Lake Doctor | A Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams Podcast

Farming Gizmos and Gadgets: Ben Schlipf with Agriculture Technology

• Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams • Season 2 • Episode 12

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Episode 12 of The Lake Doctor Podcast features Ben Schlipf of Schlipf Precision Agriculture, a local expert who blends hands-on farming experience with a deep commitment to environmental stewardship. Ben brings a lineup of innovative ag-tech gadgets to the studio, giving listeners a behind-the-scenes look at how modern tools help farmers make smarter, data-driven decisions. From precise chemical applications to soil-health monitoring, he explains how today’s technology is reshaping agriculture—and why it matters for anyone who cares about the quality of nearby lakes and streams.

The conversation also explores the often-misunderstood relationship between lake homeowners and farmers, highlighting both perspectives with honesty and clarity. Ben helps bridge the gap, showing how responsible farming practices can go hand-in-hand with protecting water resources when the right tools and knowledge are in place. Whether you’re a farmer, a lake resident, or simply curious about the surprising ways fields and lakes impact each other, this episode offers a practical and hopeful look at how collaboration and innovation can lead to healthier ecosystems for all.

Learn more about the Lilly Center's work at https://lakes.grace.edu/.

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SPEAKER_00:

Thanks for joining us on the Lake Doctor Podcast. I'm Susie Light, and my co-host, Dr. Nate Bosch, is a professional lake nerd.

SPEAKER_01:

That's right, Susie. I earned my doctorate degree from the University of Michigan in Lumology, which is the study of freshwater lakes. In today's episode, we're excited to have Ben Schliff. He's with Schliff Precision Agriculture and also serves on the Soil and Water Conservation District Board.

SPEAKER_00:

We are so excited about today's episode, and Ben actually brought tools that he uses in precision agriculture. They kind of look like sewing machine parts. Thanks for joining us for this episode, The Doctor is In.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Thanks, Susie and Nate. It's good to be here. Yeah, so I've got a lot of versions of myself. Which one would you like?

SPEAKER_00:

Whatever you'd like to share, darling.

SPEAKER_01:

Some personal and professional probably would be good.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So I uh if we go back, I was raised on a farm in the northern part of the county, uh, halfway between Melford and Napanee. And growing up went through what was sea high school and was involved in the FFA. And um, when it came time for college, I went off to Purdue, got an ag engineering degree. I was really uh kind of gifted in the sciences at that time. And came back and I I wanted to farm with my father. There's a lot of joy I had in that. And I did that for a few months and I said, this is a lot of fun. There's a lot of responsibility here farming. And a lot of that weight started to sink in. And I also looked around the world a little bit and I said, there's a lot of world out there too. And so rather than putting down roots with my family farm right away, I decided to try to see a little bit of the world. And so I had the opportunity to take a professional engineering job and spent uh 10 to 12 years of my life living in Central Illinois designing some products for farmers that help them with technology and help bring value into their goals. And then in 2020, my wife and I decided to move back to the area. We had an opportunity to join the family farm and ag business. And so we moved back, and now it's been five years that I've been uh working with him. And uh myself and my brother Kevin and my father Rich now own that business of the family farm. And we also sell technologies to help local farmers achieve their goals. Um, so it's it's a really good reward for me, not only to be farming myself and trying to use it to grow better crops, to take care of the earth, to uh be efficient with the inputs we have, but then also use some of these products that I've helped design in the past, help other local farmers do that, not only in our county, but all across the U.S. We we service primarily any place I can drive within two hours, but we'll do education events for other uh growers, other farmers. We had a group of 60 up from Brazil a few years ago to share about things we're learning. And the goal is never to say what we do, you should be doing, but we're trying to learn some things, see if it may apply for your farm or how you're trying to keep take care of the crops you're doing.

SPEAKER_00:

So tell us, what is per precision agriculture? I've not heard that term before. What is it?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, precision agriculture really can encompass a lot. Um it's a very relative term. Precision agriculture, while you may have not heard of it, has existed for many, many years. If we think about precision agriculture, there are textbooks in the 30s that referred to it. Oh, wow. It's when you'd go out and you'd try to learn about your field to come back and make a better decision. Okay. Now, the range that we do it today is much different than what they did many, many years ago. But we can look back, a lot of the land grant universities, one of their original charters was educate the farmers on how to make better decisions. That was precision agriculture then.

SPEAKER_00:

Ah.

SPEAKER_02:

Now, if we look with the kind of adoption of GPS-based technologies where we can tell where we are on the globe, we can really start to subdivide that and say, make a good decision for this couple hundred feet or this square foot based on the inputs you want, how your crop's going to respond, the weather pattern that may come through here, the soil that's there, whether the water's going to run off or whether the water's going to run in. And recently it's grown into more sensors, and we may talk about some of those later, but also the use of machine learning almost dabbling into AI to help farmers make decisions as well.

SPEAKER_00:

So science and data are driving precision agriculture. Those are things common with the Lily Center, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. In the same way, when we look at our lakes, having that sort of place-based data, it's kind of like a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet where all of the cells have a latitude and longitude associated with them. And so when we have the spatial information with the numerical information, then we can start to piece things together and see how one thing influences another being next to each other. And as I've learned more about agriculture in our community here and what some of the farmers are doing, it's it's really amazing to see how this technology can help better stewardship of the land, which then in turn helps better stewardship of our local lakes and streams as well.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, Casciasco County is a pretty big county. So how much of our land is ag land and and how much is water?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, 84%, in fact, of our county is uh farmland. And uh we looked it up on the United States Department of Agriculture's uh agricultural statistics, and so that's a big portion of it. And I think if I remember correctly, 14% was water. So you add those two up, and that makes up a pretty large portion. Surface water. You're talking surface water, right? Yeah, yeah. That makes a pretty large portion of Casciasco County. So if our if our sort of um two large, uh our largest two uh uses of land is water and agriculture, well, then we've got to figure out how those two things work well together, right?

SPEAKER_00:

So Ben, agriculture is a pretty big term. Um what what are the agricultural assets in Cassiasco County?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so Cassiasco County is a lot of, I'm gonna say, typical commercial ag. There's a lot of corn and a lot of soybeans grown. Um over the years, there's been a lot more animal husbandry in the county. We've seen some of that shift away, I'd say, probably in the last uh 15, 20 years, where I'd say the more the animal production side, the animal care, has seen efficiencies when they go to larger platforms rather than maybe the small family that had 20 cows or 80 cows. We've really been able to see farmers been able to take better care of their animals in the larger scale rather than the smaller scale. And so some of those have consolidated and that's pulled them out of the county. But it's largely corn and soybeans. We got some growers in the northern part that'll grow mint. We have some smaller growers uh that'll do human consumption crops. We've got some wheat that's used, uh, but it's a lot of the commercial production. But there are the variation of specialty crops as too. We've got um what you may think of as a normal soybean field, maybe a specific variety of soybean with a specific end goal rather than just a generic biodiesel. You can get different uh traded crops that can be high in nutritional value for specific end goals. Or on our farm, we would grow a non-GMO corn crop because it can go to a different feeding method rather than directly into ethanol production.

SPEAKER_00:

And all of that needs precision agriculture.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh need is relative. All of it would benefit from it. Right. Ah there's times my mom would say I needed a haircut. And in reality, I may benefit from a haircut. Speaking of you needing the haircut.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Ben, you need a haircut in the need.

SPEAKER_02:

She can resonate with that.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, that's something that we've noticed over um over the podcast that moms and and grandmas and parents are really important to kiddos. You have a unique thing with kiddos um bringing to the Schliff farms 4-H and FFA.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So uh it's one thing that's very common you'll see in the ag community is is I can speak for myself, but what also I've seen modeled in the community around us, we've got a very long-term goal. And so when I think of the family farm and the business that we run, I'm not saying, boy, I'm I'm 40 years old. I'm gonna work till I'm ready to retire at 60 or 65. So I need to run this business for 20 years. In my mind, this land is gonna exist. The crops we're gonna grow are gonna feed humans long after that, hopefully.

SPEAKER_03:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

And so we have to continue to invest in the next generation and just keep pouring into it and doing education. And so the staff at our team, um, right now, we've got about 10 or 12 employees. And I'm thankful we've got some good young guys. And it's it's part of our heart and our mission to invest and teach. Um, we get some high schoolers that, as part of their co-op of their high school program, they're looking for experience and we can offer that to them and grow. Um, when I was raised, we were actively involved in the 4-H, not only in the county fair, but also learning about the land, how to grow crops, how to be efficient and care for the world around us.

SPEAKER_00:

Good stewardship. That's something that is in common with the Lilly Center, isn't it, Nate?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So whether we're stewarding our land, it could be in agriculture, uh, or whether we're stewarding one of our water resources, one of our lakes or streams or wetlands. The important thing is there is to manage that than for the future, like you just said, right? So we want to take care of it in such a way that we are leaving it better for future generations for whatever they might use it for, or however they might protect it with new technologies or have new uses that we can't even foresee right now.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and it's such a gift. I mean, to to go through the world and it, if we invest in it, it will reinvest in us. And I get to see that on the farm ground. When I take care of the farm ground, it will in turn take care of us. Now, there's only so much I can do to actually control how it's going to yield for me. But if I show up and and take care of it, it will continue to provide for us.

SPEAKER_00:

So some of the tools you use are on display. So for the folks that are watching on our YouTube podcast, they can see these interesting things that look like they came out of a sewing machine.

SPEAKER_02:

I don't know if I'd say that. Well, my sewing machine has never had these inside of it, right?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm sure they haven't, but it's not familiar with precision agriculture. I think I'd serve me to say that. Um tell us a bit about what these are.

SPEAKER_02:

Sure. So I've I've got four examples of different technology we use. Um so I'll I'll start with this one here. And this is what we call a smart firmer. So fundamentally, it is a plastic stick. Smart firmer. Start smart firmer. Okay. The smart comes from the fact it has a circuit board in it, but fundamentally its job is to firm the seeds in the soil. Okay. So after I make a trench and I'll drop a seed in, this plastic stick comes along and presses the seed right in the soil. Okay. By giving the seed good contact with the soil, we let moisture come into it in a more consistent manner. So this without the circuit board has been around for uh 20 years. And it's a very cost-effective investment for a farmer to make. Um, without the circuit board, again, I'm talking like$30 a row across the planter, not a huge investment, and it's going to return bushels per acre back in his grain tank right away, just by letting the seed pull moisture and nutrients in so we can get a more consistent crop. Okay. Now, this is a project that we worked on uh when I was an engineer at this company. And so what happened is we took and put a circuit board inside here. We said we're commonly in contact with the soil. And with this circuit board, we put an array of optical sensors on. So as we're firming those seeds in the soil, we're actually looking at the soil as we're planting our seeds. And so by looking at the reflectivity of the light coming from it, we can learn about how much moisture is in the soil, we can learn about how much organic matter is in the soil, and we can give the farmer feedback on how good of a job he's doing. Wow. Real time. So he can make better decisions that day because every day we're planting and we're putting seed in the soil, it's going to be different than the last. Right. So there's real-time feedback, he can make better decisions, but then also we can map this information so he can look and say, when I plan to make decisions for next year, should I be treating every square foot of my field exactly the same? Or if I have areas that have more moisture or higher organic matter that can feed my crop better, how should I be distributing my nutrients? How should I be distributing my water if I've got an irrigation system? How should I be distributing my seed or should I put a different crop rotation in? It is a way for us to gather information to make a better decision next year. If we think about this, most farmers plant 40 crops in their lifetime, right? If we say I'm I started doing this when I was 20 or 30, I get 40 tries. If I only have 40 tries to do something in my personal life, I've got to make sure I'm learning on everyone. Right. When school, if we were writing papers and papers and papers, and you get a lot of iterations. Farmers get very few. And so we have to be learning on everyone and making meaning of it because we're going to show up to the next one with everything we got.

SPEAKER_01:

So it could be then as a farmer is going through his or her planting season, and some fields are planted when it's a little higher moisture, other times it's planted maybe with lower moisture. Some fields will have more organic matter, some will have less. The farmer then can take that data at the uh throughout the growing season can start to analyze that data and say, or wait till the at the end at harvest time and look at yields and say, oh wow, there's a really strong correlation here between the soil moisture at the time of planting and what the yield was in the end. Yeah. So I need to make a little different choice maybe in when to plant, maybe be a little bit more patient or be a little more aggressive and getting out there sooner or something like that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, because there's only so many things we can control. Yeah. Right. So for example, if I'm planting the seeds, um, the science that that we've referenced with our lab studies say I need at least a seed to be able to pull in 30% of its mass of water in three days, will make it germinate in three days because it takes 30% of its mass of water coming in before it'll start to germinate. Okay. If I put it in a bag of water, it's not going to happen instantly. Right. But if I put it on a dry surface, I'm never going to get there. So 30% is the target that we shoot for in that 30 to 40. So if I'm going along and I'm planting and I'm dropping seeds, if I'm not at 30%, as a farmer, I have to reckon with, am I making a good decision? Because I have options, right? I could choose to plant my seeds deeper in the soil. And if I go deeper in the soil, there's usually more moisture underneath. So that's a decision I could make. But the challenge is the deeper I plant the seed, the more it has to struggle to get up to the surface. So I have to weigh those trade-offs. But at the same time, I also have to pull out my smartphone and look at the weather forecast for the next four days. Because if it's going to rain in two days, I really don't care what that sensor is telling me. Because I'm going to get moisture from above. And I shouldn't care about the moisture in my soil. But I still have to respect the other numbers that are coming through it. So some of the information that these sensors can provide us are real-time decisions. Some we have to choose to ignore because it's going to rain. And some are long-term data building information.

SPEAKER_00:

So it would depend on the type of seed that you are buying what you're putting in the ground. Wow. And Nate said field to field, but within the same field, there's different data. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. When they built roads through the county, they did not create the roads along the soil type variation. They put the roads every mile. And so when I look across my field, it's silly for me to say, make a decision across this whole mile by half mile, because that's where the roads are. So I try to challenge myself and say, what decision can I make for different portions of the field? So the corn planter we use on our farm has the ability to put down two different hybrids of seed as I'm driving. It can change on the fly. So that doesn't mean that I can put the exact right hybrid for every square foot of my field, but I can pick two instead of saying what is the best one on average. Right. Because if you were trying to uh color a picture of yourself, right, and we only get one pencil, we're probably going to choose black and just go a gray variant. But if I can say I can pick two crayons instead, now I can start to give it some definition and use the different colors in the right zones. Now, ideally we'd have the whole crayon box. But this is where some of the technology, we're actually more limited on what's a realistic logistical implementation to achieve rather than what can the technology do for us.

SPEAKER_01:

So how small of an area then? So as that corn planter is going along and you've got the two different seed types you can choose, how small of an area can you choose to switch from one seed type to another? Is that on a per acre basis or a per square meter basis? Or give us a scale of how precise that can be.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So when we're planting corn, we put up about a plant every six inches. Okay. Okay. Technology exists to do the very next plant. Oh wow. You can be that accurate. Now, the thing we've had to wrestle with when I was an engineer developing some of these is what accuracy actually matters. Because soils don't change within six inches, right? They change across tens of feet. So the technology exists to go every six inches to change. And there's times we've used it to do very sophisticated test plots. But in my mind, uh that technology, while it was the first iteration, is a better engineering tool. What they've been able to develop as a more cost effective tool for farmers is one that we can be doing the first hybrid, the first variety, and then we get probably a 50-foot transition, and then we're into the second one. And for us to take that technology and help a farmer use it is more cost effective and it's easier for him to use. So it really lowers the barrier. And that's a big win. Rather than having an accurate tool that doesn't matter, when we go to actually executing these decisions, having a decision on the right scale goes a long way. So that that's a really good point. It can be done, but whether we justify it in our crop is a different story.

SPEAKER_00:

How does agriculture interface with the lakes and streams in our county?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, when we have, as we've talked about, 84% of agriculture, and just just like Ben was talking about, the soils don't really respect the roads and sort of the mile-by-mile things, neither do where the lakes are and where the agricultural fields are, right? And so we have lakes and streams and wetlands intermixed within the agricultural fields. And sometimes even those roads and stuff don't go nice and straight in our county because they're going around some of those water features. And so whenever there's an interface between agricultural land and uh one of our natural water resources, then there's opportunity for things to go from land into the water because water is always going downhill and those agricultural fields are higher in elevation than what the water is. So we could get things running off. We talk about sediments and nutrients a lot, right? So sediments would be soil particles from those agricultural fields that run off into the receiving water body. Maybe it's a stream. We might call it a ditch in more of an agricultural setting. And then that's eventually probably going to go to a lake in our county with over 100 lakes that we have here and would be similar throughout northern Indiana. Those nutrients also often move either with the soil particles, phosphorus often moves with soil particles. Uh, nitrogen will often move, more often move with the water itself. And so as that water and as that sediment starts to move off of the land, it moves into the water. One of the things that I love to point out whenever we start to have these confrontational things between tensions, tensions would be a good way to describe it, between an agricultural uh producer, a farmer, and a lake resident who's maybe um stereotypically seen as more of an environmentally conscious person, is we have the same goals in mind. So let's unpack that a little bit. A farmer such as yourself, Ben, you you don't want to see organic matter, topsoil, good soil running off your field because that's lost opportunity for holding nutrients, holding moisture, those seeds that you were talking about germinating, right? And those healthy corn or soybean or whatever other plants you might be planting. You also don't want to see excess nutrients go off because that's lost revenue and that's lost good quality soil amendments as well. And in the same way, the lake resident doesn't want to see those sediments or those nutrients coming into his or her lake or wetland or stream because they can cause excess weeds and algae to grow in those water bodies. So I like to point out to people we have these same goals in mind. Now, how we accomplish those goals, we might have some differences on it. Maybe we could unpack that a little bit. But certainly those same foundational goals are in place for uh for both groups of people.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah, it's very much contextual. I mean, when when dirt's in my field, it's a good thing because it's soil. Yeah. When it's in a stream or a lake, it's a bad thing. Yes. And so part of what excites me about this technology is it actually gives a a farmer insight to how he's doing so he can make better decisions next year. I don't know of anybody out there that's actively trying to not make the best decision in the context they have.

SPEAKER_00:

Because it affects the bottom line.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly. Yeah. I uh I can't afford to waste my fertilizer, right? I can't afford to make it become a pollutant for somebody else. Usually I'm wrestling with how much can I afford to put on to take care of the crop and land and keep the soil healthy that I, you know, can I justify putting that much on, let alone sending some downstream?

SPEAKER_01:

So it sounds then rather than, and I used the word stereotype specifically a couple moments ago, because I think it's it's unfair where we look at uh at a farmer as not being environmentally conscious. The way Ben just described that, you are you almost have to be environmentally conscious, yes. Be able to stay in business, right?

SPEAKER_02:

It's I mean, it's a word that I would say is used largely outside of the ag community, but it it's more like it just means different stuff for us. It's um yeah, it just it is farming. We have to care about the environment. Yeah, it's not an option. We have to care. Now, the funny thing is, even with an ag, you can get kind of different judgment of what people think you should be doing. Um, so on our farm, we get the opportunity to be nearly 100% no-till, right? And that works well for us. I've got a cousin and a second cousin that live within a mile and a half of us, and they cannot no-till. Like it would be there are there are groups that would say, it would be great if they were a no-till farm, like everybody across the U.S. The truth of the matter is we can't do that. Um, so why, Ben?

SPEAKER_00:

I've heard that before. Why?

SPEAKER_02:

So um one of them is a dairy farm, dairy farm makes manure. How are they gonna get rid of their manure? Right? We have to do something with we want to recapture that fertilizer, therefore, we need to put it on the field. And if I just put it on the surface of the field, it runs off. Yeah, I'm assuming I have two not very happy people with me around this table. So, in order for me to utilize those organic fertilizers, I actually need to put them in the soil. My cousin just down the road as well is a hog farmer. He is providing the bacon I ate this morning, right? Those are things we want. But if he has no method to utilize the fertilizer that's in the hog manure he has, or he has no method to get that evenly distributed across his farm, he's gonna have a much different business proposition. So for both of them, the concept of being a nearly 100% no-till does not work. Now, there are some great compromises out there where you could look at doing strip till and you can do more kind of minimum till incorporation, but there's always a compromise that comes with it. And as we get into some of these compromises, we have to say, is the cost worth the benefit? Or can I use the simpler tools to make a good enough decision that I can keep rewarding the business, the environment in the ways I need to? So while I'm thankful on our farm, we you know, I have there's one or two cats around home, and Sarah and I have some dogs at home, but I don't have animals that I'm trying to care for and take care of. So I don't have the massive amounts of manure to use. So I have the opportunity to be a no-till farmer. But in doing so, the compromise I make is I'm more reliant on chemical pesticides and herbicides, whereas they and and fertilizers where they get some of that coming back from their animals. So there's always going to be a trade-off in there. The question is in the environment we're trying to farm, what is the better decision? There's a lot of lingo sometimes on the best management practice, and it's very much hard to understand without the contextual environment. And so usually what I challenge farmers is let's make a better decision. I'm not setting the goal at 100%. I'm just trying to say, let's let's pick one area and do a little bit better at it. And it actually works in agriculture because I'm not doing this for the next 20 years. It's not there's no end date. I'm doing this. That's that's actually just the answer. I'm doing this. It is part of who we are. And so if I get a little bit better by next year, we're gonna get where we're going. The question is, can we justify the costs in the short term? Because I can't choose to make an outrageous investment to be as best as I can right now, because I'll be bankrupt in a year. These investments, not only in the technology, but in the machines, the resources, the time have real costs. So I have to say, What is the ones that I can justify this coming year?

SPEAKER_00:

So tell us more about the precision agriculture tools that you have on the table here.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So we talked about the firmur that puts the seeds in the ground, but also tells us about the soils itself.

SPEAKER_01:

Um back to the firmur just a minute, that that it it is the seed actually coming out of the firmur, or is the seed get put in and then and the firmur comes behind and kind of presses the seed into the soil?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So for those of you that can see this, the seed would drop into a trench just up here. And that is done by a very complicated mechanism that you can see. If you come tour.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we get to go uh tour um their precision extracting uh company here in the next couple of weeks. So I'm really excited to see some of this out in the field.

SPEAKER_02:

So this device is just all about firming it in afterwards. Got it. So it can be um I traditionally think of it on a corner soybean planter, but it also different models of it work on grain drills.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Um it's a similar method to when my wife is planting uh whatever seeds in the garden. You poke a hole and you press it in with your finger. Yes. Okay. There are companies in different areas of the world that would actually have a rolling wheel and actually firm it in by rolling wheel. Unfortunately, we have sticky enough soils here that we would just get that wheel built up with dirt. So this is actually a very sophisticated uh plastic that is very, very low uh not friction, but low stick for any soils that would build up on this. Very cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

It's like the pressure foot of a sewing machine.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, we're back to that analogy again, C.

SPEAKER_02:

So another bit of technology, this is a device um that this technology has been used on ag machines for a lot of years. This is simply a flow meter for liquid fertilizer. So we would have fluid, usually a fertilizer, but could be all sorts, flowing through here, and the the operator can see how much is going on the field.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

So what has really excites me about this technology is with more economical production of these devices, we're able to build them smaller and more efficient. So rather than putting one across this whole machine that says, how much am I doing across 40, 60, 120 feet? I can now say how much is going on on this exact foot. Oh, wow. So we're getting a much smaller scale again. Agreed. So we're we're pulling the scale down. Because it doesn't actually matter if across this whole 60 foot, I'm putting on average 20 gallons an acre. If one application point is only doing 10 gallons an acre and the next one is doing 30, when I look, I know we may know our soils well enough to say that soil can only hold 20 gallons an acre. And if I do more, where does it end up? In our lakes and streams. I'm not going to go more than 20. And he's making the best decision he can. But if his his distribution tools aren't on his team, he still could be creating pollutants, sending them downriver, and starving the crop on the row that he's only giving 10 gallons an acre to. So this is one that is just with having kind of more current production, we're able to shrink it and be cost effective for growers so that we can reduce pollution and be more efficient.

SPEAKER_01:

Now, practically speaking, is that going to be based, let's say that the farmer has separate nozzles that can have higher or lower rates all across that whole boom? Does the farmer typically have data that would look you know foot by foot across that boom as far as what soil types are and stuff like that? Or is that looking at last year's yield data or what what actually is what's the decision sort of making?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so it comes down to helping him make the decision. Right. And that can be a very complicated thing. Because we talked about if the roads are cut every mile, if I only have to, let's say, so on our farm, we for uh farm 650-ish acres, right? That's one square mile, give or take. So if I only had to make one decision of what hybrid I want to use, what fertilizer I want to use, like life would be a lot easier. But because I'm trying to do it on all these different pockets, it's more complicated. So a lot of the work that other growers in Precision Ag do is help farmers think about creating a formula for how to achieve success, how to be efficient. Um, and so there's part of it that's wrapped up in what decisions does he want to make. And we can leverage data. Uh the there is like nationwide soil maps that I would say are within 100 feet. Okay. But again, we talked earlier, soils don't change within six inches. They change. So it's it's usually pretty good when that I can use historical yield maps. What that historical yield map does is it shares across the growing condition we had, what was the variation that was there? So if we look across this last year, we had pretty good rainfall events. And so when I look at the yield maps from our field, I don't see the stress pockets from lack of water. When I look back a few years ago and we had a drier growing season, the stress pockets, the lower producing pockets are stressed because of water. So I have to interpret a yield result based on the season it came through. Oh, wow. If you think about your students and you say, okay, some are doing well, some are not, you can't just carte blanche say, well, this was how the semester went. You have to take it in context to what stressors came on them. Right. But then as a grower, I have to say, okay, I'm getting prepared for next semester, right? I'm getting prepared for the next year. How am I gonna set up next year when you don't know what the stressors will be? So usually as a farmer, I also have to balance the risk that's coming. I can't say I'm gonna make the best decision every time because I'm putting all my eggs in that basket. I got to say, okay, there's a lot I'm not controlling here. I have to probably shoot to 90% on everything. And if I get a perfect year, I may have left bushels on the table. I may have left and not done everything perfect to maximize that. But if something goes sideways, I've still got the ability to respond.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And soil testing is where you can actually look at nutrients in that soil. That kind of gives you a sense of, and that's something that we encourage people to do around our lakes and streams as well. If they're fertilizing on a golf course or their own yard or commercial property, understanding what that soil needs, to know what those plants need, to know what uh what fertilizer to add can be really helpful.

SPEAKER_02:

And that's not something I brought today, but actually at our farm, you'll see it when you come out. We have invested in a soil lab for our farm. Um, so recently there's a company that has built what I call a vending machine soil lab. So I can go to the field and fill up basically a pop can sized container of soil. I bring it back to our farm and I put it in this vending machine, and every eight minutes it'll process one of my popcans for me and tell me uh potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, pH, a whole array of those.

SPEAKER_01:

Nitrogen as well?

SPEAKER_02:

It does not do nitrogen. So as you mentioned, nitrogen falls with water. Right. And so nitrogen is a very timely soil test.

SPEAKER_00:

Ah.

SPEAKER_02:

I can't take a measurement of the fall and actually make my decisions next year on it. Right.

SPEAKER_01:

So we can probably be gone by then.

SPEAKER_02:

It'll be gone. The other thing with nitrogen, uh, the soils produce nitrogen. And so I have to understand a lot of my traditional underlying soils to say how much nitrogen my soil will produce. There's actually a different test we'd like to run, and it's more about how much nitrogen the soil produces because the crop is going to uptake nitrogen at a much later time of the growing season. Okay. So we've got a different, it's not a vending machine, it's more of a smaller, I don't know, it's probably about three foot by three foot near real-time nitrate nitrate tester that we can use to run for soil as well. It's a different method, um, but these tools exist for farmers.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Sometimes they've gained traction, guys keep doing them. Sometimes they say, okay, once I learn about my soils, I don't actually need to keep doing it every year.

SPEAKER_04:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

Just like we talked with the smart farmer, if we learn once what a good decision is, a lot of times now farmers would say, okay, I understand that. I'm going to make my best decision. Where can I point my curiosity? Right. What can I learn about next? And that's what excites me about this technology. Some of these are old. And it's more like once I get a farmer to go through that learning, he understands inherently the better decision that he should try to do. And he may not always be able to achieve it. But now, what is the next thing he can be curious about to try to do better as the environment changes for him?

SPEAKER_01:

It's really good. What about the other two things you have here?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So this device is one of those older technologies. It is uh a little bending beam load cell. So same technology that goes in our scales at home in the bathroom that I weigh myself on. Okay. We put these across machines and I weigh a machine as it drives across the field. Okay. Not only how much total weight there is on the machine, and so that for I could learn about compaction of my soil, but when I'm planting my seeds in the soil, I'm weighing how hard I'm pushing down on either side of it. So that I understand not only am I firming my seed in, but am I firming the soil around it or am I really leaving it really, really loose? And if I'm leaving it really loose, I'm not letting moisture come into it. Now, it could be good because if I'm putting uh fertilizer back on, that fertilizer can soak in really well. But I also don't want to kind of seal it up too much that I can't let rainfall come in as well. So these sensors are very, very cost effective. And we talked about how the flow device has gotten down in price. These have gotten really, really cost effective for farmers. And so we can get a lot of data with that to say how I'm pressing down on my soil and how I manage it. We talked about how we're a no-till farm. That means I don't have a tillage event to come through and undo compaction and get more oxygen back in my soil because our soils are living and they're breathing. And if all I'm doing is going along and pushing down and pushing down and pushing down, I'm not going to get the microbes to be happy and to digest the old crops that are there. So being able to manage those weights is real handy. And then to take this information and to put it up to a processor where now it's actively making real-time decisions for me, when as an operator, I can invest in the technology. And now all I have to do is drive the tractor because I know the technology is adjusting the weights for me automatically. That is a real relief to me. We talked about the number of decisions a farmer has to make. If I can use technology to automate those, rather than just showing him information and forcing him to make that decision, I can really be on his team as far as mental burden and operational efficiency as well. The last one I have is um, so this looks like the front of it looks like binoculars with two eyeglasses on it. And then it just looks like, you know, some sort of computer processor box. And that's exactly what it is. It's a stereo camera that we mount on our sprayers as they go throughout the field. So this device is taking pictures real time of the complete field as I'm going through it. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's facing the field. Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Facing the field, looking down in this direction. And as I drive anywhere from five to 15 miles an hour, it's analyzing the field as I'm driving across it. Okay. So part of what it does is it will take a picture and based on triggers that I set, it will send a picture to my cell phone and say, hey, were you aware that this was out here? So I can tell it when I get to a weedy portion of my field, send me a picture. So now I can pull it up on my phone and it can say, here's what we saw. We think that is a giant ragweed. Would you agree? And so now I can say, I better go do something about that because I don't want to put that seed bank out next year, right? So part of it is capturing photos for me to analyze. The other exciting thing we talked about with this load cell a little bit is it's able to make real-time decisions. So it now can look at those pictures and say, that's a weed, that's a corn plant, that's a soybean plant, and that's bare soil. So if I'm driving across my field with my sprayer and I tell it I'm spraying corn, anytime it sees anything other than corn, it's going to spray whatever's in the tank to hopefully kill it. So as I drive, it is making real-time decisions for me. So instead of spraying the whole 80 acres of the field and putting chemicals in places chemicals don't need to be, I can put chemicals on the weeds.

SPEAKER_00:

It's targeted.

SPEAKER_02:

It's targeted application. Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

Does it work with insects?

SPEAKER_02:

So this is, we talked about technology earlier, right? We talked about uh in the 30s, all the way up. This is some of the cutting-edge technology that's using machine learning slash AI. Okay. The reason this works is because of some of the more sophisticated machine learning. Now, in my mind, AI means the machine is learning on its own. This is not AI where it's learning on its own. This is we are training it to do things.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, because you said it pops up on your phone and says, hey, is this ragweed? And you get to choose.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, not even in that way. The way that this has learned is it has taken a lot of pictures, and then there is a room of guys that know how to identify plants. And those are the ones that have said, this is ragweed, or this is actually a soybean. What's a challenge is a butter print looks kind of like a soybean leaf. So those are the ones that it has a hard time recognizing. But it's the same way, me as a young boy had a hard time telling the difference between them two. Okay. So when I look at the technology that's there, the reason it knows what a soybean plant is, what a corn plant is, is because someone has told it tens of thousands of times, right? When I ask you what kind of fish are there, you know what kind of fish, you know what kind of plants, because someone has told you probably 10-ish, 20-ish times. Here, somebody has told that thousands of times. So the question you ask, Susie, does that work on pests too? This is a smart enough device as it goes to the field. If the people in the room that are telling it, if they circle the ladybugs and say that's a ladybug, now it can start to map for me ladybugs. It can start to map whatever it sees. We just have to train it to see the right things. Right now, what it's trained to do is say corn, soybeans, and then it classifies broadleaves or grasses. Because how as a farmer, how I'm controlling those two is much different. Um, it's it does work some in cotton, but I've got a grower um outside the county up towards South Bend that grows mint. When you're growing mint, you have much more reduced chemical label compatibility. He would love it if we would train it to be okay with a mint crop. So it says, don't worry about the mint crop, but spray all the other ones. So it is a really, really powerful tool, both for information to me, but also how it's automating the decisions so that I'm spending less money on chemical and not putting chemicals where I don't need them to be.

SPEAKER_00:

Nate, how can people who care about the environment help farmers use this great technology?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, as Ben was talking about, this technology can be expensive. And often the adoption part of it, the first sort of use of it, is where a lot of that expense uh lies for the producer. And we've got a number of great organizations around Casciasco County, throughout Indiana, throughout the Midwest. So I think about the Natural Resource Conservation Service, which is part of the United States Department of Agriculture. Uh, we have district conservationists around in different counties. We also have the soil and water conservation district. Um, Ben serves as a uh district, a district supervisor with uh soil and water conservation district here in Casciasco County, and those are throughout the counties as well, and those can also be good sources of uh there's often uh government subsidy programs that can help offset some costs and cost share sorts of things for farmers to adopt some of these newer technologies, more of this precision agriculture. We also have nonprofit organizations in our county here. We have groups like the Wawasee Area Conservancy Foundation or the Watershed Foundation, which do a lot of work with farmers and can provide some uh some cost incentives as well to help uh take down the barrier maybe of the cost of some of this technology.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and there's a lot of good organizations out there. And one of the tension that commonly exists, you Nate, you brought this up before, is these technologies exist, they are expensive. One thing we have to be cautious when I'm trying to educate growers, they exist, but I need to be cautious not to give judgment for not using them yet. And that's where some of the I think the tension has stemmed because between some of these organizations and the in the ag community is they exist, but they when we look outside at each grower, we may say, Boy, this exists, why aren't you using it? And we come off as judgmental, and that's a whole bunch of rubbish, right? Because as we talked earlier, my cousins just down the road. There's no judgment from me about them not being a no-till grower because they they're playing a different game than I am. But if he does say, Ben, I see what you're doing, or this is a thing I think I'm curious about, I'm gonna be curious with him. But some of this technology takes time and money to be curious with. So to choose to invest in that way is a really big ask for a lot of these guys. And so if we can grow the education and say, if this is something that you want to be curious about, we can help with the financial advantage, we can help with the learning side of it, because there's learning that happens here for sure. Then I think we can make some good headways in protecting the environment long term.

SPEAKER_01:

One of the reasons I was so excited to have Ben come here on the podcast as the Lily Center for Lakes and Streams is moving into a new phase where we're doing what we call Lake RX, where we want to develop customized prescriptions for different lakes and how we can improve those lakes for the future, solve some of the problems that we've identified with our research and education. And as we've talked about, since a lot of the land around our lakes is agricultural, that's going to be us allocating more of our resources, financial, staff time, communications, towards helping with those causes. And so we're really excited to be able to come alongside groups like yours and SWCD, NRCS, watershed groups in our community, lake associations to help uh activate some of those solutions. And there's a lot of great agricultural practices, conservation practices. There's a lot of great precision technology that can be used. And if we can help lower that barrier uh to allow more farmers to move into these technologies, that will be a win for us for sure, and for our communities.

SPEAKER_00:

It seems like each group has priorities, but a lot of them are common priorities.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I'd say uh we use different lingos a lot of times, right? And and there's a there's always a balance of what kind of costs we want to pay to do it, right? A lot of times in the ag community, um you'll see that dollars and cents are important, but it's usually not the most important thing. Very few farmers do I know that farm to make money, right? They have to make money to keep farming next year and the next year, and we talked about how it's just what I'm doing. So the way I keep doing that is I keep making money short term. But more often than not, you hear the farmer that's proud of their son for winning the baseball game, or how he's doing in a different way. And so he'll park his combine to go do that. Like he has to keep making money to care for the land. But at the end of the day, the reasons that he does things are still usually for his own reasons. And when we focus on those, we can really build a lot of common ground.

SPEAKER_00:

What call to action would you like to see, Ben, for both ag and like dwellers?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So when I talk to most farmer groups, I try to put on my farmer hat. And I have a little bit of a unique personality because I've got an engineering degree from Purdue, I've spent 10 years being curious with technology, and we had a huge team that we could go try things. Where we're at with our farm right now, because I have access to some of this technology, I can go try things a little bit easier than most farmers can. But I guess my call to action for most farmers is be a little bit curious, right? Try something that not terrifies you, but you're not sure how it's gonna go. But obviously, don't do the whole farm on it. Pick a portion of a field that logistically works well that you're willing to be curious with. Because if you say, well, Ben told me to do that, but it's in the worst part of the field, and it's always gonna be the worst part of the field anyhow, like it's gonna be what it's gonna be, right? But but be curious and try something. And I believe there's wins out there, right? So that's usually what I challenge farmers because I can learn on my farm, but my farming practices are different than yours. And the axe, the access I have to tools and technology and supplies is so much different. And the access I have to my free time to make decisions is different than theirs as well. So I try to encourage growers to be curious. And if there's something they want to play with, that's where I say, okay, I've got this use system or I've got this loaner. Here, take this and go, go see. I was talking with a grower yesterday about some tools I had given him just to demo and try on his machine. And I said, I have three different tools out last year for growers to try. And one of them came back and he said, I want to keep it. And so the other two came back and he said, I don't want to keep that. And so some salesmen could call that a very low success rate. But I think of myself as a teacher. And so I had a 100% success rate because I had three guys that learned. And so I challenge guys to be curious. Now, when we talk to lake residents, which I think is probably the demographic that is going to hear this a little bit more, what I challenge them is I said, be curious to farmers. Right. So rather than having necessarily a judgment or saying, boy, that's what I see, and I've heard there's a better way, there's probably a reason a guy is making a decision, he is. And so if we can find the growers that are around us, the farmers that maybe farm in the land that ends up in our watershed or down the creek we go, start up a healthy conversation and say, hey, whatever's going on, I'm curious. Are you up for me coming out and riding in the combine with you or picking your brain about this? I've got whoever else that I want to educate as well. That goes a long way. Because when we're forced to say them out loud, we can really reckon with the trade-offs of our decisions. And I think that can go a long way. And then the other thing, Susie, I'd say, is what Nate said of get involved with the conservation organizations. You guys are doing good work, and there's time ag will come along kicking and screaming, and there's times that we'll probably be a little bit more um excited to come along. But those organizations are doing good work. There is there is work that can be done, and then there's education that those groups are doing as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Water literacy is uh one of the things that we work on here at the Lily Center for Lakes and Streams, and that's uh educational component. I love what you said about being curious and as a teacher, and you learn something either way, whether someone eventually decides to adopt a precision tool or not in the same way. I love that about science. And uh here at the Lily Center we do a lot of research, and I love that about science too, regardless of the result, whether your hypothesis was proved correct or whether it was wrong, either way you learned something, and you are then better able to care for this amazing environment around us as a result of that learning.

SPEAKER_00:

So and the thing that that is an aha moment for me is how data you both use data to do better.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Ben, thanks for being here today. We are thrilled to have learned from you. And we hope that you will share our podcast information um with your agriculture friends.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, thanks for being here, Ben. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Lake Doctor Podcast. You can share your thoughts or submit questions by leaving a comment or sending an email to lakes at grace.edu.

SPEAKER_01:

Listening to this podcast is just the first step to you making your lake cleaner and healthier. Visit lakes.grace.edu for more information about our applied research and discover some tangible ways that you can make a difference on your lake.

SPEAKER_00:

We'll see you next time. The doctor is in.