Episode 2 | The Momentum Shift

The Parallel Path: And that was the first thing I saw. like, okay, that's something we've been looking for. Cause we carry fertilizer and bulk seed and like, it makes no sense to me when you turn on the ends, you're lifting all that weight up and you're all that weight back down and all that weight's going, you know, you're redistributing weight on tires and aren't ready for it when you lift on the ends. And, and so that was the first thing I saw, but then, you know, they had it set up showing how much flexibility there was in terms of, ⁓ row unit movement up and down and being able to go over hills and terraces and. and contour with the ground better. And so those are the two things that really immediately caught my eye. Welcome back to the Parallel Path. The Parallel Path is a monthly podcast from the marketing team here at Parallel Ed, where we bring real conversations from across the agriculture industry. In each episode, we will sit down with equipment experts, service professionals, industry leaders, and farmers to talk about the challenges, innovations, and decisions made shaping modern agriculture. This is episode two, so we're still getting our feet underneath us, but I think today's gonna be a good one. We're gonna be talking about the most critical window in a grower's year. It's the first 48 hours of the seed's life. We've got the full spectrum of expertise in the room to discuss the Fent Momentum planter. I'm joined by Isaac Hill from Fent, Kirby Woods from Fent, and Grant Strong, who owns and runs a Momentum on his acres. So let's do a quick introduction. We'll just go around the table. Kirby, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your position at Fent? Yeah, thanks, Alicia. So I'm... I'm marketing team with Echo planters. So I work with Fent and Massey. So long history in the ag industry. I was a product specialist for Longtown. I call our dealers and work with farmers out in the field in my area. Then I had a short stint in precision planning under product support. I was on the phones. a farmer or a dealer would call in and I would support them. I had a great experience doing that, learned a lot and it's still stationed there in Trima. And so just working, working with the P-TEX team as well as the planter marketing team. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but you did something with the Bex planter head to head challenge? I was involved in that and in both Isaac and I were working on that project together. Awesome. Isaac? Yeah. So, Isaac Hill, a fan of product specialists. I'm Nassy, an aquapark specialist. Started my agriculture career, precision planning, spent 13 years there, you know, just like Kirby learned a lot, you know, fantastic opportunity to just fast growing industry with a lot of industry experts. And so that was a fantastic time to grow my professional career. And then I've been over on the agco side for what? Three or four years now, maybe four or five and the time flies when you're having fun. But yeah, so I cover, you know, the parallel ag story and stores and. Illinois, Wisconsin, ⁓ and Missouri. And you, Grant? Yeah, Grant Strum, farm Knox and Peury counties with Strum Family Farms, ⁓ partners with my sister, Joanie, and my parents, Doug and Marcia. Farm corn, soybeans, raise some beef cows, do some hay, do some commercial trucking and few other things. But we'll be ⁓ entering our third season running a Fent-Momentum planter and it went real well so far and led to... talk about the highlights of our experience. Now, I believe you two were in the helping the creation of the Momentum Venter, correct? Yeah, it was kind of there for some of the first testing of the Momentum Venter. So Momentum wasn't built from an old platform, correct? Correct. So tell us about that process. So I like to put it this way. So if you look at Uh, specifically into what precision planning's done in a lot of technology that's come really a lot of us focused on the road. Yeah. Right. So they, they, they tackled, Hey, how do we create a better for a more consistent for downforce? Um, how do we do better job of cleaning resume? How do we do better job of closing as well as meter a metering delivering the seat. Right. So they really attacked that. Right. So if you look at what momentum means to me, it's, it's okay. We now most of the stuff is prepped up very, they really kind of affected that now how do we attack the things that ⁓ really tied in more of the tour? So how do we, how do we reduce compassion, creating them up with the toolbar? How do we get that part? Because there's, there's things that even though I get this right away, that doesn't mean it's going to fix something caused by toolbar. Right? So that's really in my mind, why, moment? Yeah, no, I'll piggyback off of that. Just like you mentioned, you know, Precision did a fantastic job of shining a light on specific agronomic issues on the farm. And you know, that's all been done on the row unit and FENT took that step back. And from a bird's eye view we're looking at, it's like, okay, how can we make agronomic impacts, you know, off of the row unit, but now on the frame? So things like removing pinch rows and being able to have a closed loop system. So we know how to distribute the weight evenly and increase capacity on the planter. So we can carry the weight, distribute it evenly, reduce compaction field. Um, you know, just trying to, trying to solve issues that farmers were facing on an, on a daily basis. No grant as a farmer, how much of that, when you first heard about the momentum sounded like marketing BS or how much of it, like what really made you take a look at it? Yeah. So I don't know if there's any marketing BS necessarily, but as Kirby and Isaac alluded to, you know, a lot of companies that perfected the row unit itself in terms of placing the C we've been running, you know, precision planting products for several years on other brands of planters and got along really well. And ⁓ for us, yeah, I feel we're somewhat unique in terms of the different field types we have. ⁓ So our geography, we have flat farms, we have a lot of hills, we have terraces, we have river bottoms, ⁓ we have a lot of different soil types and so a lot of contour and curves in our fields. so for us, ⁓ what type of plan or frame we ran was a big deal to us. And we were always seemed like we were kind of searching for one that had more flex, could distribute weight better. And when we first saw the momentum, was actually at the, I think it was the after hours, one of the first ones they did, the Pure Civic Center, we were coming back from the precision planning winter conference and we stopped. And so that was the first time I actually got to walk around one of the momentums. And there was, we had seen some other planners in the market that had they were kind of off-market, off-brand planners where they had a separate subframe that carried the rail units. And that was the first thing I saw. was like, okay, that's something we've been looking for because we carry fertilizer and bulk seed and like, makes no sense to me when you turn on the ends, you're lifting all that weight up and you're all that weight back down and all that weight's going, you you're redistributing weight on tires and aren't ready for it when you lift on the ends. And so that was the first thing I saw, but then, you know, they had it set up showing how much flexibility there was in terms of ⁓ row unit movement up and down and being able to go over hills and terraces and contour with the ground better. And so those are the two things that really immediately caught my eye. And we were kind of looking for that. You know, it took us a couple, three years to get into one after we were first introduced, but those were two of the things that really caught my eye when we first saw the planner. of that, you said something about your fields. We're in central Illinois right now. So we have a lot of flat, giant pieces of ground. I believe your farm type is a little bit different. You have some more rolling hills. Yeah, so if you look at ⁓ the landscape of Knox County, Illinois, where we're sitting, ⁓ if you're on any of the edges of the county, it's pretty flat, pretty black, really good soils. And then you kind of see this area through the middle of the county. The Spoon River Basin kind of runs right through Knox County. We're fortunate enough to farm up and down the Spoon River. So whenever you're going down into a river, area, have a lot of hills and terrain and so our family kind of grew up in the part that had a little more terrain and hills to it. So we have a lot of HEL ground, so a lot of minimum till, no till, a lot of roll, a lot of waterways, terraces in some cases. so we do have some of that flat black easy to farm, what I'll call easier to farm stuff. I mean, there's obviously different challenges that come along with that type of ground, but I can usually, it takes me about a day and a half to get those fields done and the rest of the time I'm, I consider myself an artist when you, when I get done planting a field, it's quite the picture I've painted. So. So with that, you do have that really rolling terrain that the flexibility of that momentum toolbar probably was what you're into. Yeah. So that was really a big draw. So in the past we had run some wider planters that had multiple sections. So we had a plan that had five section flex and basically the bar pivoted into five sections. And as a planner, we got along really well with, but as we moved into high speed planting, it was hard to find a bar that had that much flex to it. And so where the row units were attached to the same mainframe bar, you were just really limited on your row unit travel. And that's where now we're back into a momentum. You know, my row unit travel is significant. And now I've got that same sort of even more flexibility than I had when I had a bar that had multiple section flex. And so that's really been a big deal. It's almost, ⁓ it's actually become an interesting conundrum in a couple of spots because I now have to think to myself, okay, if I plan it this way, can I harvest it that way? Especially with corn, you know, soybeans, you can do about anything you want, harvest any direction, but corn, you're picking down the rows. like, I found myself a couple of times I get that planter to flex and actually plant something in a way that makes it easier for me to have to do less turns. But then I'm like, I don't think I can pick that that way because the corn head will not flex like that. So I've actually run into a couple of situations where that's happened. So. Hey, sounds like you guys need to take that back to Adgerow and get a flex. for that. Yeah. Flex for that. Yeah. Okay. What about technology on the planters? What comes standard? What's, what's really important? a whole momentum flare and is powered by precision. what that means is you have 2020 in the can, really controlling the all the planting controls for all the controls down for us closing. ⁓ and so it's something that's our customers are used to. There's a direct brand that was running precision before. it's that part of us pretty easy step into into the product. But then Yeah, so all the V7 meters with electric drives, V drives, Delta Force, Hydro-Octane Force is standard. So really those are the big standard features. And you can add on, you know, ability for high speed planting and also liquid fertilizer as well. And then we start talking about some of the technology on the frame. You know, when you look at load logic and it has a full package, you know, the ability to We have weight bins built into the rims. And so we know how much weight to distribute out to make sure that we are carrying the balance, we're carrying the weight balance throughout the entire frame. And then we're also able to decrease tire pressure. And so that widens out the footprint. So we have less PSI per square inch on that. So I'll reduce in compaction. And then we, know, as Brianna mentioned before, the DCT ability for us to have that, you know, 55 plus inches of row unit travel on throughout our different models just allows you to get into some spots planting terraces and making it more difficult for the combine operator. It gives you a lot of opportunities. So instead of burying some of your row units and some of them dangling where you might have the shallow planted seed, ⁓ it just allows us to make sure that we're contouring with the soil, make sure that our seeds always do the same depth, giving us consistency for even the merchants. What about pentros? Pentros. So yeah, we do have inline tandem. So we don't have We don't have any two tires in our surrounding. And so with that, you know, our wing wheels are on the far outside and then we have inline tandems underneath our tank. And as Graham mentioned, that allows us to carry the extra weight. You know, we can distribute that weight more evenly throughout those and just reduce compaction in the field. We're just going to be following the tire tracks that are already created from the track. Awesome. so then Grant, we've talked a little bit about this. ⁓ you make the move to Momentum. What were you running beforehand and what really drove the shift? ⁓ we were, ⁓ we, we traditionally been a Case ⁓ family and we still run a lot of Case ⁓ equipment. So, ⁓ actually the Fent Momentum was the first non-Case ⁓ planter that I've ever planted corn with. We've had some Kinsies and stuff we planted beans with, but for corn, that was our, our, the first time I'd ever planted anything other than a red planter. But a lot of it was just, as I mentioned, we were already in precision planning. that was, as Kirby said, kind of a seamless move for us. And we definitely upgraded some of that equipment ⁓ going into it. ⁓ The most important factors on the plan for me, he mentioned the Delta Force. that's probably the single piece of technology that I think is revolutionized planning, especially high speed planning of anything. Then we put the reveal row units on, the furrow force closing system. You know, so those are kind of the three stages to me that are the most important piece of technology on there. And, ⁓ as Isaac said, you know, once we, I didn't know a lot about the load logic or the, the auto inflate deflated the tires, how significant that was until, ⁓ we run dual liquid on our planner. So we have, you know, the factory liquid system of a thousand gallon tank. also have saddle tanks. We carry the second liquid product in pumps. We were carrying a lot of weight. Even when we're not full of seed, we're carrying a lot of weight. And so that's just critically important. We were running a track planner before and I was getting, there's without question, I'm having less compaction problems with these, the tandem tire system than I was with tracks. The tracks would float pretty good, but it just seemed like it was really wanting to compact all the air out. Whenever it drove on something, it really would smash it out. this has been a lot better and it's worked really well. It takes a couple minutes for it to inflate to, you always got to remember to flip it back on free while I go on the road. You know, even if you have it on auto, takes a little time, but the planter folds so fast. It's like, you're not sitting there waiting for it to fold up and you're folding up in about 60 seconds and gone. So, yeah, but those features have all been really, I would not be able to probably, it would be hard to go back to without having those things. And I want you to have them. So. Have you noticed any difference in the emergence or initial inhale? Definitely more evenness of emergence, especially in those areas that were kind of the harder to plant areas that I mentioned. ⁓ The row unit contact and ground contact ⁓ is just really, really good with this. And so, I there's, I try not to plant up and down over hills very much just for contour purposes. You know, I try to. I don't want a row to get washed out by a heavy rain. So, you know, I try to contour plan as much as possible, but sometimes it's impossible because I have like three contours. It's like a four dimensional plane. feel like I'm planning on sometimes, but I actually had trouble in the past with planners. ⁓ know, that planners that have the wheels in front of the row units, which obviously the FENT Momentum does, but it has two frames. So you don't deal with this issue, but planters that have the wheels in front of the rail units, when you break over a crown of a hill, it will lift the rail units out of the ground when you break that crown. And the first year I ran a planner that had wheels in front of the rail units, I wasn't realizing that was happening. All of a sudden I went by these fields and I didn't have any corn on my hilltops because it was setting on top of the ground. And this was before Delta Force and some of this other stuff, so I didn't know what was going on. So then I had to get into a practice of lifting the draw bar up every time I went over the crown of a hill to make sure the planner stayed in the ground. And, you know, that's been completely eliminated with momentum not having to deal with that because it's on a separate frame that's doing its own thing versus what the main carrier frame's doing. And so it's things like that that people that farm flatland don't realize. you because you just don't deal with something like that. But it's just been a no question the consistency in those more rolling difference in terrain areas has been significantly better. So you have better emergence. and you're not having gaps. So how does that translate to the bottom line of your farm? ⁓ well, you know, when you have corn in those areas, obviously it's going to give you more revenue. And, know, it's not only just making sure you have, you know, a good stand of plants in those areas, but, you know, keeping wheat suppression down, you know, because obviously if you miss a two foot spot in the field, you're going to have something growing other than corn or soybeans, whatever the case is. And so every time you have a bear spot like that, you're just you know, creating a weed bank for future generations to deal with. Yep. And those poor kids are, if there anything like me, they get sent out with ⁓ a little corn knives and have to go knock down the, where I grew up, it was sunflowers. didn't have wild sunflowers. I would have to go out. It's the worst days. It's always hotter than, you have to go cut those sunflowers down. That's gross character. That's what my dad said. All right. So. Who is this planter really built for and who probably shouldn't necessarily need to buy one? And I know that's going to be like a sticky point because everybody needs to learn some right? Well, think there's one thing about my animals. It may be different for everybody, right? know, Grant with his hills is utilizing decent teeth. Maybe if I'm in the flatter is I might. You know, there, if I plant a waterway, yeah, I'm using that feature a little bit, but it's not as significant. It is maybe in, in voluntary. But what I would say is the other side was, Hey, we got a little larger, we tire inflation. Um, we're, helping mitigate compassion caused by the tool more. So even if it's, if I'm a, um, flat black and beautiful, you know, where maybe I saw, um, and the wet springs where I had to get to see the ground hit that. take the right way out. You know, I'm really best at compassion. I think right now I have to take off my Fent hat and put on my Anko hat. You know, when it comes to planting and it comes to planters in general, the main thing that we need to do is, you know, really figure out what are the farmer's greatest challenges. A lot of the times we'll take that momentum and put that on the farm to solve a lot of those problems. But there's also going to be guys that don't need a thousand gallon liquid tank, that don't need 130 bushel seed tanks. And so we also have, you know, the Massey Ferguson planter that that might be able to solve their problems in a, you know, a more efficient manner. And so we have. a wide range of planter options that we can get onto. I I believe any farm in America and add value to their bottom line, whether that is the Fentanyl Manna or the Massey Fruits and Plant or so, know, putting a piece of equipment on someone's farm without solving a problem isn't our greatest sales feature. You know, it's like, want to make sure that when we're putting some, we're adding value to the farm, adding, you know, solving problems and making sure we're, you know, helping out their body a lot. I agree completely and I mean, I really does have a wide variety of equipment for no matter the operation size. You're what your bottom line is, how much spending power you have. We really do have something that match every operation. Answer that question. What about, and this is just, you're going to have to partly explain this to me, the EMHD flow sensors? Yeah. So EMHD is a robot road for logic control and it's precision planning product. And really it was designed to have a wider range of running speeds, planning speeds, as well as application rates without changing ⁓ things like orifices without I'm having to reconfigure ⁓ basically spending less time changing things on a plan. So if you're going from this rate to this rate, if you're going to trials, if you're doing variable rate application, it's really designed for that as well as running a wider range of products. If you're doing some of the ⁓ more creative tag fixes with some biologicals and sure, there's things like that where maybe it's hard to flow that product through a two-gishmo. ⁓ fertilizer system without plugging it. ⁓ it's really designed for that too. So that it gives it open, grow a lot of flexibility and, speed and rate and product that they want to run. ⁓ but it's also a desire to really keep a high rate of road to road accuracy. ⁓ you know, these guys are spending a ton of money in fertilizer. ⁓ it's, it's worth to put, ⁓ fertilizer on a planter and, know, it's, and it's time to do that. So we want to make sure if the rows are spinning that money on the product and the technology that it works for them and it feeds that plant easily across the width of the planter ⁓ because we want to really utilize that product to transport something. ⁓ It's also a control loop. So each row is monitoring. So the flow sense is monitoring what's going out at the row at basically at the row. And then the ⁓ valve is adjusting to basically make sure we maintain that. So always using that control loop to enter at that rate that we set. Yeah, with the EMs, we've removed the turbine out of the flow sense. So we're not relying on that turbine. So when we get into some things like the sugars and stuff like that, ⁓ we're not dealing with the turbine getting clogged or anything like that. Or if you have dirty fertilizer or something like that, we're not dealing with that. ⁓ Correct me if I'm wrong, didn't you switch some of yours from the turbine to the EMHC? Now we're still running turbines. I've just, I've kind of, I've learned to deal with their attitudes. I'm, you know, running liquid on a planner, I will be honest, you know, people ask me about liquid all the time. We're running two liquid products, so I, sometimes I have twice the headaches, but I definitely spend more time. you know, fine tuning my fertilizer than I do my seed. The seeding is just like, you know, it's not foolproof, but you can identify problems and fix them pretty quickly. Sometimes liquid, you don't know quite where the problem's at. And we've adjusted, we're still running the V-Apply HDs and the turbines. And I think at this point, I'm just going to wait until I would roll into a newer plan or before I upgrade to the newer system. But if you can learn it, definitely the EMHDs. you know, from what I've read and seen and I have a couple friends that run them, know, it definitely eliminates some of the issues I deal with on daily basis, but it just depends what your tolerance is for those issues. just because something stops spinning doesn't mean it's necessarily stopped flowing. yes, there's a little more ground truthing a few things, but. Now, do you variable rate any of your seeding, any of your fertilization? How does that work? Yeah, fertilize, we're dabbling with some variable rate on the planter, but we're not putting like from a nitrogen standpoint, we're putting this to maybe 20 % of our nitrogen down with the planter. So the rest is being done elsewhere. So there's not like a huge need to variable rate that. See, we variable rate every acre and we probably have for seven or eight years ⁓ at this point, corn and soybeans. And then that's been a really big deal for us as I mentioned the terrain. we'll, you know, you'll have flat, you know, mostly black heavy soils. You may not vary a couple thousand plants in population from corner to corner, but we have farms that I know there's a 12,000 plant population spread from like a field edge. It's close to trees versus the highly productive areas. be 12,000 plant differences. And so one obviously saves you seed and ⁓ We've identified the areas that we're really not making any money on. why, why put a Florida seed out there? Then we know the areas that are really yielding well or that from a corn situation need more plants, know, soybeans, it's almost ⁓ the opposite. that's been, you know, some with precision planning it. I've worked with several different monitors and technology is super easy to get scripts into a 2020. You can adjust them on the go either by, you know, number of plants. You know, can want to change 500 seeds every zone. You can change it. You can change it by percentage. It's just a real, real easy to do. So kind of a no brainer. If people aren't doing prescription planning with seed, I would encourage you to tell me why not. Because it's, you can start very simple. Just go by soil type and you can overlay soils type with yield history. You know, there's plenty of good data guys out there that can build those maps for you. I quit spending time doing it myself a long time ago. I did it for the first two or three years and that got old real quick. now I pay a few guys a very minimal, what I feel is a minimal amount of money for the time I used to spend doing it to build them for me. And now we've got eight or 10 years of history with those maps and they just get refined a little bit every year. Like you said, it's easy to do it in the 2020 because it just is a couple little... So my background, I was a precision tech. I actually was on the ag leader side and I used to manage acres like you saying. So I did write the variable rate prescriptions for planting and for fertilization and you're 100 % right. The amount of money that can save your bottom line because you're eliminating your cost on those low production acres and then really targeting those high production areas. mean, it's something that I... Yeah, it's a two way street. You're boosting revenue on the best acres and you're lowering your costs on the... non-productive or less productive acres and ⁓ it's just one of those sayings if you're not doing it you need you need to be ⁓ I'm a firm believer in that so. All right ⁓ so how does the momentum represent what we're calling the parallel path of iron and technology working together? Oh, you're looking at me. All right. How does it? Well, I mean, just like parallel, mean, I remember I in a lot of these meetings that we started out with the mission statement, go through that working in parallel with, you know, farmers. I view that similar, like as we spoke throughout this conversation, you know, trying to solve those problems, trying to solve problems on people's acres, trying to make sure that they're getting more revenue in their pocket or saving where we can, all those different things. some of the hardest things right now in agricultural rights, right? And so we're fighting all these input costs and everything's getting more more expensive it seems. So making sure the technology that is on the plant is in your cab of your tractor is adding benefits to your farm, adding revenue in your pocket, at least giving you the insight and the knowledge to make educated decisions moving forward, whether that is getting into variable rate. ⁓ know, every piece of technology on our planter does have a close feedback. So small things like Do I have the right downforce value? know, we're way depends on every single row unit. So we know exactly how much weight is being carried on the gauge wheel. ⁓ Are we distributing our weight evenly? Just reducing every agronomic problem that we could have on every planet. So maybe for that our technology is adding value to the farmers. I think is the one thing that we can do and that's working right alongside with them. So. And I'm actually gonna jump back. we have say we have a John Deere. a guy who's running a John Deere planter who has that technology. And we know John Deere has their own true north. we're running implement guidance, what can we do for those customers who want to switch from a John Deere planter to a Momentum? So, I mean, on the guidance side of things, can run with, know, if you're running a John Deere tractor today and you have your implement guidance, you run strip till, you know, all of that will transfer over to the Momentum planter. We're still going to run our planter itself. via the 2020 monitor, we can run through any, you know, if they're running a Gen 5 monitor or 4640, whatever it be, we could also run the planter ISO side through that. So, your terminal. Yeah. And then just, you know, while the, the deer guidance, what, track is on, that just controls the tractor and guidance lines. And with case, do you have Trimble? that okay? Using Raymond. And so that obviously ties in with the windbox technology. ⁓ One thing I would add, can I go back to where the parallel technology question is, big stuff forces are paying around app slash program, right? So it's adding visibility, agronomics visibility, and able to transfer data, but it's also adding another layer of support for these guys. So I can visualize what's going on in 2020. If I receive a problem, can. I can see that real time through live stream, through that app. I can also review that after the fact. it's really designed to help alleviate any issues quicker, right? And resolve those before you, maybe in the past you planted to old field or something like that without ⁓ acknowledging that problem now. And you should really see that. Everybody can see that what's going on in that planner and to correcting problems. So dad who's picking up the seed at the seed shack can pull up the app and be telling Grant that his seed is messing up and Grant can sit on the phone and argue with him. I don't think there's too many things Grant misses. So I'm going to, sister and I in a fortunate situation that our parents kind of, you know, let us take over a lot of the decision making equity, you know, as we entered the operation. So. It's usually a grant that kind of oversees everything and probably too much to a certain point. something happened to me, it'd probably get chaotic for a little bit. But we're definitely working on processes with our own family to, know, if something like that did happen that, you know, we have a standard operating procedure in place that someone else can step in and take over. To piggyback off what Kirby said a little bit, you know, we also have You know, we have the ANCO team, have all the support side from the ANCO, but that is also includes precision. So, you know, we work very closely with, I don't know if there's a better team in the industry of support than the Precision Planning Box, but they're fantastic. You know, they're taking phone calls throughout the entire night, but during busy season, but we work very closely with them. So we have an army of support. And so it's not like, you know, your dealer is always going to be your first line. me and Kirby and then the precision team as well. So it's like you have a full army body. Exactly. All right. Before I let you guys go, let's go around the table one more time and in as few sentences as possible. What is the single biggest momentum shift a grower will see in their operation after year one? I highlighted a lot of things from an infield perspective that that we saw and you know, it's just a consistency, you know, and limited compaction and consistency placement is one. I guess I'd like to quickly highlight something that probably isn't a point that the sales team uses much, but the ease of working on this planner is unlike anything else in the industry. I can back it into my shop, lower the wings down, literally walk around all 24 row units without being encumbered at all. I don't have a tire between a row that I can't get down to work on a row unit. And so I know from an owner operator standpoint and having employees that do a lot of work on the planner for me, I mean, they're, they love working on this planner because it is so easy to do. I mean, I can have the row units at any height for them at any time, you know, you don't have to completely unfold the planner to be able to work on it. And so there's a lot of things there that a farmer probably doesn't take into account if they're working on their own equipment. necessarily as much, but there's some easy things like that. It's just such an easy plan to work on in the shop as well. And that's another thing that we don't look at necessarily when it comes to our ROI perspective, but with the cost of parts and labor, anything you can do to make those parts of working out equipment easier is a big thing too. Last time I was at your shop, just returning for the planter. ⁓ I would say, you know, Simple and reliable and when when you look at that just like ingrained and mentioned working on it operating it You know the 2020 system is simple ⁓ If you were to take all the components off the planner and lay them out you'd be like there's really not that much going on It does make it simple and then you know we look at the reliable side of things and not only is the planner itself You know all the technology that's on it's been it's been robust. It's been proven I mean V-DRIVE Delta Force been out since what? 2013 I believe it was and ⁓ Now there's still a lot of those systems out there that are in the fields today. And then you put, you know, our one thing behind that, our three year Goldstraw warranty behind that. And it just gives the grower to the peace of mind to be like, you know what? I have three years of backing behind me and just gives them a little bit of peace of mind going into, you know, every season knowing that we got them back. Capacity without compromise. that's a good. Straight from the bargaining seat. I was great. I up in this market. So, no, like he's been waiting to say that. No, I really have. So trademark. No. So I realize. So it's multiple aspects. So, it's, Hey, like in the case of, um, if I need, if I need a higher capacity player, um, like grants, metchniques, or two liquid products, um, if he's running a high liquid and, um, things like that, we're not. It's designs you not create compaction minute help mitigate the compaction. But also as, as Isaac mentioned, ⁓ we're not sacrificing any service ability. ⁓ the Goldstar warranty is, is we're not compromising any of that. ⁓ so it's really a circle of it's more, more than just agronomics that, ⁓ is really part of that. Right. It's it's a service ability. It's it's dealership that, ⁓ the service you guys are providing. and an area next. Okay, we're gonna, I'm gonna cut here and we're gonna have to go back because I completely forgot to talk about the gold star warranty. So ⁓ I'm gonna ask about the gold star warranty. Did you ever have to use the gold star warranty? Yeah, we had a couple. We haven't had much as a couple things in season, but you know, they parallel service team has come out and you know, done planner inspections for us. I mean, there's been a couple things they found and I think there was a couple items they knew were starting to fail on some planners. They came out and put them on, know, preemptively to make sure it didn't fail on us in season. So, haven't had to use it extensively, but it's been nice to know that that's an option available to us. What is the Gold Star Warranty on a FAT momentum plan? So Gold Star Warranty, so at first hand, all central products have a basic Gold Star Warranty. ⁓ all branch out. make this a little more about planters, but if I kind of trapped here, right. So it is, it is a three warranty. Um, it's been the, the, the way, um, so everything on that track card, basically on track is, um, going to be all insured the sale holes too. So some of your cars would have the same package. Um, so what they, what that does is it, it kind of locks in your cost of ownership and there's no hidden surprises. Um, So we've taken that and put something similar on the planners where everything on there is three or 18. So a precision planning component, all that is three years as well. Outside of where I am. Nice little answer. It's like, what about those opening? Yeah. But then what also includes is parts guarantee. So from a, from a leadership standpoint, Hey, we're We're helping you to make sure that you guys are covered with the right parts and right quantity of parts to support them. So they can keep the planters wrong as well as, is, is a inspection period where every year we want, we'll have the dealerships go through the planner ⁓ and do a post planting inspection and make sure that that planters were ready to go for next season. So, you know, I would always say I kind of, one thing I was in then is, you know, ⁓ planter maintenance is hugely important, right? Like, ⁓ technology does not replace planter maintenance. So we need these guys, ⁓ you know, get it, making sure that the planters is right over here. So it performs out of shift and, ⁓ it goes serves a great, ⁓ part of that, right. It helps, helps, ⁓ draw, draw that. So, cause these are guys, this is the inspection where they're going to catch those where parts that need to be replaced. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we just. We hammer so much on any of our trainings, basic planter maintenance. It's like, as Kirby had mentioned, the technology is fantastic, but know, step one is always going to be our maintenance and just having the ability to have the team go through your planter in and out and just make sure that everything is set up properly. know, giving recommendations, whether you do need to replace some opening desks or, you know, having the conversations throughout the year and know where some struggles you might've had and maybe having the conversation, what's the next steps. Just building that relationship with the farm. Yeah. And these are not just whatever technician we have back in the shop, these are going to be fence certified technicians that have gone through hands-on training to make sure that we've got exactly who needs to be looking at that plant you're looking at it for you. All right. That is a wrap on episode two of the parallel path. Guys, we've covered a lot of ground today, literally and figuratively. We've talked about how the momentum isn't just a bigger piece of iron. It's a smarter way to manage that soil and that planting time. If you want to see the momentum in person or talk to the experts, you can help you dial in your planting head on over to parallel ag dot com or stuff. I want to run locations to talk to our team. Thanks for spending some time with us today. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the path cast wherever you listen. So you don't miss an episode. And if there's a topic or a guest, you'd like to see us cover, we'd love to hear from you. We'll see you next time on the parallel path.