Ag Geek Speak

19. Preston Sundeen Pt. 2 - Teaching Precision Ag That Works Today

• A Podcast for Precision Agriculture Geeks • Season 2 • Episode 19

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Welcome back to the second part of our conversation with Preston Sundeen to explore how a two-year ag program prepares students for precision agriculture careers by building real-world skills across hardware, software, GIS, and agronomy. Sundeen's focus is practical confidence: clean data, sound troubleshooting, critical thinking, and learning to ask better questions.
 

We also talk about...

• defining precision ag as practical, cross-disciplinary work
 • balancing agronomy, GIS, hardware and software fundamentals
 • building file discipline, projections and boundary workflows
 • sourcing NAIP, PLSS, and satellite imagery effectively
 • controller setup, CAN bus basics and diagnostics
 • using simulators to teach certain types of controllers
 • as-applied data, JD Operation Center, SMS, and FieldView exposure
 • teaching troubleshooting: manuals, credible videos and tests
 • digital literacy and AI as time-saving tools
 • measuring success by momentum, confidence and community impact
 
 We had an excellent conversation with Preston and we know you'll enjoy it too.

Part 1 of our conversation: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2297340/episodes/18257891

https://gktechinc.com/

Sarah:

And now it's time for a geek speak with GK Technologies, Sarah and Jodi.

Theme Music:

In the fields again. I just can't wait to get in the fields again. The life I love is ready to product for my friend. And I can't wait to get in the fields again. Oh, I can't wait to get in the fields again.

Jodi:

Welcome back to Ag Geekspeak. And in this week's episode, we are back with the one and the only Preston Sundean. And last episode, please go back and check it out. We talked a lot about Preston's background in agriculture, how he got to where he is today in the world of agriculture and his background with ADMS and Precision Ag. And we had a lot of fun talking about not only, you know, Preston's background, but all the other fun things that come along with thinking about and applying precision agriculture and uh and more places than just the field, so to speak. But this week we are looking forward to continuing the conversation with Preston and really thinking about you know what are some ways that um we can instill confidence and um the basics of precision agriculture knowledge in students and for those of us that are working with ADMS for the first time. And of course, the conversation will go off of that point too. But thank you so much for being with us again, Preston, and we're glad you're here.

Preston Sundeen:

Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Jody.

Sarah:

Yeah, so you have spent a lot of time in the classroom actually teaching precision agriculture concepts. Was and obviously you've taught a lot about GIS in uh in as it gets applied into precision agriculture. But was that the only thing that you taught as far as precision agriculture, or were there other precision agriculture um classes like outside of ADMS that you taught?

Preston Sundeen:

Uh so I'll just kind of start back with the start of Lake Regia State College's precision precision ag program. And uh it got started back in 2012 via a grant to the federal government, saw precision ag as an up-and-coming discipline or field and wanted educational facilities to go and put a degree and a program together. And I came in its second year, and when the program started, it had more of a uh philosophy or a view on installing hardware, and that was one aspect that I had a little background in, but but not as big. I was more agronomy, and so the the program has agronomy, precision egg hardware, precision egg software, all as a component, all as key classes. And so I pretty much um throughout my I think this is uh so I was a full-time instructor for I think nine years, and I was a part-time instructor for three. Um, I pretty much taught every class that's that's been offered through here. So whether it's the GIS or the agronomy or the the quote unquote precision aid classes, which is another question on what is precision egg, and everybody has a different view of of what it is. But uh yeah, I you know when I visit with parents or students looking to come to the program or with parents, I just kind of mentioned that I felt this program was as up to date or as an agricultural program as up to date with what is going on right now, boots on the ground, what farmers are doing, what agronomists are doing. And to me, that was precision ag. So yeah, I've I've pretty much taught taught them all. So ask any any question out there, GIS agronomy, and and I can kind of tell you what we're doing here.

Sarah:

So, what are when you just mentioned that people have different definitions of what precision agriculture is? When when you see that, and and I I I I feel that too, but maybe can you help us understand when people come in? Because I think sometimes the definition of precision agriculture can put blinders on people so that they can't really always see the whole thing. So, can you help us understand what you mean when people say they've got different definitions?

Preston Sundeen:

Well, I'll tell you a story that I tell a lot of people. When I first got hired on, I was out somewhere, I can't remember where, and somebody asked me what what do you do? And I said, Well, I just got hired of uh a precision aid program instructor, and you know, oh good. So you can teach them students then how to install this outback GPS system on this 895 and then have it connect to my Dicky John on this air seeder. And there was a lot of other things I forgot now, what was all in there, but it was that you know that that back 10 years ago trying to make all of these different uh round knobs and square pegs and everything come together, and I went, yeah, no, that's not what we're gonna precision egg, absolutely, but out of 20 students, how many of them are going to be trying to retrofit all of that? So it is, it means a lot of different things to to different people. The the GIS is pretty simple, I think, you know, as precision egg and and utilizing programs such as uh ADMS and um uh looking at fields through remote sensing and uh satellite imagery, drone imagery, and that type of thing. Uh on the agronomy side, I think it's you know utilizing the the tools and whether it's software. We use Farm QA in the program. Uh we've used other apps as well, which I expose the students to that. So I feel that's precision egg. If you're if you're a crop consultant, I think you're involved in precision egg, but you're probably not installing outbacks into 875 versatiles. You know, you're you're using uh a particular app and you're uploading all your chemical recipes, and maybe the app is doing some of that for you, or maybe you're having to enter in, you know, the rei level and the rain fast or those types of things. Uh when it came to the shop, we that was probably the hardest part was the shop projects. And so we put together a four-row plot planter. We always planted 40 acres of of field with it. Um, and so that was kind of the hardware side. It was pretty much precision planting. And I would tell students, you know, that the overall lying fundamentals of this would go case, John Deere, whatever you would have. But you know, this was just kind of putting together that troubleshooting, installing um, you know, CAN bus wiring system, hooking it up to a controller, uh, some troubleshooting diagnostics of it. And then um, as applied data, we've always worked with in the program too. Uh, we used to use SMS. Uh now we do a little more with the operation center. Um field view. We've used field view in the past as well. So that's kind of my view of where precision comes into all those different aspects.

Jodi:

I'm most curious. So, like in my expecting background, and this is just a me thing, like I ignored the agronomy side, try to get at the GIS side and the software side, but the hardest one for me is the hardware. What what are the you know, what are the big big things that you want students to take away going through those hardware classes? Like what are what are the things that you're trying to instill and would say that they're you know they've learned what they need to you to go out and once you're done with their your hardware class?

Preston Sundeen:

Well, hardware was just incorporated in. We'd we had a class just called Advanced Precision Agg, and that was a shop class, and and the controllers were were put in there as well. Um, I think a lot of part of the controllers, because there are so many of them, and you know, we were asked over the years, you know, so why aren't you teaching, you know, this specific one and this specific one? Well, they are they are complicated to teach on when you don't have a fleet of equipment. A lot of those controllers have to be plugged into the air seater to know to be able to hit the air seater functions in there. So what we've what I when I was I haven't taught those classes for a couple years, but when those were my classes, uh we built uh we have a kind of a little mock portable NH3 with um with a Raven Cold Flow that we can plug into at that time. It was a John Deere controller and a Pro 700. Uh we have uh we have a sprayer that can be plugged into a controller, and so it's it's the basics. You know, it's it's setting up that controller um uh for the implement and uh doing the dimensions, uh calibrating TCMs, trying to talk about different scenarios and how that would come into play and what you would have to do in the controller. I tried to implement egg talk a little bit where I would go on egg talk and I would find a problem and I would just go, okay, that's kind of a you know, entry-level problem. Let me pass this off to the student. And some of those you don't really even need to have the controller to try to figure out how to do it. I would just tell them, you know, try to find a YouTube video that solves this problem. Like, I mean, I don't know how many times I've tried to solve a problem. The first place I go is has somebody else solved it and put it on YouTube. Uh, and or let's read through the manual and at least rule out these different venues or these different directions of the paths to go down. And um, can we just find the right answer in the troubleshooting guide? You know, the the tractor isn't receiving GPS. Well, let's look at the globe and and look at what light color lights it's flashing. You know, we can do that just off of uh off a manual. So and then and then try to get in conversation with the students and if they're doing something on the farm to bring that into the classroom or struggle to do something on the farm, or tell me a story about something on the farm that uh you guys had trouble fixing and then you got it solved. What was that? So, but hardware is hardware is the toughest part by far.

Jodi:

Yeah, like you said, right? Like if you how do you if something needs to have uh an air seater to attach to it to like turn on or you know do 75% of its functionality, like that's not always feasible to have in, or and then what percent of the classroom is going back to actually working in to be the farmer and and and working have to run the controller?

Preston Sundeen:

We're a two-year program. We offer a class or two in all these different aspects, and the one I didn't mention was business, which you'll have to get into, or or econ. Um, but how can we offer enough in those classes to give a student a background so when they attend the case John Deere uh field day or the learning going there to learn the controller or going to their open house so they fall they can follow along what the presenter's talking about, that they can ask uh good engaging questions. That's kind of that was always kind of my litmus was to make sure that when these students graduate, that you know, they're probably not gonna go start a map writing consultant business, but when they go attend the agronomy meeting, that they can follow the presenter and and pick up on those key buzzwords and um the topics that are being presented on.

Jodi:

That's a really good like litmus or like just uh outcome, you know, like if that's the outcome, that makes it I mean it's it's still a challenge to put together the the training to do that, but like okay, there this is the outcome. That's that's cool. I really like that. Okay.

Preston Sundeen:

Like we have a student attend an ADMS clinic, they're not going to to s be able to teach the class, but I want them to be able to sit in that class, have Kelly teaching them, and they ask intelligent, good, engaging questions. They can follow you know the the train of thought or where the instructor is is trying to take them and you know and be able to grow from that training, but have had the correct background to sit in there and be comfortable in that meeting or training.

Sarah:

And when it comes to something like hardware, you know, it's it's interesting because every single company is is doing something different with the way that their controllers come in and the way that they transcribe that information out to the equipment. And yet at the end of the day, even though all of those different colors of equipment are doing things differently, there has to be some things that are similar in the goals to get things across. So if students can even get just enough experiences working with enough, yeah, they might not get every single little piece of the puzzle that's in the marketplace today, which, dear lord, for the amount of equipment that's out there in the market, that would be almost impossible anyway. But if you could get a couple of the more popular brands that are out there and then have the chance to kind of touch and feel across each one, maybe you can see those commonalities of the things that need to happen to get that prescription rate translated over to the equipment and get it get it applied.

Preston Sundeen:

And I think you know, I really promote two-year uh colleges, and I think that is an advantage of a two-year college, is we could figure out how to implement a two, three classes on every single specific controller, but then is there value in that to that student? Or can we do just what you're saying, Sarah? Go and give them the background in each of them, and and they have their education in two years, which also you know has the liberal arts and the gen ads and all that other things, a good two-year education, and then they can get out and they would have a feel or know where they're going into. Maybe they're gonna go work for case, let case or John Deere, whomever they go work for, give them their industry specific training. There's no sense of us trying to pretend to be as good on a controller as Case, John Deere. Come here, get get a good background, and then where you're going to be employed, let them get you that specific, specialized, individualized training.

Sarah:

And to that point, you know, I think it's really interesting to think about that because so often in the real world, you know, you go to school to get those that foundation. But I remember when I got out of college, when I got out of agronomy college, and I was out there working in the field and actually working in egg retail, the steep learning curve of actually being in the business, right? Yeah. Now I value everything that I got in the classroom. It was that really big foundation, but I needed to be out there to learn the rest of it. And and don't go on. Go ahead, Preston.

Preston Sundeen:

Well, I was just gonna say I appreciate my four-year degree, and I think four-year degrees are very valuable. But for the students are coming here for a two-year degree, and then you can take, like what you're saying there, Sarah, with that steep learning curve. Take your first two years, especially in agriculture, as that's that's further education. I mean, your first two years in retail or or whatever it is that you're doing, going back to the farm, I mean, you're gonna learn so much, and you have to learn so much in them two years that to me that's just an extension of your education. And hopefully you got a good background to really take advantage of those next two years to soak it all in. And uh, but I just like any other industry, you're you're always you always have to be a student. I mean, if you're gonna succeed in any industry, you're you're always a student.

Jodi:

You mentioned this in the first episode too, Preston. And and here too, like building those critical thinking skills, being able to figure out where on YouTube can I find this? Is this five-minute YouTube video very shortly into it? Can you tell right away, is this thing going to answer what I'm looking for? Right? Like, I think back to when I got out of grad school, that's what I that's what I took out of it as like I went to grad school to become really good at Googling stuff. Like it sounds crude, but like you you get the background of like, what's baloney and what's gonna bring value to me? And you mentioned that, like that's what you're trying to instill in the students is how do you find what you're looking for? How can you tell that this thing that you're you're trying to do, where can you find the information to make it go? Right. It's not necessarily that, yeah, we're gonna learn every single controller, but how do we have enough of the basics and enough like thought about thinking about this that we can we can get it done and find the information to to get it done.

Preston Sundeen:

The information to know how to query for information.

Jodi:

Yes. God, I mean, I I feel like that's such a 2025 thing, but right, like in the world that we live in, like that is what we as humans are, right? Like a lot of what we do in the United States for work is querying for information and then implementing that information. And you've got to be good at critical thinking to do that.

Preston Sundeen:

Especially in in this line of work, because it's so vast. It's if if you if you're gonna say that you're you know a somewhat involved in precision A, whatever title that happens to be, an agronomist uh uh on the equipment side is people are going to be like, oh, you're the you're the doctor, you know everything. Here's this question, here's that question, here's and I make fun of or I don't make fun of my I make light of that in the classroom all the time. And if we're doing a a uh chemical recipe problem, I will provide the student with 10 times the information that they need, because that's exactly how that farmer's gonna present it to you. Is and and I'll give them a question and we'll do it on the board, or they'll have to do it, and they'll be like, Do we need do we even need to use that part? Nope, but I'm giving it to you anyway, just to make sure. Yep. Yeah if if you say you're a you're a chemical salesperson, you're gonna have all these questions, and they are going to give you your the life story of the question. Uh they're gonna give you way more information than you need, more than likely.

Sarah:

Probably while everybody's drinking a cup of coffee or something. So let's let's go over and talk a little bit more about ADMS in the actual classroom for a second. So there is so much with and really ADMS is learning how to take GIS and apply it to agriculture. So, within the parameters of that, where do you even start?

Preston Sundeen:

Start with learning how to run a computer, and that is the other uh thing that I tell the class right away when we start ADMS that one of the goals of this class is is just computer knowledge. And so where do I start? I say ADMS is located on your C drive, and and here is the folder structure, and then and then we open it up and we go through the settings and we are we're able to talk about, you know, just are we switching from Latin long to UTM and have a conversation on that and pixels and then we start uh with boundaries and uh what kind of data that is, and then we go to USDA geospatial data gateway and we download we download NAPE, we download uh county data, PLSS. I every uh people that if I have students listening to this, they'll laugh because I always well, what does PLSS stand for? That's one that's a requirement to graduate the egg program at Lake Region.

Speaker:

That's that's the graduating question.

Preston Sundeen:

Uh but then so they get they get the information in a in a zipped uh folder or an email, and now we have to download the zip folder, uncompress it, and I write on the board. Now you're gonna move this to your C C drive, GK data, county data, create a folder called Ramsey. Put that so uh we start at the very basics and at the beginning.

Sarah:

So you you are actually having them download data.

Preston Sundeen:

Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah:

Do you have them also download like LiDAR and uh satell a little bit of satellite imagery too?

Preston Sundeen:

Satellite imagery um did up until the last couple years when when Glovis kind of redid their website. And then I you know the teacher is always trying to learn 10 minutes before the class starts. And and when they when they had that uh Glovis um remake, I we go and look at Glovis, I tell them where they're getting their information. I uh and then we do utilize um the consultants package that the GK Technology so graciously gives us as a university. And by let students know that if you know if you're looking at doing it without that particular package, this is where you would go to download it. But but we do download satellite imagery through the consultants package. We download NAPE and PLSS data uh traditionally though.

Jodi:

You know, that's I I never really thought about it until you mentioned it. Helping students how to run a computer, and that sounds counterintuitive in the year 2025. It's not, but exactly. I learned so much more about how to run a computer working for GK than I ever thought I would.

Preston Sundeen:

So we'd we we'd go and um you know recruit from different high schools and um as as post-secondary educators, we'd get together with high school education educators, egg educators a lot. And one of the you know, a common question was what can we do at the high school level to prepare students more for your A classes? And they were I could tell what answers they were looking for. They wanted you know, farming questions and all this, you know, specific things. And I'm like, you know, computers. It it think you gotta crawl before you can run. And I uh there's a lot of and I see it kind of within education, it seems like college throughout education, it seems like there's momentum or movement to put college classes in high school, and high school classes and grade school. I got I my kids were in fifth, sixth grade, they'd come home and they were learning about Middle East history. And I'm like, you're doing this at fifth and sixth grade. Um, but I there's there's kind of that going, and I think we're to a degree missing the boat on a on some of this stuff that in high school you can have a lot of knowledge and learn a lot of things that aren't specific to a discipline, just you know, computers, and and now with AI, and and that's a whole new discussion on whether or not is AI good or bad, and it's just like anything else out there, it's how you utilize it, and and I think there should be more uh teaching on how to let AI benefit your day, how how to let AI help you write a paper, and how to let AI help you with your math. And I I had to put together something with uh Half-Life the other day, and so I threw it in Chat GPT because it printed me out a perfect explanation that I could utilize in a very formal uh setting, and I could go step by step through how it did it, and it was amazing. Uh, you know, I mean simple process, but uh there are the the correct formulas, and chat GPT spit out for me in 30 seconds and was able to shave many minutes of time.

Jodi:

Yeah, it's so funny because the most recent podcast that Sarah and I have had at this time, and it's mid-June when we're recording this, um, is the first part of the conversation we have with our colleague Travis Yike about what AI is and how do we how do we view it in precision agriculture? Because people think that it's out here to take away farmers' jobs, but really we need to rethink about A, what is it, how does it work, and how can we make us better? And I think it goes back to critical thinking skills, right? Like if you if you know enough about the the process itself and then also know enough about what kind of questions you can ask to help you, right? You now can use the software instead of or like use the the product, the thing instead of having it viewed as an enemy to what you're trying to do, right? And I even like I see these college debates about using AI in college, and I I think that every college professor would want to not to have it write your paper, but help you get to what you're doing faster or help you learn more about what you're trying to write about. Um yeah, but like you said, it all goes back to mindset about how we're using these things and and bringing them into our lives, which is pretty interesting.

Sarah:

So here's a here's a question for you. When you're working with these students, and and you get them when they're coming in right out of high school many times, sometimes other walks of life too. But when they graduate from that two-year program, what does success look like? What what is successful um for a student who's graduating out of your program?

Preston Sundeen:

That's a great question. You know, a a lot of times we look at success from the academic side as job placements, or we follow up with a survey a year after graduation and and are they all full, fully employed? I think that I don't I don't like going down that road for for the question you ask. I'm trying to think of this a little bit uh more in depth for what is success. I think that uh the students when they graduate from here and they could go back to the farm, they could be going into industry, they could be going on to a four-year degree, that a successful student is furthering their education, no matter what aspect that is, uh, that they're applying the information that they learned, uh, that they feel they are succeeding. And then I through the program, um, we talk a lot about, you know, that I know a lot of our students are going back to rural America, and we talk just in classroom discussions and different things about just being involved in communities. And uh so I think that, you know, I hope that students can take their background here and apply it to more than just the field of agriculture, that they can take their computer skills and apply it towards being on a board, or they can be in the precision A club and then apply that to running a meeting on the city council. And so I guess I mean I don't I don't necessarily think that all the students have to be uh chairperson of the city council leaving the program to be successful, but you know, those types of things that they feel they have the capability to do that. Um, and I I I see graduated graduated students quite often. And uh, you know, it's it's fun listening to them talk about what they're doing. And I think I can I can gauge the success on the emotion and the excitement that they have when they are telling me about what they're currently doing. And I I get a lot of that. Like uh, I think I don't know if it was on the last episode or on this one, we're talking about graduate students snap snapchatting me back on different precision A things, and you could just you can tell they're having fun, and that's successful, I think. Out of the box answer, I think.

Sarah:

I think that's a great answer though, and I think that makes a lot of sense, right? I mean, hopefully that they've got that that basis for critical thinking. Hopefully they can go and you know work really hard to try to you know figure out how to make things work and they enjoy it, and then of course, like you said, they're having fun doing it and contributing to society, yep, and passionate about it. So it's pretty fun. That's really fun. Preston, I just want to thank you so much for all of your time visiting with us. Preston has been a great guy to work with. Um, he does call not very often with questions because he knows how to run the software pretty well. Usually when he calls, he's stumping it it's a game of stump the chump and and it gets a whole bunch of answers.

Preston Sundeen:

I I like to figure out how to do things on my own, but I have to call in just enough to be able to make sure that they know who I am. So you know who's he? You gotta knock on the door just often enough to make sure that you don't lose your place, I guess, is what I mean.

Sarah:

Never forget who you are, Preston. You're so important in North Dakota precision agriculture. But so thank you so much for your time today. It has been great visiting with you both on the last episode and this one. If you didn't get a chance to check the last episode, I highly recommend going back and checking it out. Um he even talks about applying precision agriculture into lawn mowing. It's super fun. So um, thanks again. And with that, at GK Technology, we've got a map and an app for that.

Theme Music:

No, I can't wait to get in these again.