CropLife Retail Week: AGCO Tech Event Highlights, U.S.-Mexican Corn Dispute Update, and Tech Hub Live 2024

Eric Sfiligoj and Lara Sowinski discuss AGCO’s Tech Day, the latest in the fight over U.S. biotech corn, and more details on the upcoming Tech Hub Live Event.

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*This is an edited and partial transcript:

Eric Sfiligoj: Hello. Welcome to another edition of CropLife Retail Week. Back together again, Eric Sfiligoj here with CropLife Editor Lara Sowinski. Lara, good to see you again, ma’am. Thank you so much for coming back. Or actually, I should say that of myself should I not. I’m so thankful you’re back. And I know alive I on occasion, on occasion, you’ve been gone and I’ve done videos solo and you.

As our viewers are probably aware. Of course, you did the video solo last week. I thank you very much for doing that while I was running around the state of Ohio enjoying myself. But, hey, I do have a couple of things to share with viewers since I’ve been gone. You know, this was at the end of June.

Our friends at AGCO had a Tech Day in Salina, Kansas on a farm, and they were demonstrating several pieces of new technology that the company has in the market now or is planning introduce over the next year or two. They had some autonomous vehicles, grain cart, and a baler, as well as for our friends in ag retail, on the sprayer side of things, there were two products they highlighted.

One was the Weed Seeker 2. Now, this is a Trimble product, and now that AGCO is in the Trimble Partnership joint venture that, they’re putting that on their sprayers. The Weed Seeker 2 helps fight resistant weeds by putting the right amount of product in the right place. And it’s a green and brown method.

The sensors look for this would be in the early part of the season, but, the speaker there mentioned the fact that the optical sensor on the Weed Seeker 2 is so sensitive that it can, quote unquote, spray a dime-sized weed, even if the sprayer is traveling at 25 mph. I thought that was very impressive.

I mean, I know how small dimes are. I have trouble finding them in my pocket all the time when I need one, and that is a very impressive sensor. So it’s truly precision ag. So again, the Weed Seeker 2 is currently in the market.

And then they also talked about the Precision Ag Planting Vision system that they’re getting ready to introduce. Now this system is more of a camera-based system. Here is a video I took of Scott Van Eaton, who was with Precision Planning, who was at the event, and he explained how the Vision system will actually work in the field.

Scott Van Eaton: With the application from our Symphony nozzle so it’s doing that targeted spray there. We are going to the 20/20 in the cab, and that’s where they’re interfacing. They get to see all that information in front of the system. They’re going through the field. They’ll get metrics and maps to rate that they’re applying for each year. If that system is running and fitting in with the camera system, get something that we need him for, basically.

So we have that density. We type as they’re going through the field as well, start to generate that information so they can make a decision if they need to go. So I haven’t talked about that wanting to touch on with the system, which you guys would have seen a little bit increase, far from this station is the Precision Planting Panorama here.

So we can also utilize that and just take their data from there and need put money into their account on that and, and then have that with them. So wherever they go they got their phone. They could pull that up. Look at that information, share it with a trusted advisor and agronomists that they’re working with to help them make those decisions.

ES: So that’s what Scott had to say regarding the operation of the Vision system. Lara, that system is in beta test right now. And AGCO and Precision Planting are hoping to bring it to market probably in 25, maybe a little later than that. But, hopefully in the next year or so, this Vision system will be seen on sprayers, of all makes and models. So it was one thing the AGCO folks made a point of saying that, you know, the products we’re talking about here, they’re not just for Rogators. They’re not just for the Massey Ferguson sprayers. You can use them on John Deere. You can build them on Case’s. They’re brand agnostic in that sense. So yeah. Great. Great feature. Y

Anyhow, one of the thing the update I know intermittently over the last I guess year or so, we’ve talked a little bit about this conflict between the U.S. and our friends in Mexico regarding yellow corn and biotech corn importation. I know that the Mexican government that was in place was kind of resistant to accept these, these imports from the U.S. because of the biotech feature. And they were looking to become more self-sustaining on their own when it came to yellow corn. But there was an election recently in Mexico, and the administration changed. So the new president elect is a woman by the name of Claudia Steinbaum. And. Yeah. And her secretary of Ag or Minister of Agriculture, excuse me, stated that the, that they’re not going to follow the previous administrations movement to not accept importation of yellow corn from the U.S. So, the Minister of Ag mentioned that they’re going to continue to rely on the U.S for yellow corn imports and the basically that this, you know, that that’s about a $6 billion business, or at least it was in the most recent year, 2023.

So, that will continue. So the corn growers in the U.S. will continue to be able to send their corn to our friends in Mexico without any resistance from the Mexican government at this point.

Lara Sowinski: I thought that was a really interesting development. Obviously big development. I know that our U.S. trade rep, Katherine Tai, was, in Mexico City, at the end of June, addressing the dispute settlement panel as far as part of the USMCA trade pact and presenting her case, you know as to why the imports should continue. So, Claudia Steinbaum will have a six-year term. But you’re right. I think that the new administration, while she will You know, she was close to, Lopez Obrador, the current president. And I think, you know, that helped her, a little a little bit, as far as, you know, getting elected. But, she has said that, you know, she will clearly have her own agenda as well. So I think this is a good start for her getting, you know, you know, again, I think, you know, the more I read about this, the case about this, it seems that a lot of the, the data that Mexico was using was outdated, it wasn’t science based, etc., etc.

So I do think that the U.S. has a strong case just on its own merits. but I think this administration coming in in October will also help, you know, kind of, ease those trade relations. And there are clearly other things that are going on, not just an ag, but other trade thing. So, which kind of leads to things that I’ve been thinking about, you know, this past week or so is, you know, I always keep my finger on all things supply chain related, and it’s always, I’m attracted to this space and thinking about it because it’s truly an art in a science, much like how I view agriculture just as much. Science is art. And, you know, I, I’m thinking that still. And what we’re seeing is still a lot of uncertainty and instability with global supply chains. And I always look to ocean shipping, global, you know, commercial ocean shipping is the bellwether of how the rest of the supply chain is behaving or, you know, performing or not.

And you had a really good article recently on, kind of a follow up, with our, visit to Sunrise Co-op, in June. And you were talking about, just in time supply chain management, inventory management, ceding way to just in case. And that’s something that, you know, you and I have talked about before, kind of building up this for stock due to, snags in the supply chain.

And, well, a lot of it has seemingly kind of settled down post-Covid. I think ocean shipping right now still, and we were just talking about this internally, with our Global Ag Tech Alliance, group, just recently whereby, you know, you had these huge spikes in ocean freight rates during Covid, followed by kind of a capacity glut, rates fell and now they’re, you know, they spiked again, in large part because of what was going on in the Red Sea and attacks on steamships and, which caused, you know, a lot of diverting, you know, of freight maybe going, below African up adding, you know, a couple three
weeks on to the transit time, higher ocean freight rates. And then, recently it looks like Hamas is, warming up to the idea of a ceasefire, which would obviously smooth things out in that Red Sea, you know, crucial ship shipping channel, for sure. And then ocean freight rates are starting to bottom.

Whether it’s inventory management strategies, whether it’s shipping, you know, what ports, where do we go? You know, you add, this labor relations, particularly in Canada right now, it looks like, both of their major rail lines, CP and CN could be heading for a strike still. International Longshore folks on the East Coast, Gulf Coast, contract set to expire on September 30th. Still no contract there. So I don’t know. I, you know, the other thing. And why is this important and why is it always in play? And then, one of the panels and I really wanted to call this out because we have a agtech retailers executive think tank panel on the Tech Hub Live program.

And, a lot of it will be discussing the business and how do we operate a business in the current climate. And again, you know, the instability, the uncertainty and whether it’s the interest rates, you know, just higher costs for farming. You know, what what does that mean? And so I’m super excited.

Our friend Bruce Erickson from Purdue will be moderating this panel. We’re a couple weeks out from Tech Hub Live for probably about 15 days, thereabouts before we kick off. I’m just so excited.

I wanted to mention that again. You’ll be handling the drone workshop. This will be on Wednesday the 31st, right after Tech Hub Live main program concludes. You’ll be outside with the folks looking at a big trailer that SAG has for us, with some simulators and all this good stuff. And then we’ll be doing live, drone demos.

I’ll be inside, with the cool air conditioning for a panel on biologicals. Okay, now I guess the truth is revealed, but, we’re so excited. So, again, I really would love to see everyone. Techhublive.com to register.