Hello from Tulare, California! I’m here for the 2019 World Ag Expo. It’s the largest annual exposition for agriculture in the world... there are more than 1,500 exhibitors showcasing innovative technology and equipment on 2.6 million square feet of land! Last year, folks traveled from 49 states and 63 countries to attend. I’m here with farm efficiency on the mind. It’s been 3 days of exploration and excitement. I arrived in Los Angeles Monday night at 10 PM, then hopped in the rental car and drove to Bakersville to stay for the evening. I woke up at 5 am the following morning to have a JBG operations meeting from my hotel room, then finished the journey north to Tulare, a town located in the heart of the Central Valley and home of the World Ag Expo. I drove to Expo headquarters and, with jaw dropped, I surveyed the biggest parking lot and the most buses I have ever seen in my life.

Photo courtesy of the World Ag Expo.

I walked into the first gate I saw, like a deer in headlights, and was drawn immediately to an importer of specialty equipment from Italy. I was there talking for at least 3 hours to the engineers of the products if you can believe it. When I started JBG in my backyard and did everything by hand, there weren’t many farmers around that utilized tractors or other larger farm equipment; thus, I had to learn everything farm equipment-related via YouTube and internet search rabbit holes. When I visit neighboring farms in Texas and neighboring states, I always learn something new; however, at this expo, you are sharing information with people from all over the world who might (and probably) farm completely different from you, as well as seeing first hand the most cutting edge agricultural technology. It’s amazing and mind expanding.





Photos from the Expo!

I’ve been looking at our whole production system, or how we make a crop from start to finish, and brainstorming on how and where to improve operations in order to make things easier for everyone at JBG. For example, every time a tractor drives over soil, the soil compacts and compresses into a smaller volume, making it difficult for air, water, and roots to penetrate. This is soil degradation and obviously not ideal for the crops' growth. However, if you slap a GPS on the tractor, the machine will only drive on designated little paths every pass and keep the beds soft and lush for crops. Plus, the beds would stay in the same place instead of moving around on the acreage. This is called control traffic farming and is something I read about in college 20 years ago. With technology improving, the cost of this pioneering equipment has dropped immensely, making easy technological improvements more accessible to farmers. Another example where implements could help us is reducing passes. We make anywhere from nine to twelve passes when preparing the crop bed currently, depending on soil conditions. However, using combination tools, where you can add implements to the front and back of a tractor, we could prepare the bed in as little as two passes. This could reduce our fuel usage by 500 or 600% which is beneficial for the environment and saves us a little cash, too.

My list of our production system and where to improve.

All of these innovations reduce our labor requirements, and since we never have a shortage of work to do at the farm, we could send farmers to tackle other more pressing tasks. Weed elimination and harvesting would most likely be at the top of that list if we were hypothetically to get a bunch of fancy new equipment today. So, here’s to finding new and fun solutions to all of our problems in farming and in life! ‘Til next time.