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
13. Introducing Surface Shaping with Kelly Sharpe Pt. 1
GK Technology introduces Surface Shaping and SD Surface (in conjunction with Rust Sales) which offers land managers an innovative approach to field design. Surface Shaping allows for advanced drainage design, giving farmers the ability to design intentional water flow and directionality, above and beyond normal ditching and "land leveling." Kelly Sharpe explains how this new technology preserves valuable topsoil while eliminating problematic water-holding areas through advanced design and precision implementation.
• Surface Shaping differs from land leveling by focusing on water direction rather than just creating flat surfaces
• Surface maps are created within ADMS, producing cut/fill maps showing where soil should be removed and where it should be added (the controller will move the blade to do exactly what the map calls for)
• Preserves agronomic integrity by allowing farmers to limit topsoil removal to prevent exposing clay subsoil
• Implements precise design plans where equipment operators follow color-coded maps until areas turn green
• Requires less technical expertise from equipment operators since the plan guides the entire process
• Focus applications include: Red River Valley field surface modifications, irrigation grade preparation, terrace building, and construction site preparation
• Requires farmer input during mapping stage to ensure the design meets specific field needs
• Can reduce fuel and labor costs by eliminating unnecessary passes across the field
Contact GK Technology to learn more about how Surface Shaping can transform your field's drainage and productivity.
SD Surface will not be available fall 2025, but we will keep you updated on the official release date!
https://gktechinc.com/
And now it's time for a Geek Speak with GK Technologies, sarah and Jody, friends and I can't wait to get in the fields again.
Speaker 2:No, I can't wait to get in the fields again.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to A Geek Speak, and this week on our A Geek Speak podcast, we have got something really exciting to talk about. Gk Technology is currently in the process of developing a new product called Surface Shaping, and to help us understand that, we have a guest who needs no introduction, but we're going to introduce him anyway because he's pretty darn awesome and that is Mr Kelly Sharp, one of the owners of GK Technology, who has been working a lot with the surface shaping concept and especially out in the field to help us make it kind of come alive and honestly, Jodi and I were just out yesterday working with Kelly a little bit about this. So, Kelly, can you just help us understand a little bit about and I know we've done a podcast with you in the past about who you are and what your experiences are, but can you help us remember who are you, Kelly?
Speaker 3:I am Kelly Sharp. I was born and raised in the wonderful city around Shelley, minnesota, and have a farmstead out that way still, have a farmstead out that way still, and my background is have a degree from the University of Minnesota, crookston, in agronomy, and have been with GK since we started in 2000, in 2005, 2006. And end result is I then worked in the mapping side. I do everything, less programming. I leave Darren and Travis up to the programming side of things. But when it comes to the rest of what happens in the company, there isn't much that I don't tackle as far as items.
Speaker 3:So I get involved in new projects and things like that, the SD side of the business. So of course GK does the mapping side of things. We do the software side of things for all the wonderful mapping needs that you need for your variable rate, for your drainage needs. But we also write the SD drain, ditching and tiling packages for Rust sales. In that front, in that endeavor, we're always trying to come up with new ideas and the surface shaping component kind of came into play. So we write the software side of it where Rust sales picks up, the wiring, machine, control, gps side of it and of course, doing the sales and marketing on that.
Speaker 1:Well, and to that point, you know, and kind of going back just a little bit, talking about who you are, you know I had the chance to work with Kelly before I came to work for GK Technology and now, honestly, I'm kind of one of his dudes working right alongside of him here at GK Technology on the team and one of the things that Kelly is so good at he's been with this company so long he's got a solid base of egg technology. You know, kelly, your background with your dad who used to do equipment. You know really thinking through different equipment and how equipment should be engineered. So he's got a solid base with equipment. And then, of course, that solid base of agronomy, that trifecta. There is something that's extremely difficult to find in this industry today. And then, with his history working with our software, adms, for all the, for all the years, he's really seen this software from the ground up.
Speaker 1:So all of these tools that have been added on over the years, kelly's seen them all come into the software and I know when I'm trying to work and where I'm going with this whole thing is that when I'm trying to work with software and think about things in a different way, we've got a suite of tools there, but Kelly is pretty creative in trying to figure out like, okay, these are the tools we've got, how do we think about using them in new and different ways to accomplish new and different things? Which is pretty neat, and I think sometimes that helps. Maybe you know, when we're dealing with stuff like surface shaping, you can take those concepts of surface drainage, the concepts of tile drainage and all of those things and think about things in a brand new way to bring to light some ways that we can use old tools that are in the software but also to be very imaginative in how we're bringing about new products. But there you go, kelly. Go with that where you want. How about that?
Speaker 3:I'm going to summarize what Sarah just said into something really simple, and both Sarah and Jodi have heard me say this before. But it's how many ways can you use a crescent wrench? But it's how many ways can you use a crescent wrench? And really, I mean, at the end of the day, you've got a few clicks in the software that do this, and how many different ways can we do it? And again, the creativity of that.
Speaker 3:I'll be honest, I'll be honest with you, sarah, jody, a lot of the stuff that we hear, a lot of the stuff that's coming back and ideas that I have. I have no problem handing it off and saying, hey, I was talking to Curt and Elaine down in South Dakota and they said this and I thought this was a really great idea and I'll give full credit to some of the ideas that come at me that other people have come up with too. But I mean different ways of doing things has been the creativity of, you know, hundreds of users spread across the country and listening to what they're doing too. So I'd love to say I came up with a lot of those ideas and I did come up with a few of them along the way, but again. It's like that thing of sometimes just watch what other people are doing around you, and this goes for life. You might just learn something from your neighbor down the road of what they're doing too.
Speaker 2:So and and that's the thing too is, though, is like not only have you gotten these ideas right, but you've also implemented them. That's, that's the difference between having the idea and implementing them. It's a different product than sd ditch and sd tile. Just go into depth about what surface shaping is and help us understand. What are the differences here and what can we do now? Rust and stuff.
Speaker 3:It goes back to the concept that we had years ago that you build a plan for a field and you just go to work. So if you're going to go out and do a ditch, if you're going to go out and do tile, you build a plan, you build a design, you build some concepts, but at the end of the day you're going to go out and drive a survey, turn around, and then you're going to go out and drive a survey, turn around, and then you're going to install the tile, you're going to drive a survey and you're going to cut a ditch. So that location of that ditch, you can do some pre-planning and stuff like that, but you still have to survey it in the field. And the benefits of surveying it in the field is you don't need to worry so much about benchmarks, exact perfections or imperfections from the field to the or from the office to the field. So so the but the benchmark component gets to be so important if you're going to be doing those those types of things. But again, with a ditch, with tile, with things like that, when you set it up in the office, when they hit the field they may be like oh you know, we want to have it just a little bit this way or a little bit that way and you don't, you know, trying to have the tools to change that stuff on the fly in the field are. We're just going to call. If you're going to the plan portion of it, it's kind of pertinent or impossible.
Speaker 3:So the idea is that you know the guy in the tractor. Just like planting, just like anything else, the guy in the tractor has to have some insight, some knowledge, some understanding of what's trying to happen here. So when you're ditching and tiling, you need somebody that's got a head on their shoulders, that's sitting in the tractor to make sure that everything is getting done correctly. When you get into the surface shaping portion of things, we take it to the next level, where we need some input from the customer. We need some input from the customer.
Speaker 3:Basically, we're engineering, we're redesigning the field. So we're going to fill in this ditch, we're going to change the shape and layout of this field, we're going to move X amount of dirt from here to here and we'll get deeper into that in a second. But the base concept of it is is that all of a sudden you hit the field where it's completely pre-planned. You go to a benchmark, you touch off on it, you put your machine into a auto blade, if you will, or auto cutting, and you drive until all the areas are cut, all the areas are filled, and you go on to the next field. You don't need somebody inside the tractor necessarily that has a lot of understanding of what's going on here other than is the blade going up and down and are things responding, and if all those, if those two criteria are met, keep on driving until this map is green.
Speaker 1:So there's, there's so much there that we could talk about and I and, and we'll just let this conversation roll, but first I got to ask a question. So you know, back in the day, years ago, there was this concept of land leveling, and so when we start talking about, you know, cutting ditches and filling in low spots and all of that, are we making this level? Or help Kelly, help us understand what's the difference between land shaping and land leveling?
Speaker 3:Sure, and it's one of the huge parts that we want to make sure we're really clear on upfront about this. This is not land leveling. The old theory of land leveling was exactly that leveling the land out. You were going to go across with this big, long blade that was going to take all these little imperfections out of your field, but it didn't really have the concept of I want a ditch here, I want this or, better yet, I want this area that is maybe bowl-shaped to have directionality. Land shaping concept that we're going after here and I want to kind of think about this in four different parts. On the land shaping part, but just the number one is we're going to use kind of the Red River Valley to the land leveling component that Sarah just brought up there. But using that concept of the land leveling in the Red River Valley flat ground that has undulations and ditches in it is the simplest way I can put it is you know it's not like you have 20, 30 feet of fallen fields, it's a lot of stuff that's. You know it's not like you have 20, 30 feet of fallen fields, it's a lot of stuff, that's you know, three, four feet of fallen, a whole quarter, and you're just trying to get these little imperfections out. But we have plenty of spots that are bowl shaped. Well, the land leveling did a great job of getting rid of all the plow furrows and one way disc ridges and stuff in the field. But you still were left with these bowl-shaped areas and then when you got all done land leveling, then you had to cut a ditch to that spot so it didn't hold water. But you got rid of all these minor imperfections that were over. You know, call it the 80-foot, 60-foot patterns, 40-foot patterns of the one-way discs and the plows and some other minor infections that way. Other part of it is is you had no control over how much dirt came off of some of the more pronounced ridges and stuff like that. So you may have taken areas that had six inches of topsoil or three inches of topsoil and taken an inch or two off of those areas and some of the low areas you maybe have filled in more and all of a sudden you went from six inches and ended up with eight inches down there. So that was some stuff that happened there In the surface shaping portion on the Red River Valley stuff.
Speaker 3:If we'll example one, we would be taking that soil and in the planning and design portion you're going to tell us I don't want to move more than two inches of soil at any spot in my field. Perfect, we're not going to remove anything more than two inches. So that's part of the design process. So then we might have a hole over here that's a foot deep, or this bowl shaped area that we need to put a foot of fill on this side. But we're not going to change the output side.
Speaker 3:The output side is going to stay at the same elevation. But we might put a foot of fill over, you know, 300, 400 feet away to get that grade to come the right direction, to get you to an 05 grade or whatnot. But the idea of it is is that in the designing process we never cut a foot off of that hilltop to put a foot of fill in here. We grabbed a whole bunch of soil from all over here to fill in this little area that needs a foot of fill to give it directionality. So that's the big difference between the surface shaping and the old land leveling process is that the design. We have that ability to control what we're getting from where.
Speaker 1:And just to kind of help maybe frame up what I think I heard you just say again that land leveling. The whole concept was just to level it. It doesn't necessarily give water a direction where it should go once it hits the soil surface. So ponding was still very, very possible. As a matter of fact, some of the guys that I heard talk about that did land leveling to fields. They talked about how it would almost turn into like mush when it would rain, because, again, that water just kind of sat, whereas the surface shaping that we're talking about and that I'm hearing you describe shaping that we're talking about and that I'm hearing you describe it's really helping us give overall directionality to water when it falls on the surface. So whether we're improving ditches or whether we are filling in low spots, the whole concept is that when that water droplet hits the surface it has a way to escape off the field, if that's our desire Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yesterday, Kelly, we talked a little bit about this and I really like the way that you put this, and there's many uses to surface shaping, not just looking at it from a way of managing the shape of a field to manage water. There's a lot of other things too and it's a good use for it, but it's almost like we're doing advanced drainage. We now have the keys to a way to more precise or more advanced ways of shaping our fields to meet the demands of our water management plans.
Speaker 3:And that was an excellent term. Advanced water management is really. It's a great term there, jody. That really does drive home what we're doing. And with that being said, I mentioned that there's kind of four in my mind.
Speaker 3:Again, we're at the point right now where things are functioning and we're trying to get into the kind of the the marketing side of things a little. You know, getting closer to the marketing side of things, and I kind of see it in four different, four different concepts at Red River Valley, you know, cut a little dirt from here, fill in the spot here, and then there's truly, truly the, the more, the land leveling concept, the laser leveling, if you will, that you get into with the guys when you move out west and get into guys doing like furrow irrigation and things like that, where we're just going to put a grade from one end of the field to the other so we can open up this, ditch this canal and dump water in there, and it's going to go uniformly down the field at a specific rate. And again, at that point you're not worried about how much I removed from this hill, how much I filled here. It's just a matter of we're going to make it like this, no matter what. And then the third option would be more would be more the terrace shaping or rice paddy building type stuff where you're going to potentially, you know, put stuff and drop stuff and put stuff and drop stuff onto to terrace type things.
Speaker 3:And the final option would be final option that I would see would be more the the building pad, the building pad type type designing where you're going to come in and and and you know, maybe put in a new, you know be building new cattle, bunkers or things along those lines, building a design to say we're going to come here and we're going to put a pit over here and we're going to, you know, put this up and dike over here, and getting more into the construction phase of things. And again, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, all of these things that I'm talking about, all these things that I'm talking about, come with a certain level of complexity to them from the standpoint of we're really kind of wandering into the concept of construction management.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I think that's so interesting when you know, really, the background of GK technology has its foundations in agronomy, right. And yet here we are and we're starting to think about construction, and there's so many places where this could be. I know I worked with a farmer once upon a time who was doing just what you were talking about. He was setting up a feed lot for cattle and he needed to like be filling places in and making better ditches in certain places, and those kinds of things. This would have been the perfect tool to be using for that.
Speaker 3:And, with that being said, though, so if you go hire a construction firm to do this, what's really important is that they know that we're not just going to go out there with a dozer and make this shape. They're not just going to go and say, boom, boom, here, we filled that hole, we put this over there, we're done. They're going to oh, that hole that's going to be filled right there, we're going to peel back the black dirt there, get it down to clay, push in some new clay level that out, put some black dirt back over the top of it. This is one of the concepts with the soils that we have here. You take yourself down to. You take yourself down to some of the things we've all seen on the internet, watching these big, big tractors pulling two scrapers and moving dirt. You know they got six tractors out there. You know they run 12 scrapers on six tractors and, anyways, we watch these systems and what they're moving soil around on. These guys are farming, and I'm not saying 100%, but a lot of these guys are farming, basically, in the sand. You know they're not hitting the, you know their A horizons and B horizons and you know tillable soils and stuff like that. Again we start doing that in the soils.
Speaker 3:Here in the Red River Valley we know what happens when you hit the blue clay layers, when you go from your nice black, rich topsoil and you start getting down into that, that bee horizon, and all of a sudden it's like that stuff.
Speaker 3:If you have to plant and put crop into it, you'll get a crop to pop up. But you know you're going to be 200 bushel corn over here and 50 bushel corn over here and at the end of the day you guys hit it on the head. At the end of the day, we're an agronomy company. Where we're under, we're trying to approach this with good agronomic knowledge and good agronomic experience going, hey, we don't want to rip six inches of topsoil off of your Red River Valley fields from the standpoint of if we do, we're going to start getting down into that clay. We want to be cognizant of how fragile that ecosystem is, that topsoil is that we're working with, and make sure that we're not getting you into scenarios like that. And again, for any of you guys that have been out ditching, any of you guys that have been out working on stuff, you've pulled up some blue clay and even dumped some into a dirt pile and noticed the yield differences even where you dump some of that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yep, even where you dump some of that stuff?
Speaker 2:Yep, this is a perfect segue to what I want to ask, kelly, because, thinking back to GK as an agronomy company and also thinking about construction, I mean we're kind of playing in a really special area, because I think, you know, farmers want to do these things with more precision, right, to get better at reclaiming hilltops or building sites for their farm or doing these things that they know require more precision. But there just is no way that farmers are going to fork out, for the most part, the money that is required to get this construction equipment, and it doesn't make sense, right, like, to invest in that expensive of equipment for something that you're going to use, you know, one time it just doesn't pay for itself. Um, but we're on the agronomic side, right, and so this gives you this higher level of control while also having that agronomic consideration. Like I, it's a really interesting and, I think, really cool place to be in. But my question of what I wanted to ask too is, speaking of like construction and what we're doing here and what concepts we're using, can you talk more about cutting and filling and you know how we take into consideration these agronomic pieces too, to make sure that we're not cutting too deep and that we're doing a good job and getting to the map that we want to get to. We're getting to the final product. We're getting to.
Speaker 3:Very good, very good question there, jodi, about the cut fill. The cut fill part of this gets to be a thing that again, looking at and this doesn't necessarily have to be a valley field, this can be rolling hills, this can be anywhere in the country but you start getting bowl-shaped areas of fields and I want people to think about it. Just think about a bowl or even a plate on a table. Now if you were to just take that plate and tip it a little bit, does water drain out of it? No, it doesn't. It still has a little bit. You know, if we just took that shape and tipped it, you're still going to get a little bit of water ponding on the bottom side of the bowl, if you will. So the idea here gets to be that we're going to take the whole bottom of that bowl, fill it in. But we don't just want to fill it in, we want to give it all direction. Hey, do we want the flatest areas in the field to be at a 0.03 grade, which a 0.03 grade would be three-tenths of a foot of drop on 1,000 feet, and they go. You know, I'd like to have a little more grade than that. Let's shoot for a 0.05. So now that's a half a foot of drop, six inches of drop on 1,000 feet. But when we get done with the design, when we get done with building the project for them, these bowl-shaped areas now the top side of them are going to be raised up and it's going to, every foot of that field is going to have at least a 0.05 grade heading towards whatever outlet or whatever ditch is airstriped by, and then that ditch will take it to here and here and here and leave the field.
Speaker 3:In that process, though, we're taking and building a plan. We're building a plan that's going to say that in these areas, when we get all said and done with it, we've got the original elevation, we got the, the shaped elevation, and we're going to make a difference map. That difference map is going to be the map that you're going to watch in the, in the field, and you're going to see these green areas saying everything here is on grade and everything here does not to be, does not need to be touched by a scraper. Now, the areas that are in the red are hilltops or hill-shaped areas that we're going to be removing soil from, and the areas that are in blue are the water holding areas that we're going to be filling back in. So you'll be grabbing soil from the red areas and going to the blue areas. When you get done cutting hill, the map will turn green you're done there. You're going to go over to here, where you're blue, dump the soil and when you get that loaded up to a elevation it'll turn green and say, hey, you're done filling over here. So you're not just going to be driving back and forth, back and forth.
Speaker 3:And in the construction world a lot of that is what is happening in the construction world right now is that they just drive back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. They're not really documenting cut or fill, they're just getting to a grade. But the point is is that you know when they build the highway, how many times does that dozer drive over? You know that square foot Probably half dozen times foot, probably half dozen times, maybe a dozen times, that dozer will drive over that same spot over and over and over again. And from a farm agronomy standpoint, guys, the amount of fuel you're going to use up, if we're going to use that theory that you don't know if you're done yet or not, we could burn a lot of fuel and this is going to be a labor-intensive, fuel-intensive process. But trying to limit that and say, hey, you're done over in this quadrant, go to this next area, go to this next area, go to this next area.
Speaker 1:Kelly, one of the things that I love about this concept too, is when you make this map, you've got your red areas or your orange areas and you've got your blue areas that need. You know, blue areas need to get filled in red and orange needs to get cut. And the whole concept is once you just like you said and I'm repeating what you said and I apologize for that, but your map turns green once you've accomplished what you need to accomplish out there and once you've got your plan so that you've got that directionality built in, once you've filled in those spots, the way they should be filled in, or once you've got the cuts made, where those cuts need to be made, your map turns green. So often when we've had farmers doing surface drainage out there, they take it upon themselves to go out to that field and make sure that they're the ones who are doing the surface drainage and cutting those ditches, because they don't trust other people to know where the water is supposed to be flowing and how those cuts should be made and how those back slopes should be made.
Speaker 1:But with this we're actually going to have a plan that's in place. So, theoretically, if you have a somewhat of a half decent equipment operator out there if they don't know where the water goes, if they don't know what you know. Oftentimes the way the farmer thinks about that drainage in those ditches it's so personal to them that trying to trust somebody else to make that come to life is really hard. So if we've got that built into a plan and you've got an equipment operator that can go out there and just focus on driving back and forth making sure that it's cutting where it's supposed to cut and doing what the plan says, when you get that map turned green, you're done. So essentially I think this could actually help quite a bit with labor because we won't have to have the technical training for somebody out there to be operating this who's been farming that land for 30 years before they've got it figured out where the water is supposed to go.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I think the word that was said yesterday is that you pop in the tractor and you don't stop until the map turns green and that's it Like. You get into gear and then you don't have to touch the hydraulic controls, you can turn around, you don't have to lift anything up, it just works it really cool.
Speaker 3:And again, at the end of the day, you're going to try to move that cut area to the nearest fill area and that's really the only decision. That's really the I shouldn't say the only but really the major decisions that are going to be made when you're in the field is I need to move that soil into that red, needs to go into a blue, and these two are near to each other. These two are near to each other and and away you go and anyways, it's, it really is. It really is a game changer.
Speaker 3:And and again, at the end of the day, for me, what really drove this concept and what really made me think that this was was something we needed was watching some of the people either doing the land or doing the the the grabbing the land planes and running around out there, or people that just went out there and did some laser grading on their fields and put one elevation to another, and I can think of a few fields around the area that I watched this on and it just was so painful to watch. And again, they got all said and done with it. And the laser one, they got done with it and everything was great and wonderful, but they had so much clay exposed and the guy that went out with land shaping, he got all said and done with it and then they waited for the next rain and said, oh, there's all the dots of the spots that aren't draining now. Now we got to go ditching again.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 3:I mean that was kind of the premises that I watched and I just said there's got to be something better than this. And again, it's the same stuff that Darren saw, it's the same things that the guys that Terry Rust and Chris Morricourt and Luke and all the guys out at Rust Sales saw, and just going there's got to. We've got the tools. And a reminder to everybody. A reminder to everybody this is something that requires a design before you go to the field, meaning that somebody has to create that and for the most part, it's probably going to be us. You can buy our software and do it yourself, or you can work with us. Again, when I say work with us, it means we need input from you. Don't just walk in the door and tell us to build a plan. Come in the door and say, hey, build a plan, but I'm here to give you some input, because it's not our job to tell you know, to say we want to fill in.
Speaker 3:If we say we're going to fill in this ditch and you're going to be like you can't fill in that ditch, my dad put that ditch in and it's going to be like, oh, I don't care who put it in, it's in a dumb place and there's plenty of those ditches and things like that that have happened in fields. And I use this Shelley 8 example in our training class all the time, and let's call it what it is. It's a disaster. I mean, just with the layout of the drainage on that thing there's some ditches that you just look at it and go. I don't know, those guys must have been like reading Braille or or I don't know, they must have been totally blind because they got water going in circles and and, like I said, those are the types of things that you got to just work with. We need the input to say what parts of this do we want to fill in, which parts of this do we want to cut and get rough designs, and from there we can make magical things happen.
Speaker 1:And to that point, Kelly, when I was just talking about having somebody that isn't necessarily the farmer, with those ideas of how to make things go actually in the tractor, because the plan is there, you have to have that operator, that farmer, that landowner involved in that planning process developing the land so you get the product that you want out there At some point in time. If you know where you want that water to go, if you know how you want that land to be and act, you have to be involved in that conversation at some point.
Speaker 2:So this is super exciting and I think this is a really good place to stop our first part of our conversation today. Surface Shaping is a really exciting product that we are putting out, and again it comes back to what Sarah just said is at GK, we're here to help you put your thoughts of what you want to do in your field into a digitized form that you can then go out and implement. And this is just another step of doing that, of giving you tools that can take what you want to do and actually get it done in the field.
Speaker 1:And this is a really exciting thing Is that why at GK Technology we say we have a map and an app for that.