Ag Geek Speak
GK Technology Inc Team Members, Jodi Boe and Sarah Lovas talk about precision agriculture, agriculture mapping, agronomy and drainage.
Ag Geek Speak
5. Pioneers of Precision Ag: Shawn Kasprick Part 1
Shawn Kasprick shares his journey from farm kid to precision agriculture pioneer with Simplot Grower Solutions, detailing how early developments in the field shaped the technology farmers use today.
In the episode, Sarah and Jodi sit down with Shawn and discuss
- Shawn's background growing up on a farm in Walsh County North Dakota
- Shawn's educational background, which includes dual bachelor's degrees in Crop and Weed Sciences and Soil Science from NDSU and a master's in Agronomy from Iowa State University
- Starting a precision ag program with Simplot when handed a laptop and told "good luck"
- The evolution of grid sampling to zone management in North Dakota
- Pioneering deep soil sampling for sugar beet production
- Programming to overcome data integration challenges and the importance of understanding what data you're looking at
- The emphasis that good precision ag always starts with solid agronomic principle
- Why multiple data layers create better maps for management decisions
Join us in the next full episode of Ag Geek Speak as we continue our conversation with Shawn where we explore the practical field applications of precision agriculture and his thoughts on future innovations.
GK Technology, Inc.
https://gktechinc.com/
Simplot Grower Solutions
https://simplotgrowersolutions.com/
And now it's time for Ag Geek Speak with GK Technology's, Sarah and Jodi friends, and I can't wait to get in the fields again.
Sarah:No, I can't wait to get in the fields again. Welcome back to Ag Geek Speak. We are so excited for this episode. We have a very special guest, Shawn Kasprick. Hailing from the northeast corner of North Dakota, he works for Simplot Grower Solutions. He's had a number of different roles within that company over the years, but we're going to have a great conversation about his career and things that he's done with Precision Agriculture. A lot of people know Shawn from a lot of different places, but I don't know if people always realize what an impact Shawn has had to precision agriculture in our area and actually, quite frankly, just to precision agriculture and a discussion. So we're going to talk a little bit today about some of his career and some of the fun things that he's done over the years. So thank you for being here, Shawn.
Shawn Kasprick:Welcome. Thank you, and I'm glad to be here. It was interesting to be on some of the podcasts.
Sarah:That's great. So tell us a little bit about yourself, and I'm going to throw you under the bus a little bit, because I know that you were a Walsh County 4-H-er back in the day.
Shawn Kasprick:I was. I did a lot of things within Ags, of course, within 4-H, being one of the group and doing a bunch of things there, so that's kind of where it started. You know grew up on a farm on the eastern side, right along the river, you know, so it was always something to do with farm and it was always great to you know, whenever you got done with schoolwork and you just you're on the farm, right, I mean you do whatever you could and it was fun.
Sarah:That's a long story short. I actually knew Shawn through 4-H myself. I was a 4-H-er back in the day too, in the same county. So yeah, good times good times.
Jodi:So you grew up on a farm and what did you go to college. What was your story after high school?
Shawn Kasprick:So, of course, coming from the farm, that's what you want to do, right? I mean, the whole plan was to go back to the farm. That's what I wanted to do, that's what I love, that's I'm always an egg. So I went into school, I went to NDSU Crop and Weed Sciences and while I was there, I was when start talking through things. I can actually just I think it was two more little classes and I got my soil science degree too. So I did did both of them at the same time because I loved both of them, and really they go, they go hand in hand. I mean, anything you do with ag production and crop production, you know, not only do you have the fertilizer side of things, you have the crop care, and so it all went hand in hand.
Sarah:I didn't realize that you were that close to having a soil science degree. That's. That is pretty, pretty fun. But when you think about the major components of agronomy, right it. It does start with the soil and the planning for the fertility. And hey, is the soil right for actually putting a tillage tool through it so we can make a seed bed here. And then you move into the whole crop management thing, which really does come down to crop and weed.
Shawn Kasprick:Right, and you know, when you start looking at all the classes that you're supposed to take and you talk with your advisor, these are the ones, and there's always those optional you can do this or this. Okay, well, I kind of like this, this is what I want to do. And then after a while, they said, well, you should go talk to this advisor over here too. That's what I did, and ended up being able to get a degree within the soils department.
Sarah:So that was fun. That is very fun, just collecting degrees, you know. So that's great. So you graduated from NDSU with a bachelor's in crop and weed science and soil science, and soil science. So you're a double major. Yeah, that's very fun.
Shawn Kasprick:And then. So then I went from there, went to Simplot and to continue with the career, with the education side of things. That year let's see it was two years after I started within Simplot, Iowa State had their started their online degree, their distance education degree, and so I went and applied on that and did my, got my master's in agronomy from Iowa State.
Sarah:I did not know that you had your master's degree in agronomy either. This is, I feel like I'm really getting to know you here, Shawn. I feel that I assumed you had your master's degree in agronomy either. This is, I feel like I'm really getting to know you here, Shawn.
Jodi:I feel that I assumed you had a master's, but no, that's really cool. I mean that was. Can I ask, like, what year they started doing that, Cause they I still have friends now that are doing that in 2025.
Shawn Kasprick:Yeah, it was 99 when they started it, I think in 98, they started it for you had to be in Iowa and I was like, okay, I don't know how I caught word of it or how I ended up finding out about it. But then I did my application and sent it off to them and I had to get a couple of my professors from NDSU to give me a letter of recommendation to send off to them. I had to get a couple of my professors from NDSU to, you know, give me a letter of recommendation to send off to them. And so I got that done and I was one I think I was one of the first classes allowed outside of the Iowa state that they brought in, so that was kind of fun to go through that, so you're actually one of the first out-of-staters in that one too.
Jodi:Yes, that's pretty neat, that's really neat. So what was that like? So, like a, I've got two questions here. What motivated you to go back and get your master's? Like, what part were you looking for with that master's? And then b, what about your class? Like, okay, so 1999, what was a distance education?
Shawn Kasprick:like, like you didn't have zoom right, so like how did?
Jodi:you do like an online master's back then.
Shawn Kasprick:So what we ended up doing is, you know, I had to go there for orientation, so I had to be on campus for orientation. Um, throughout the whole time cycle, it was okay, here are the classes that are available. How much do you want to take on? You know, and at the time I, you know, there was no kids, um, I was, it was just me, my wife and we were just doing the things that we needed to do, and so it was whatever I wanted to take on. So I took on, I think, two classes, maybe three classes at a time, and I'd come home from work, eat, eat, supper, and sit there and open my book, read my book, do my quizzes online, whatever I needed to do.
Shawn Kasprick:Professors, everything was either email or we would have the forums and the blogs online that we would have to communicate back and forth and, like all of this, we had to communicate so many times and it was really about getting how many times that we would interact with our professors or the other students.
Shawn Kasprick:We'd all have to give our input on a specific topic, and then it was just kind of a forum going back and forth All of the tests that I all have to give our input on a specific topic and then it was just kind of a forum going back and forth All of the tests that I would have to take for one class or another. I went to the high school and they got them proctored within the high school. One of the teachers at high school just said yeah, if all you need is me to sit in and sign off on your tests, that you took them pretty much you know and you have to send them in, I can't turn around and send them in for them. So yeah, they agreed to that and got it all done.
Sarah:That's pretty neat. I had no idea that there was an online distance thing happening at that time.
Jodi:Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, it sounds like it's very heavy, you know, written communication based.
Shawn Kasprick:Yes.
Jodi:Which probably you know. You got to solidify your thoughts and write it out and make sure that you understand the concept by writing that out. That's so fascinating.
Sarah:Okay, if it's all right, I want to kind of pause on the education conversation here with the intention of circling our conversation back around to this. I'd like to ask you how things went in your career to kind of where you got to today, and then ask you a question after that how your education at the beginning really helped you accomplish whatever you wanted to in your career, or how that all works. So how's that for a fully loaded baggage question?
Shawn Kasprick:Wow, let's just dive right in.
Sarah:Let's just dive right in. Let's just dive right in. I'm kind of famous for that. But yeah, why don't you tell us a little bit about your career and the things that you did within Simplot? Because you were kind of one of the first people really working with precision agriculture and kind of one of the people that really drove Simplot's precision agriculture program.
Shawn Kasprick:Yeah. So it was an interesting start to it all because I was brought on board within Simplot the first year more or less, as a crop advisor trainee I was supposed to be trained in. I was going to be one of the salesmen and I think that first year of doing it I loved computers. I always dealt with computers all the time anyway. And about that same time Simplot was looking for getting into Precision Ag. And what do they do? And they're like oh, you like computers. Here's a computer You're going to do Precision Ag.
Sarah:Good luck.
Shawn Kasprick:Okay, where do we start, and so it really kind of started that way. I mean, it was pretty much. You know, throw us a laptop, you start Precision Ag here's our kind of group and the people that we currently have involved and start off.
Sarah:So, for frame of reference, approximately what year are we talking here?
Shawn Kasprick:97.
Sarah:97. Okay, so GPSs are barely on tractors at this point in time.
Shawn Kasprick:Yeah, so GPS was on some of the equipment. It was all you had to pay the subscription fee to get that unlock code to in order to be able to have some reasonable accuracy, and it isn't the accuracy that we have today at sub, you know, sub meter or sub centimeter accuracy it was yeah well, you're within three feet or three meters of it, you'll be good For fertility, probably it's just fine. But when you're dealing with anything smaller than that, there was absolutely no way we could do it.
Sarah:And I think it's important for the audience to note that you know you spent most of your career in Northeast North Dakota.
Shawn Kasprick:Yes.
Sarah:And most of the crops up there are sugar beets, potatoes. You know there's a lot of high value row crops where that accuracy on the GPS does matter Absolutely it does.
Shawn Kasprick:Yeah, yeah. So you know, taking all of that in. You know, everything that we were doing at the time was, you know, just building fertilizer maps and recommendations. So I think late 90s, the mid to late 90s, everything was looking at grid sampling, right, everything was grid sampling. And you know, I think a few things just started off with.
Shawn Kasprick:You know, let's look at zones, let's look at, you know, satellite imagery, you know, and look what we can do. You know here's areas of higher growth and lower growth and everything in between, and let's make zones off of that. I mean, looking at the maps, it makes some sense and let's start that way. So that's kind of what we mean. Looking at the maps, it makes some sense and let's start that way. So that's kind of what we were looking at and trying to bring that, all that in from one computer system to another and have everything talk properly. You know, became and became a big, big issue because you know not everything. You know our system is our own and nobody wants to talk outside to that system because that's different. You know, and they're like, really, this is the system I've got, what is your data set on the backside, and so it's understanding how the data talks to each other, and that's what it is.
Sarah:I always think it's interesting and I always equate it back to hydraulic hookups. You know we've got the whole world and then we had John Deere hookups and I don't think a lot of people in today's world realize what an issue getting data to talk across platforms is. It's really nice when we've got standardized hydraulic hookups. It's really nice when all the data talks. The farmer really does benefit from that. I can honestly say I believe that farmers appreciate that a lot.
Shawn Kasprick:Yeah, and I dealt with those adapters for the hydraulic hookups. We had some of those changeovers, so I get exactly what you're talking about.
Sarah:It's a good metaphor, isn't?
Shawn Kasprick:it, absolutely it is.
Jodi:And I have to plug in ADMS at this moment, because that's one of the things we really pride ourselves on is that, okay, we can bring in a lot of data, you know, as long as it's not a proprietary thing that's locked to us. But for the most part, we can read so much of that data and also export it in a way that will get to where you need to go. I mean that's so important to us in long term. I mean we've been around for a long time and we plan to be here so that, no matter what, you can have that data and use it, no matter how Precision Ag progresses and changes over time.
Shawn Kasprick:And everybody had to get there at some point is you have to understand the background of data and how it actually handles and how it talks. I mean, we see our displays today and we see our displays on any of the computers and you're like, oh, that's a pretty picture, but unless you understand the data in the background and how it actually what it took to get from point A to point B, you can never move that on to the next level unless you start to understand that, and I had to go through that and that growing pain myself. So it's just something you deal with, you know.
Sarah:And so, to just put things in a frame of reference here, at this time when you're working, just trying to figure out what to do with this computer that Simplot gave you and how to get data to talk, you're really in the process of developing what Simplot uses for their precision agriculture software platform.
Shawn Kasprick:Is that correct?
Sarah:Yes, so you pretty much are responsible for developing that.
Shawn Kasprick:Yeah, so within our groups we had some groups talking with each other. You know, some of the groups dealt with the Ag Leaders, SMS software and some of that stuff going on. We had, you know us where we were dealing with the soil tech and what soil tech had to bring at the time. And even within our own group internally we were dealing with ArcView for all of our GIS stuff on the backside and that's kind of where, well, we're already in ArcView and this is what we're going to do, and so that's kind of what. We just kind of transition ourselves into arc view and that's what we were running in on the backside.
Sarah:Okay, yeah, and along this time you must have had some pretty big conversations with Darren, because he was programming software at the same time, or at least I know that you guys have had conversations along the way.
Shawn Kasprick:Yes, we've had conversations along the way and you know, at the time in his previous life, in the previous career that he had, there was a lot of discussions back then and it really at that time it didn't fit what I was looking for, what I wanted to do. You know, although we were kind of all tracking the same direction, it was just not the mindset that I had and what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go was not exactly the same thing.
Sarah:So it was we had conversations and had the opportunity to learn from each other and get ideas, and that you know I think that's something that's really important to remember is in the late 90s. There's a lot of pioneers of precision agriculture out there that were really working hard to try to develop systems that worked well for handling lots of different data, and there's a lot of people that had a lot of different ideas, and it's always so neat to me how we had these great collaborations. We can have different ideas and, quite frankly, the precision agriculture industry that we have today stands on the legs of those conversations and collaborations. We've got different opportunities out there to work with different things and it really has made precision agriculture feasible in today's world to actually be something that works for farmers, for applicators at the field level.
Shawn Kasprick:Yes, yes, and I mean it was. You know when everything was coming out, this little geography. You know whether it be when we started at four or 4.4 acre grids or two and a half acre grids that they're kind of been moving to and moved to. Or you take a look at the zone map and you assume everything within that same zone is all the same within the soil samples in the soil test, soil samples in the soil test, you know you get. You either take an absolute within the grid that that small little grid represents that part of the field, or you move it to a larger scale and it just made more sense to me, not only economically. But this area is all the same. Why do I want to divide, subdivide it any farther? You know, that's kind of where I was looking at it.
Jodi:And with that too, right, Like nitrogen is such an important part for us in North Dakota. So doing grid samples across big fields just is hard to do every single year, Whereas with a zone you can take less samples and still get that nitrate number every single year. That's hard to. How do you do grid sampling to 24 inches every year when you got to get that nitrate number Right? It's just not feasible.
Shawn Kasprick:Well, and if you look at where it started from, you know, back in the kind of the high states in the Corn Belt where they were doing a lot more of the grid samples, they don't have the field sizes that we do necessarily. I mean they do have some large fields, but theirs was cut up a little bit differently. They have some rolling topography that we don't necessarily have, at least here in the Valley, you know, and at first when they were looking at it, it was all on pH and lime.
Shawn Kasprick:You know they were doing a lot of variable rate, lime and those applications which, on a grid sample. That makes sense. You know, when we start getting into things that we're doing here, it just didn't quite fit the same way.
Sarah:And so you know the direction that we went with zones makes more sense. And you also have to remember that, especially in the area, the geography, specifically in the Red River Valley area of North Dakota, we have a lot of sugar beets and we're actually soil sampling down to four feet for those because we need to know that nitrogen number to keep the quality of the sugar beets. So imagine doing grid sampling down to four feet. Ufta meta says the Norwegian.
Shawn Kasprick:And we were doing that.
Sarah:You know when we first started there were still people.
Shawn Kasprick:That's their mindset is okay, I'm doing grid samples because that's a variable rate to me or to in their what they were looking at and they were pulling samples to. You know, the zero to our standard, zero to six, six to 24, 24 to 48 inch samples and we're going there. And you know, some of that also ended up developing into what Franzen had dealt with with for our sugar beets is taking that nitrogen credit and he was doing a lot of work up there. He was actually looking at how deep is our nitrogen go, because we're having to deal with that. Do you ever remember that we were dealing with six foot samples?
Sarah:No, I do not. Oh my gosh, that would be terrible. Yeah, I want to see the probes for that.
Shawn Kasprick:So there was, and, of course, all the problems that you have when you start going too deep and you don't have the probe or the telescoping probe. You have to if dirt falls in while that that hole is screwed and you have to go to another one you know, so so they were doing that for a few samples.
Shawn Kasprick:They were doing it. It was a lot of it. It was just more research and just starting to develop it into the field, and we're kind of playing around with that and at the end of the day, it was like you know what, we don't care, it was just too much work.
Sarah:It was just a lot of things going on and you can glean what's going on with the deep nitrogen from those four-footers.
Shawn Kasprick:You really can Gosh.
Sarah:Those four-footers are enough work, oh my gosh.
Shawn Kasprick:Well, and if you think about it when we're dealing with you know what do sugar beets do? Well, Scavenge they go down super deep and scavenge all of that nitrogen and that we're worried about and bring it right up to the top for us. So fine, we'll deal with that, and that's how we ended up kind of continuing on with that is that deep nitrogen discussion. We can see it in the sugar beet tops and the sugar beet leaves and go from there.
Jodi:I remember John Lee talking about that at AgVise. It's like after the nitrogen recommendations were updated, there was a couple years where there were still some issues with that really deep nitrogen, but after the updated guidelines and years of where the nitrogen rates weren't so heavy, finally we got to levels where the nitrogen was normalized and we could rely on that four foot depth and we didn't have to worry about any of that really really deep nitrogen.
Shawn Kasprick:Right, you know and I know one of our customers we were doing was doing a soil pit. Every year he was doing a soil pit. Just some of it was for his own amusement and his own knowledge of what he wanted to do. But the university NDSU had some test plots up there for some other things and other reasons and they would kind of take advantage and go up there and say, oh, here's a soil pit, let's go look at it. And you climb down into that soil pit and I think it was I can't remember if it was only a six-foot or if it was an eight-foot soil pit that he had dug out, climbed down the ladder and it was up against sugar beet. So you see the profile of the sugar beet down there. And I think at at four to six it was during the drought in in 06.
Sarah:Oh, so I bet they went really deep then.
Shawn Kasprick:At six foot, it was still a pencil thick, jeez. That's amazing so all of that nitrate is being pulled up and anything else, and so there's some other stories of what else can is down that deep profile too. Everything, anything that leeches, herbicides included, can be pulled up and um and show up as a as an issue in the crop.
Sarah:So, yes, that can always be very fun. Yes, let's see what the leaves look like.
Jodi:It sounds like you've seen some things.
Shawn Kasprick:Well, there's that, and then you try and diagnose what happened here and you're like I have no idea. I mean what this looks like. It hasn't been applied in 10 years.
Sarah:Well, yeah, that's how you kind of figure that are really changing with soil texture and organic matter and pH. We're getting the right activity in the right place, but we're getting not too much activity in the wrong place.
Shawn Kasprick:Right, exactly. And you look at some of those and I know we had that conversation, jodi, the other day but you look at some of those soil, or the soil applied herbicides. You look at the labels on them and, like the dual label On there, it says a low, medium and high soil text, or a low, medium and high organic matter. This is what. These are the rates that you should apply. Well, it just screams variable rate.
Sarah:Absolutely it does Absolutely.
Jodi:Yes, and I think, like in the world of weeds, right, like weed control in general has just been so effective that it's like, oh, we don't really have to pay attention to that. But now, as we are dealing with herbicide-resistant weeds, I mean it's okay. Now we're looking at those labels and thinking how do I maximize this so that I'm getting the absolute optimum control with the tools that I still have in my toolbox?
Sarah:Without killing the crop and other places where I got to back that rate off.
Shawn Kasprick:Right, yeah, absolutely.
Sarah:So okay, so you got this computer. You're working on developing how data is going between platforms. You're creating the platform that Simplot is using. You were pretty much in Arc at that point in time trying to make everything go. Are you guys still using Arc? Do you have your own platform now? How is that going?
Shawn Kasprick:Yeah, so we're all still working within Arc. That is the background engine that runs everything that we're doing, everything that we started with, and, of course, once you start in within Arc, it's its own coding platform, and they've now moved to Python coding and so that made it a whole lot easier. So, in the background, not only did I do all this stuff for school, but I also learned how to program and things on the backside.
Sarah:Because you were bored and you needed something else to do.
Shawn Kasprick:Right, yes, that's absolutely it, jeepers creepers.
Sarah:Okay, so you learned how to code, so you're a computer coder now.
Shawn Kasprick:That's amazing, and like I said you know I love computers and I've always known computers, so it wasn't that big of a deal. It was just like, okay, I got to figure this out and we'll go.
Sarah:When you were starting out. Tell us a little bit about the field applicability of it and some of the experiences that you had early on getting it to actually work.
Shawn Kasprick:So everything that I've always done always comes from a place, of course, from my background is soils and agronomy, and so everything that I've dealt with all the time always starts with agronomy. And when we first started into this and everybody had these, their software and proprietary, they're like, oh no, ours is special, ours is this. You know, you can't, nobody else can do this. I'm like it's, it's agronomy, it's agriculture. It's not like we're holding secret codes for the nuclear, any nuclear things going on. Come on now.
Sarah:It's a lamb's quarter in the field.
Shawn Kasprick:Right, yeah, and this is. This is sand, silt and clay. We're not an organic matter. We're not dealing with a whole lot, you know. So it's it's agronomy on the backside. That's all it is. That's how we start with it and what makes sense when we start looking at it.
Shawn Kasprick:Yes, the satellite imagery made sense. This area was, you know, high, medium and low for a within the this within the reflection of the of the satellite imagery. But now you start making. If that's all the zones that you're doing, and you start making there, you have to also answer to the customers. You answer to the growers okay, what? Well, why is that area green? Okay, or why is this area poor growing?
Shawn Kasprick:So you start having, you have to start looking at the background and we were doing a lot of things, starting with topography mapping. Right, I mean, topography mapping started really big. We were running up and down the fields with RTK level instrumentation versus LiDAR that we have now, or where the customers can pull that data off on their own RTK systems. We had to do that ourselves at the time. So we were pulling all this in and we could see that within the elevation mapping and sometimes that elevation mapping matched exactly what we were dealing with with the satellite imagery. So it was really good.
Shawn Kasprick:You start looking at some of the old I mean the old books of on the soils books and on the back side they had old satellite imagery. I mean, besides the soils data, they had old aerial imagery that you started looking at and some of those old aerials started pulling up. You could see old farmsteads that used to be in there that are no longer there. Okay, and I know you start looking at that. You're like, oh well, that explains why this area is so much different. There used to be an old yard in there. You start talking to the customer and he's like you know what? I don't remember that, but his dad does.
Sarah:Yep.
Shawn Kasprick:And like, like you know what I don't remember that, but his dad does and like, oh, okay, so you start looking at these things and now you know, you start adding all of that, all of that together, and that's you start pulling in multiple layers into there. And that's where we're dealing with it Always pulling in multiple layers, looking at more than one layer, cause if you only deal with one layer, can you explain everything that's going on with those zones or within that satellite imagery or yield map or whatever, based on one layer?
Sarah:So that's an interesting component to think about and actually something where your system is quite similar to ADMS, because, again, I would say that's an exact. We have that conversation all the time. How do you go and pick out that one image that describes your field all the time? Does that image actually exist?
Shawn Kasprick:No.
Sarah:No, it always has to be a combination of multiple layers and even there, once you have that in and you might be describing that area, you still might need to do a little bit of modification within that picture so that you really get what you want.
Shawn Kasprick:Right. But you look at the time when everybody, when we were first starting with this, a lot of our competitors out there, a lot of people that were doing different things, were just looking at that one satellite imagery and saying, OK, this is how we're going to zone your field. Ok, that's great. So that was the last time it had sugar beets, which happened to be you know, because it had changed hands or whatever. It was five years ago. So the field this coming year is exactly the same as it was five years ago? Probably not. There may be some similarities, but there's a lot of things that have changed since then.
Sarah:Absolutely, and what I think is so interesting about that is there's a lot of companies today especially new companies trying to enter precision agriculture that do just that. They find that one image and they say this is going to be the image that's going to be your zones forever and we've come so far in precision agriculture. I mean, it didn't work back then at the beginning. Why would it work today?
Shawn Kasprick:No, and that's just it. They want to find that one thing and just yep, this works. The easy button, the easy button, absolutely.
Jodi:When you think about it, it's agriculture. We're working with a natural system. It's complex, so when you think about it, it just makes sense that there's more than one variable going on. That's explaining why our crops are looking like they are Right. So how do you bring in those multiple layers to help you get to a somewhat predictive map that you can fertilize off of or make decisions and make management choices off of, and select and not select and apply and not apply in areas?
Shawn Kasprick:Right, and that was one of the nice things when we were dealing with ARC. Arc has done that in the past. The whole background for ARC is all of the full-blown GIS. Of the full-blown GIS. Our little agricultural portion that we wanted to play around with was just this little teeny, tiny scope of what ArcView can do as a total. And so they're like, yeah, we can pull in that data set. Not a big deal. This is what we do, and so pulling in imagery for Arc was not a big deal. Pulling in other data sets for Arc, they've done it on the backside for other applications, so it wasn't that big of a deal. We just had to make it work for what we need to do in ag. So you start pulling in multiple layers and you got to be careful because you pull in too many data layers and it gets way too complex. So you got how do you simplify it? So it really comes down to what layer or a couple of layers. It will explain everything that I need for this field to continue and move on.
Sarah:But that brings in the human portion of it right, where an agronomist is looking at these pictures of the field with their background and knowledge in crop production and soils, and they're able to look at images and be like, yes, this is a layer that should be included, no, this is not a layer that should be included. And then you could put it together into something that makes sense.
Shawn Kasprick:Yeah, absolutely, and that really becomes more of an art form, right? I mean, all three of us could sit down with the same data sets, pulling all of the information, and our zones would come out. I would suspect pretty close, but the exact line of where I divided it and you divided it and you divided it are all just a little bit different, and that's fine, that's you know. Even when you're making the application, that machine does not stop dead on that line and transition from this rate to this rate. There has to be that zone where it ramps up or ramps down, and so there's that little bit of a variance within that line.
Sarah:That works. But that is so true and we do that all the time here where you know, we might have different ways of making it happen, but we're going to get to pretty darn similar results, but there's always more than one way to skin a cat. The other thing that I think is so interesting in this conversation so Shawn deals in a completely different software package, obviously, that he developed, and we here at GK Technology deal with ADMS, but we have that GIS background that you know. They're both GIS-based softwares, which is very interesting, and some of the stuff within the softwares might be different, but it's got that GIS background and so you know when you're working with precision agriculture, I just think it's really important for people to understand the value of understanding basics of GIS so that you know how to actually operate some of the things. That's not something that's necessarily an agronomic education component, but it's so critical to precision agriculture.
Shawn Kasprick:Right, yeah, absolutely it is.
Sarah:We've talked a lot about your early career and how you were working on developing software. Next time we'll visit with you a little bit more about what you're doing with precision agriculture, maybe a little bit about the in in the field practicality of making everything work and some future ideas. But at the beginning of this podcast you talked about your education and you know how you really pursued that. So can you tell me how has your education prepared you or enhanced your career, and what sorts? I mean you did most of your education at the very beginning of your career, so how has that really impacted who you are today?
Shawn Kasprick:Well, you start looking at everything that you do within schooling. I mean, that is actually the preparation for everything that you need, that you want to learn, and that's how. And so everything that I do within my precision ag, within my career, that's my grounding right, that's my ground for looking at every application that's out there, because there's all kinds of new tools, new concepts, new products that come out there, and this is the latest and greatest. But let's look at the background. Let's ground ourselves to okay, how does that application or how does that product actually work in the ground? And so, whether it be a precision egg, invariable rate, a new product that comes out, a new idea, new concept, new satellite imagery that they've got the latest and greatest let's all bring it back to okay. Does it have applicability in the field level? What is it going to do for us moving forward, and does it actually give me any information that I need to make a better decision than what I had before?
Sarah:Does it actually work from a practical standpoint?
Shawn Kasprick:Yes.
Sarah:That's great. It's really fun to hear People have different reasons for pursuing the education pathways that they do, and so it's really fun to glean that information. And I think for some of our younger listeners it's always great to have that information in the back of their minds as they're going through their career and making decisions. So I appreciate that. That was a great first conversation here with Shawn. We've got so much more to talk about. We are going to have an additional episode next time with Shawn from Simplot. We appreciate that, and with that at GK Technology we have a map and an app for that.
Sarah:I can't wait to get in the fields again. No, I can't wait to get in the fields again. No, I can't wait to get in the fields again.