first of all, I think one thing that's critical to understand is that farming and agriculture is just like any other business, and the customer is always right. The customer will always get what the customer wants to pay for. You know, that's what's driven a lot of the changes at what we do on the farm. People like consistency. When you go to the grocery store, you want, you want you want it to look like the produce you bought last week or the week before. Many people shop, but they get familiar with whether it be a Krogers or a Walmart or wherever they buy their groceries, and we, the customers, like the Frito lays and the McCains of the world are the same way those customers want consistency going into those manufacturing or processing plants. That's why, I think, you know, that's really what's driven a lot of the consolidation in agriculture, is the fact that our customers don't want a lot of times, you know, 30 different farmers delivering to the same plant. They want consistent raw product, because they can get a lot more efficient with processing, and they can get a lot more consistent product into the grocery store for the customer. Now, you know, as far as the Food and Farm exploration center is concerned, it started out as just a family project, and it was just an idea, and then basically, so, I mean, I didn't create it the it was amazing to me, and very humbling. As soon as we start talking to people like the Rosella family and the derricks family and some of the financial institutions and and our customers and the John deers of the world that supply us equipment, they all to, almost to a man said, Hey, we should have been explaining the changes in agriculture 10 years ago. How can we help you? So it ended up going from what was initially about a six or $7 million project that we were going to do as a family to a $42 million project. We had a little bit of mission creep right in the middle of the design. And there were several, prints put together as Andy, well knows, Andy's been with us since we, you know, very early in the process. But it is, it's just that to let people know what happens on a modern farm, to let people know that there are some really great careers in agriculture, that it is a, you know, high tech business these days. And. And for anyone that you know likes to work outdoors or be in the outdoors, farming is just a great career right

Matt Kirchner: 25:06

now, absolutely great career right now, great career in the past, and certainly a great career in the future, if we can get that word out and we can let people know about how farming is evolving, how these are becoming tech careers, the incredible rewards that are available to folks and credit to your family, I made a six or $7 million investment. Certainly is no small investment. And then you think about bringing all these other partners who see the mission, see the vision, see the importance that agriculture has for the community and the in the community's economy, and everybody, to your point, stepped up and was a part of it. And when you're you know when your idea is big enough and there's enough momentum behind it. It's amazing what can happen. Why do you think it's so important that the public, and especially young people, maybe who aren't as familiar with precision agriculture, that they understand the real story of modern farming, and those talk about how the center shares that story with students.

Dick Pavelski: 25:56

You know, we wanted to bring the knowledge of the farm basically, to the people, and we realized very early on, also that we as the farmer could not tell the whole story, because we're not the expertise when it comes to everything that needs to happen. We needed the processors to tell what happens. We needed the grocers to tell what happens. You know, in the store as there's a complete chain of people involved in getting the food to the grocery store, if you will. And I think people don't have a sense of appreciation of what it takes to get their food. Food in the US, at least, has, really, for at least the last two or three generations, has always been there. And then, other than covid, where you've finally, you know, you've seen a few empty shelves, and people may have started taking a little more of an interest. They just took their food for granted. And, you know, in a long term, from my perspective, I think that's dangerous, because people don't protect what they don't appreciate or understand. And long term, it could be a threat to our food supply. I recently heard that 93% of our clothing in this country is imported. I'm not sure if we went to war, if we could provide the uniforms for our soldiers with importing 93% of our of our clothing, right? So a lot of that is just, you know, getting out the understanding of what happens on a modern farm and how sophisticated and what it takes to get food to the table. And I

Matt Kirchner: 27:20

think you're exactly right. I think if you know people in the United States, we do take our food for granted, and you mentioned three or four generations, and that's exactly right. I mean, you know, how long has it been since we've had anything close to a famine or close to, you know, genuine hunger on a widespread scale? Not to say that some people don't, don't struggle with that for other reasons, but in terms of availability of food and being able to go into a grocery store or elsewhere and have access to your nutrition. I mean, that is something that is pretty much ubiquitous and that so many of us just kind of assume is going to be there. I like the way that you put that Dick if you know people don't appreciate something that they don't understand, which really shows the the incredible value of the work that you're doing at the Food and Farm exploration center. Andy, have you been able to interact with any of the students that are taking part in what goes on there, and tell us about that experience?

Andy Diercks: 28:08

We have mad, and there's so many kids here that like to share the story you shared, that you had that connection. Your parents had that connection. But I don't know if you have kids, but I do, they don't have that connection anymore, and their kids certainly are gonna have less right. We have people have lost that connection right. 3040, years ago, everybody had a parent, an aunt and uncle, that had a farm and kids, that was a part of the summer trip was to go visit the farms. And right happens less and less frequently. Now it happens obviously, way less in the cities. And so people really have lost a connection of where their food comes from. It just comes from the grocery store, which it's magically there every magically there every day. And so bringing kids here, letting them come out to these four, one acre fields and see it grow, building the greenhouse, all the displays here to show them really what it takes to grow food, right? Most of them, you know, maybe mom has some potted plants in the house that they grow. But otherwise they just, you know, even primary education, they're so busy now they have such a curriculum they have to force through that the time to we're gonna plant some seeds and watch them grow over the semester. That just doesn't happen at a lot of schools anymore. And so this is a very quick opportunity for them to come on a bus and spend a few hours here and really understand what it takes to get the food to that grocery store and on their plate. And

Matt Kirchner: 29:19

where are they coming from? Are they coming from nearby? They're coming from all over the state, all over the Midwest. Where are these students coming

Dick Pavelski: 29:24

from? Yeah, you know, we're now seeing bus loads of school children coming up from clearly around the state, all I mean, Maryland and North we've actually had a bus out of Chicago, several out of Milwaukee and Madison. But now during the summer, that's changed, in a lot of people that vacation. I mean, we've had people at the center now from, I think, 31 different states, had a group up from Brazil, had one from Tasmania a couple of weeks ago, the audience that I reach is getting a lot farther than we originally even dreamt that it could be amazing. Think one other comment I'd like to make is when you were talking about the importance, and I talked a little bit about letting people know where their food comes from. The other issue that we have in agriculture is what I refer to as an ill informed voter base. But beyond that, it's legislators and the people that write the rules who don't understand what's happening on a farm, all of the new technology, the safety that's been built into it, the sustainability that we've got. I mean, in our my son now runs a farming and he's fifth generation, so we've been farming the same land for 150 years. The yields are higher, the nutritional value is higher. The amount of food produced per acre is more than tripled in that period of time. And you know, people writing the rules as far as how food is not only produced, but how it's transported, how it's handled in the grocery store, all those food safety issues they need to understand the industry, and that's also a big part of our mission. So

Matt Kirchner: 30:58

have you reached out? I'm sure you have to the state legislature, to Governor's offices, and then folks at the federal level as well to welcome them in and educate them.

Dick Pavelski: 31:06

Yes, we do. And Andy is on the board of Wisconsin Department of Agriculture. We've had, you know, EPA people come out and visit us as well the regulatory side at the national level, and they've also visited farms in the area at the same time. So they're not only seeing, you know what we're talking about, at the Food and Farm exploration Center, where you get a snapshot, but they're visiting farms of all sizes, all the way down to basically, you know, large home gardens or those type of things, Andy size of, you know, operation, our larger operation. And that understanding, I feel is critical, absolutely

Matt Kirchner: 31:42

critical. So to that point and to that end, as we're reaching out, whether it's to, you know, to policy makers, whether it's to people who are just curious about precision agriculture and the changes in agriculture, whether it's a school teacher, a CTE director or a superintendent who's listening to this podcast and says, Wow, this is really cool. I'd love for my students or for my colleagues to have the same kind of exposure. How do they get in touch and how do they how do they get signed up to experience it?

Dick Pavelski: 32:07

Yeah, I mean, they just go to the website, foodanfarm.org, and book their tour. I mean, book the tours, or look at the website. You know, all of the information is up on our website,

Matt Kirchner: 32:18

awesome. And we'll be sure to link that up in the show notes as well, so anybody who's interested can find it there. You're doing such amazing stuff. Really, really cool. Any other things that you want to highlight, Dick or Andy for that matter, about what the Food and Farm exploration center is doing to get the community engaged with with modern agriculture. We've talked about students, we've talked about policy makers and and legislators that you know? Any other things that our audience should be aware of,

Andy Diercks: 32:39

respective employees, right? We talked about a kid or a family coming up from Chicago, right? They're not thinking about growing up and I'm going to be a farmer, or I'm going to work in agriculture that's just not on their radar. And so to come here and to understand the technology that now exists in our industry, and how many people we need to make it work and continue to advance it, that's a huge part of what's going on here, teaching people that we need help. We have a really exciting career. You can still get a suntan, right? It's I love the diversity of my work. I spent a lot of time in the office in the winter, but I'm outside in the sun and doing all kinds of different things in the summer. It's very rewarding. It's fun to watch a crop grow. It, frankly, is right? And just not a lot people get to appreciate that, right? So many less families have gardens than had gardens 20 years ago, right? There's more and more people moved to the city. You got less and less of that. And so just being able to come out here and watch stuff grow is is a new experience for a lot of people.

Matt Kirchner: 33:30

There's something to be said for you know, first of all, having a job, having a role, where you've got tremendous amounts of variety, and also that that time outside communing with nature, super, super important, valuable. That's important whether you're, you know, a 6070, 80 year old individual, or whether you're a 15 year old kid or younger. We want to make sure that all those folks are understanding the great opportunities that are available and in agriculture as it continues to become more and more modern. Speaking of that 15 year old kid that we just referenced, I want to take both of you back. We'll ask you both this question, and maybe Andy, we'll start with you, and then I'll pose it to Dick. And that is, this is a couple of questions we love asking every guest on the TechEd podcast. The first one is, let's think back to maybe when you were 15 years old and you were in the world of education. You're going through your own education pathway, and then you get into deeper into your career, and some of those paradigms about education change. So Andy, let's ask you first, if, if there's something that you believe about education that might be novel or that might surprise some people, what would that be

Andy Diercks: 34:32

that we need to engage more in it? We do so much of it now, to go through and get that piece of paper at the end, whether that's a high school diploma or a tech school diploma that we don't we're not really there to learn. We're there to get the piece of paper. And I really enjoyed in college studying history of science, where, where the people that we talk about in science, in history, they were there to learn and advance their knowledge. They weren't there to get a degree, to get a better job, to get more money. They were learning and Dick. And I have to learn on this job every single. Say, and I think that's something that really lacks in the generation. It's challenging to teach, obviously, but that's one of the great things about the center. You can come and and be forced to learn a bit.

Matt Kirchner: 35:09

For sure, you're not going through your educational journey just to be able to have a piece of paper or some digital badge that says you did it. It's like, okay, what are you learning? What do you know? There's huge, huge dignity in learning new skills, understanding new concepts, and so we really should be going to school to learn, not just to earn that whatever that piece of paper is that represents what it is that we did while we were there. Dick, same question to you, is there something you believe about education that would surprise some folks?

Dick Pavelski: 35:34

Well, I mean, from my perspective, it's going through school and getting that degree was one thing, but if you're going to be involved in agriculture, you really have to be a lifetime learner, because everything changes. We're learning something new every day. We've got new varieties, new equipment, new technology to adapt to. So you have to be open to that constant flow of new information and learning something new every day.

Matt Kirchner: 36:02

Absolutely that lifelong learning is so very important. We talk about it frequently here on the TechEd podcast. We are done with the age where, you know, as Andy said, you go to school and get your degree, and then you know, whether you were there to learn, or either you were there because you wanted that piece of paper. You know, 510, 15 years later, sometimes even quicker than five years, what you learned while you were in school is already obsolete, especially with the rate at which technology is advancing. So we have no choice if we want to exist in this economy and we want to have any modicum of success, but to be a lifelong learner and to be continually adding to our knowledge as technology and process and the world changes around us, speaking of the world changing around us? Dick, and I'll ask you this question, and then, Andy, I know the world has certainly changed around me in my lifetime, and I'm sure it's changed around you as well. In fact, we talked early on in this episode about some of the original concepts of agriculture and how those have evolved since you got into it. Let's go back in time to those early days. I want to take you all the way back to where you're when you were 15 years old, and what kind of stay on that concept. So you're a 15 year old young man, you're growing up, I assume in central Wisconsin. If you had the opportunity to go back and give that 15 year old young man any piece of advice, what would that

Dick Pavelski: 37:14

be? I think it would be to tell myself that I'll be very fortunate in life and have the opportunity to learn and work with a lot of very great people. And you know, don't waste that opportunity. Be a lifetime learner.

Matt Kirchner: 37:28

Awesome. Be a lifetime learner from 15 on, and you touched on just being able to be around really, really interesting people that I'm sure have shaped your career, shaped your knowledge. Really important advice for a 15 year old is to take advantage of those opportunities and those interactions with others. Speaking of interactions with others, Andy, I've really enjoyed interacting with you on this episode of The TechEd podcast. Would love to hear your insights on the same question. Take us back to that 15 year old Andy Dirksen, what would you tell him if you could tell him anything?

Andy Diercks: 37:57

Well, just like with dating, get out on the dance floor. Take chances. Don't be afraid to fail. Find out. Don't be afraid to ask questions, like constantly warning and yeah, just get after it. Hey,

Matt Kirchner: 38:09

put yourself out there. You'll never know what you can accomplish unless you put everything into it. And and as harrowing is getting out on that dance floor for the first time can be getting out in front of any new experience. Really, important. We're really, really excited that we had some time to spend on the dance floor here with Dick Pavelski and Andy Dirks, talking about the great things happening at the Food and Farm exploration center, talking about the amazing things that are happening in precision agriculture, how quickly it's changing. Absolutely fascinating topic for me. Dick Andy, to both of you. Thanks so much for being with us. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it very much, and thanks so much to our audience for joining us. I know that our audience learned as much as I did, and hung on every word. I gained such an understanding of the things that are happening in precision, AG, and such an appreciation for what happens on the farms across the United States of America and how that environment is changing. I want to make sure we thank again. Dick Pavelski, the founder of the Food and Farm exploration center, Andy Dirks, the Vice President of Coloma farms, who also serves on the board of the Food and Farm exploration center for being with us, we will put the show notes up for this episode of the podcast. We'll put those at TechEd podcast.com/pavelski that's TechEd podcast.com/p, A, V, E, L, S, K, I, when you're done checking out those show notes, and we will link up all the things that we talked about here, including how you can find out for your students, for yourself, how you can visit the Food and Farm exploration center. We'll have some other resources there for you as well. We, as always, have the best show notes in the business. Then head on over to social media. You'll find us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tiktok, wherever you go, you will find the TechEd podcast. When you're there, say hello. We would love to hear from you. Can't wait to see you next week on the TechEd podcast. Until then, I'm Matt kertner, thanks for being with us. You.