What TractorZoom’s Data Says About the Future of Farm Equipment

Audio Transcript:

Andy Campbell: I do think that there is a lot of challenges ahead of us in terms of a US row crop economy, that still need to be figured out, and largely on the demand side.

I don’t know how much longer we can kind of out-bushel, some of the challenges that are in front of us, and I start to see some things, within the equipment world, of can we provide the same kind of value in a smaller, piece of equipment and maybe even an older piece of equipment that is more efficient, with the use of its time. But I think, to really be competitive long term, you know, I think we have to definitely figure out demand.

Chad Fiechter: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Commercial AgCast. This is Chad Fiechter, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue, and I’m joined by my co-host

Todd Kuethe: Todd Kuethe. I’m also a professor here in the department and a member of the Center for Commercial Agriculture.

And, really excited about this, conversation. Chad, you brought our guest in today. I did. Do you wanna tease a little bit, and then we’ll have him introduce himself?

Chad Fiechter: Sure. So I think that- I was introduced to this guest by our former colleague, Jim Mintert, who I think you and him connected at a conference somewhere. And then, Jim said, “Hey, Chad, you should talk to Andy Campbell from TractorZoom.”

Andy Campbell: Yes, Andy Campbell, director of insights with TractorZoom.

But when I first met Jim, I believe this was at the NADA conference in ’23 maybe, ’24 possibly, but that’s the North American Equipment Dealers Association. They run a big, association all across the country for farm equipment dealers. And he was up on stage, and I’ve followed the Purdue, barometer for a long time.

And so he’s on stage talking about the results, and he made a mention, he’s like, “And this would be so cool if I could trend the barometer and have it correlate with equipment values.” He’s like, “I don’t know if that’s possible.” And that, that’s how he ended. He’s like, “I don’t know if this is even possible.”

And in the back of the room, I’m like, “Oh,” like, “this is definitely possible.” And so I went up and talked to him afterwards, and, and yeah, the rest is history. ‘

Chad Fiechter: Okay, so

What does TractorZoom do- Uh-huh … that will make that possible?

Andy Campbell: So yeah, TractorZoom, you can kinda think of it as like where data meets diesel.

And we’re the Kelley Blue Book, at least we started as a Kelley Blue Book of farm equipment, all digital, and we have a huge marketplace site where people can go and find all the equipment they need. We don’t advertise, though. We don’t charge for it. It’s more or less a data aggregation. And so we have about $85 billion worth of equipment valuation data from dealers, from auctions, and we pull that stuff in in real time.

And so we know how much stuff is worth, when it’s worth, how much supply is on the market, and you can kind of imagine if you know all that information about all the different pieces of farm equipment, and we’re getting into construction too, in real time, then you can start to really understand what’s driving the industry and, what even projecting forward might happen knowing that the supply’s out there.

Chad Fiechter: Okay. And you have an interesting background as well.

Andy Campbell: Mm.

Chad Fiechter: That- in, in a couple different dimensions that we’ll probably hit on in the future, but talk about that

Andy Campbell: Yeah. So it’s certainly not a straight line. And I was actually just gave a, an intro to a bunch of the interns that we have on, staff here at Tractor Zoom the other day, and they’re like, how did you get from there to here?

Like, that doesn’t make sense.” Which is exactly what my wife says. But I started on a farm, and so I still have connections with the farm. That part makes sense. I grew up in northern Iowa. I helped own and operate a row crop farm up there. But my dad kicked me out and said, “There’s no future in farming.

You gotta go get a different degree.” So I went to the University of Iowa, got a degree in chemical engineering, and then did work for the food companies. But I really liked the business aspect, so I came back and got my MBA, and this is where it gets a little crazy. that in a very roundabout way, I actually had ties with the Hawkeye women’s basketball program.

And, I was a grad assistant for Lisa Bluder and helped coach all them. I was there before Caitlin Clark was there. I’m sure

Todd Kuethe: you’ll get that question the rest of your

Chad Fiechter: life. I

Andy Campbell: know, yeah. Oh, 100%. Yeah. She’s like, “Do you know Caitlin Clark?” And it’s like, I preceded Caitlin Clark. But anyways, that actually led to my first job out of grad school, where I was a college basketball coach and a professor at a private college, and I would just… Doors opened up. They happened to be both opportunities at the same time, so I’m like, “Oh, I’ll try it out.” don’t usually say no to a neat opportunity.

and so I coached and taught for a number of years, and I know we’ll get back to kind of the teaching aspect and the academic aspect of it, later in our conversation. But one of my former students there I stayed in touch with, and after I’d left academia, started up a consulting firm, went back into the industry a little bit, and they were having trouble with their marketing, so I went in to give them a little bit of, advice.

One thing led to another, and, I started helping them out for five hours a week and then this data company, became a little bit larger, and 10 hours a week, 20, 40 hours a week, and, pretty much after a while it just made sense. Like, tie my boat to this bigger ship and, and we’ve been going gangbusters since.

Chad Fiechter: Man, that’s crazy.

Andy Campbell: so the origins here is that Andy, you, allowed us the opportunity to use tractor zoom data to at least get a start And so earlier this year, that paper came out. it was a really cool opportunity for me.

Chad Fiechter: you gave us access to I think it was 300 to 450 horsepower tractors. Mm-hmm. and it was quite a few years. Did it go back into the early 2000s? It

Andy Campbell: did, yes. Mm-hmm.

Chad Fiechter: and-

Andy Campbell: Yeah, so 20-plus years of data.

Chad Fiechter: Okay. and so anyways, maybe I can hit some high points, right? Mm-hmm. so what we did is we created this model, where we are estimating sort of like the characteristics of the tractor, how does it relate to the auction prices? And, ju- like just quick off the top, it was, you know, i- as we get into those hour buckets, the sort of usage categories of tractors, which we defined fairly coarsely, but it was- Mm-hmm

the penalty or the price, decrease that you would see for an additional hour essentially kind of worked in half from maybe like 100… in the data we’re using, we said it was $120 for less than 500 hours, and then $60 for between, I think it was 500 and 1,000. Right.

Andy Campbell: it was reassuring in the sense that that’s what I see when I run the data on… I mean, it’s a similar, shape of curve that I see on spares, that I see on combines, tractors, any kind of houred, type of machine.

That’s typically what I see, is that almost exponentially decreasing rate of depreciation.

Todd Kuethe: So you ran a Mm-hmm … a hedonic pricing model.

Which is basically the idea is you’re buying a bundle of characteristics. So you can decompose that price into the value of each of those characteristics. So the classic example is you buy a house, you’re buying a set of bedrooms, set of bathrooms, s- kitchen, attached garage, what have you, right? And each of those things you’re buying in that big price, and you’re basically decomposing through regression.

Right into those pieces, right? That’s what you’re doing. So my question to Andy, like, was that sort of way we think of things as an economist, was that surprising to you, expected to you?

so yeah, throwing in usage in there, and then also age, any of these other quantifiable things.

Andy Campbell: And then the non-quantifiables, essentially like, Chad, I think you pulled out, like, okay, we need to have brands as, potential, inputs and control variables, yes. so that was one, and then also the types of auction too. I knew that that was important from looking at the data in the past.

I’ve done simple sorting and I could see that there was a difference. but to be able to prove that it was a difference, in this model, I thought was interesting. But yeah, not brand new.

Todd Kuethe: Retirement auctions have the highest premium. And so, like basically, if you take light tractors, I’m trying to think about if I wrote it down.

Chad Fiechter: I don’t see it. Mm-hmm. But there’s a significant premium for a tractor sold in a retirement auction than in a dealer liquidation or a regular consignment sale.

Todd Kuethe: Okay, now I have to ask. Mm-hmm. The people who are coming to bid, they know that it’s a retirement auction?

Andy Campbell: Yeah, almost all re- auctions that go, you’ll know if it’s a retirement auction. A retirement, estate, dealer, typically liquidation, you’ll know that it’s one of those.

Chad Fiechter: Okay. So the thing that was interesting to me, so I, it, why it, it was, I was having a conversation with a family member and they were talking about a retirement sale, and they were talking about how you go to retirement sales to support that person who’s retiring.

and it’s like a community event where, you, whether you bid or don’t bid, you need to go to support them.

Todd Kuethe: So it’s almost like, as an analogy here, like the 4H livestock auctions. Yes. Where like no one sells pigs at that price the rest of the year, but we’re, like, supporting this kid and their dreams and the…

Was that surprising to you, Andy?

Andy Campbell: It wasn’t surprising ’cause I’ve seen it in the data in the past.

Chad Fiechter: Okay. Yeah,

Andy Campbell: sure. So I knew that it would be up there.

The one thing that I don’t know is if it is that, you know, the 4H, I paid twice as much for this heifer than I should type of thing.

or if it is truly because items that make it to retirement, and if a farmer makes it all the way to retirement, they’re probably a good operator.

And they know who it is, they know the machine ownership.

There’s value in that. Even when a dealer goes to resell a machine, if the dealer can attach the ownership of who the previous owner was, that tends to increase the sale value. So there’s an aspect of that going on, too, and I just don’t know to what degree- Yeah …

Chad Fiechter: my thought was, does it signal that that group of machinery is better, or is it some indication of how mu- how much value information is, right?

Andy Campbell: Yeah. A couple pieces within that though. I mean, you have estate sales as well. You have liquidation sales. So different situations why people essentially have left the game, and retirement is still, is still crushes estate and the liquidation. And another thing that I’ve done, I haven’t studied this in retirement, but retirement sales obviously have happened every year that we’ve had, you know, all these auction data points.

But there’s different pe- reasons why people retired in ’19 versus ’21, ’22. Like in ’19, they had gone through four or five years of just hard farming times. They’re like, “I’m out. I don’t see, you know, a future in this.” Whereas if people retired in ’22, ’23, they’re at the top of the game and they’re just like that…

And so if you looked at different points in the, the ag economy, you might be able to suss out, like, why do people retire? And did, you know, were the other bidders charitable? did they feel a need to be charitable if times are great versus in, you know, in ’19 you might’ve felt like you needed to be charitable because times are not great.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah. Well- Yeah, that’s an interesting

Andy Campbell: point.

Todd Kuethe: Can we pivot a little bit? Do you mind if I do a pivot?

Chad Fiechter: that’d be fine. I’ll allow it.

Todd Kuethe: We hear all the time at university, like, “Well, you guys should partner with, industry more. Industry’s now, like they’re so data-centric. They have all this great data,” like…

and like I continually meet people who are collecting data that either we wouldn’t be able to do or don’t know how to do it, or they’re doing it so efficiently, right? So like if we wanted to build a data set to look at this research question, it might take us a year to find a grad student, train them, get the data to work, right?

Like everything is so slow. So I’m curious, Andy, what your thoughts are from the industry perspective of being involved with research at the universities, and maybe shed a little light onto why isn’t it happening more or should it or should it not? Kind of curious.

Andy Campbell: Hmm. Yeah. it’s good question.

I, I’ve got a little bit different background ’cause I’ve been in academia and so I know how slow things can move, at times. but also when I came into this position at TractorZoom, you know, we were small fish, big pond, type of thing, and we knew that our strategy for marketing had to be different than just, throw up Google Ads and all the rest.

And so we came at it at a perspective that we wanted to be the better educator, that we wanted to share what we had and try to just educate the industry, learn constantly, ’cause we knew we didn’t know it all and we still don’t. But we always wanted to be the better educator and provide thought leadership as our leading edge.

and so this ended up fitting really well with that. So it kind of fit within our philosophy. It fit within my understanding of what I was familiar with, in the past. And we still had pretty big discussions here at TractorZoom. And I met with our CEO, our CFO and we talked about, data-sharing agreements and looked over the form, the NDA and all that.

And so it did go back and forth quite a bit, but I think maybe my perspective helped a little bit, give them some reassurance. but one of the things that I’ve come to realize, too, and I think this should be taken into consideration with other people in the industry, is that, you know, with AI and everything else now, that data is becoming a little bit more of a commodity.

recency of data is key, so you’re always wanting to make the most updated decisions, so it’s that influx of data that’s really important. And then it’s the usability of data. so I think there’s a lot of people that are sitting on a data lake just thinking it’s their moat, when in actuality it’s what do they do with that data and how do they educate and how do they provide value with that data.

that’s their true value proposition. and so as long as you can kind of protect your data, what becomes more important is what do you do with it and how do you educate people with it and how do you advance… from our perspective, how do you advance the industry. That’s becomes the real differentiator.

I know it’s definitely worked for us.

Todd Kuethe: and you sort of hint at something I think that’s really key which is like you are giving us something of value- where you’ve put real hours and man hours and in some cases years of expertise and whatever, right?

And then to like sort of just give that to somebody, that’s very trusting, right? It’s sort of like, like there are people who probably would loan us their cars before they would loan us their data, right? Yeah. So I think there’s, that’s part of it too, right? Is like how do you, in some ways you have to kind of build a relationship or get to know- Right

I think.

Chad Fiechter: my perception is that you were patient, and that may be partially because- you were in education, right? So, there might be some sympathy towards us in that place. But I do think this is a challenge we’re running into where the availability of data that we can use, especially because we probably can’t pay, for access to the data like, someone who is really gonna benefit from it

of the way they’re gonna, design their strategy on marketing their used equipment or something like that. and so I think that, us trying to figure out how do we do that and how could we possibly create situations that would be valuable for you to be the data provider and for us to be bringing something to is, is really, it’s an interesting problem.

Todd Kuethe: I think, part of that, too, is that, I don’t think academia, for better or worse, is probably everywhere you’re gonna wanna look for the answers to, questions you need by 5:00 today.

but maybe if there’s something that’s sort of like a toothache that’s been kinda gnawing at you and you kinda suspect something for a while,

Yeah, ’cause what we’re good at-

Chad Fiechter: Academics and dentists- are very well, like that’s- that’s a really nice thing.

Todd Kuethe: Well, what we’re good at is, doing something precisely-

that is difficult to get at, right? And that might take time, but, sometimes you just need to know, do I need to mail this thing to this other place or not?

And, that’s not necessarily where, what we do as research. I think a lot of times industry, their research is like, I need to solve this problem, today.”

Right.

Chad Fiechter: But that’s kinda if… Andy, is part of your role there that education piece?

is it to be providing sort of those insights, quicker than we could, right, quicker than we could do?

Andy Campbell: Yeah. that is. I mean, that’s, part of the reason why I have the title the director of insights. Honestly, ’cause they couldn’t find a hole to put me in, type of thing.

So this is what they- Dentist … they call it. You’re right. Yeah. but yeah, that is part of my role is to, you know, half of it’s to bring information in and to understand things better, and then half of it is to share it out. And I think we’re lucky here that we kind of have a perspective that things are changing so fast that we don’t know everything, and so we have a kind of innate curiosity to want to learn more.

but we also have a challenge that most companies have with a restriction on time. We just don’t have all the resources, and time being the biggest one. And so I think that’s where it really worked well for us, to work with you, is we knew that to be very thorough in this fashion, it would take a lot of, time and resources that we didn’t necessarily have, and not even the expertise to go into the depth that you all did.

And so by partnering It helped a couple things. Yeah, we didn’t necessarily need the answer by 5:00 today, and we had a curiosity about it, and we needed some objectivity and scientific rigor that went along with this. And so from that standpoint, it worked out really well. And maybe it’s because you guys kind of approached us on this, that we didn’t need the answer right away.

And so I could be patient because it was a wait and bait, type situation where it just, I could set it to the side and I could continue to work on my deal. and it worked out. I mean, did have to inherently have the patience, but,

Chad Fiechter: Yeah …

Andy Campbell: worked out.

Chad Fiechter: Well, I think that’s the thing, that I’m struck by coming into academics later in life, is that what we have is we do have the time to go slow, when that was not something that I ever had whenever I was operating a business, right?

It was, it was, “I need to answer this question now,” or, “This is the most pressing concern,” where we do have that time. And so trying to figure out where are those opportunities, right? Maybe toothache sort of things where we can provide sort of that, we can slow it down, we can be real precise- Mm … but it can still be valuable.

I think that’s a unique thing to be shooting for.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah, it’s a little tricky too, right? ‘Cause I think the other thing from, my perspective the reason I like to interact with, industry or folks, out of the field, is that I don’t always necessarily know what those questions are.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Right? So sometimes you have to say- Mm-hmm … like, “Hey, what are you stuck on that you can’t quite solve or you can’t quite figure out?” Because if it’s just whatever you bring up first, that’s one you can probably already get a good enough handle on, right? and I think that’s the other sort of where collaboration across universities with, with industry.

that helps too, a lot of, like, “Well, here’s what I’m stuck on,” right?

Chad Fiechter: Another question I have is, so thinking about people who would come into TractorZoom and thinking about these skills that are about being precise or doing a data analysis, with the of AI and the ability to sort of like you can be a couple people now, like how do you think about that as the future workforce development for people like you in these places?

Andy Campbell: Oh, just had conversations with our, data scientist this morning, about that exactly. Of, you know, we have trade evaluations that come in through our system, for dealers, and we’re talking thousands collectively across all of our dealers per day. and they’re so inundated with all this information that it just takes them so long to get to a particular answer, and it’s worth the time and the rigor for them to get to an answer on a half a million dollar combine.

because if they’re off by a little bit, that ends up being quite a bit. but if they’re off by a little bit on a mower, you know, a lawn and turf type of piece of machinery, it’s not worth their time to go through. And so we were talking about this continuum of accuracy, that’s needed, within the data, and so there’s definitely a trade-off on accuracy versus time.

And at some point, and it’s getting to be, you know, the emphasis is more important for time right now on many things, that they want time back for a lot of these pieces, not necessarily accuracy. Because manpower is really short, time is money, And people, consumers, expect an answer faster.

We’re just trained to be able to buy things on the spot. And so what we’re seeing in the industry is not that accuracy’s not important, it’s just we wanna be faster and also accurate, on things. If that makes sense.

Chad Fiechter: Sure. you can kinda do the nitty-gritty at scale.

Andy Campbell: You can do a little clean up.

Right. If we can do the nitty-gritty at scale, and the biggest thing is providing confidence. If whatever value- you provide to me, can you provide confidence to me that how you got to this answer? And, you know, that assurance of, “I trust your data already, but how did you use your data to provide this answer to me?”

That is what we’re seeing. Kind of the biggest question in the market is the confidence in the process of getting to the answer that people are really after right now.

Chad Fiechter: I’m curious your perspective on, you’re watching data all the time. Mm-hmm. like, what is your perspective on where we’re at as a farm economy right now?

Not necessarily sort of like the big- Mm-hmm … ag economy, but the farm economy. And pr- I’m assuming most of what you would say would be reflective of, like, the row crop economy.

Andy Campbell: Mm-hmm. So United States row crop economy, I think there’s more headwinds than tailwinds. And the, you know, when I watch the data, there’s a lot of noise, that gets in there that you can pay attention to the things day to day, even week to week.

I think the larger headwinds of larger global competition, more challenging international trade deals in the markets that are seemingly less and less there. I do think that there is a lot of challenges ahead of us in terms of a US row crop economy, that still need to be figured out, and largely on the demand side.

I don’t know how much longer we can kind of out-bushel, some of the challenges that are in front of us, and I start to see some things, within the equipment world, of can we provide the same kind of value in a smaller, piece of equipment and maybe even an older piece of equipment that is more efficient, with the use of its time?

But I think, to really be competitive long term, you know, I think we have to definitely figure out demand, you know, biofuels, wherever that might come from, new trade agreements. But, and I think on the cost side of things, it’s been… it’s looking differently at our cost structure, not just continuing to do the same things that we’ve always done.

Chad Fiechter: do you think there’s ever, I was having a conversation last week about, horsepower.

And, we, in the paper we talk about differences in brands, and there is clearly premiums, related to different brands and it’d probably be best if we didn’t say them in a public podcast.

Todd Kuethe: That’s for sale. No,

Chad Fiechter: I’m just kidding. That’s, yeah, that’s for sale. give us a call if you wanna sponsor the answer to that. the question I have is will we ever get to the point, you said getting sort of more efficient, right? Mm-hmm. Where, that horsepower and the ability to deliver work will become kind of a commodity agnostic of the brand, or is that brand premium sort of always going to exist as you, as you think about the machinery industry?

Andy Campbell: I think it’s gonna become less, and I’ve got a couple reasons why I think it will become less. for one, when I’ve studied different brands, what happens is the paint fades, is what I call it. Eventually you get this depreciation down to where things depreciate at high hours at about the same rate.

So the piece of equipment, whether it’s red, green, yellow, or purple, it depreciates about at the same rate per hour. and the other thing, though, that I learned this past week, I was at a large dealer executive conference, is the growing prevalence of, they’re not called portals, but they’re essentially, adapters that can plug one computer system, so call it, like a John Deere operation center, into a red tractor.

And so you have these converters that allow people to brand switch a little bit easier between brands of machinery. Right. And so as I think as machinery gets more expensive, that brand switching will become a little bit easier with tech.

Todd Kuethe: Well, and that’s not, just found in the ag sector, right?

The idea that, a technology company is like, “We’re gonna make it seamless to just use nothing but our technology for everything,” right? And then takes a little while, and then someone says I got a solution. You can plug this thing into this other thing over here.” And then they’re like, “Okay, cool.

That works for a while till we get the new one. Now we’re gonna make it-” where you can’t do that. it’s like there’s like this race, right, between, adaptability and, Can I ask another question? I have a- Yeah … I have one sort of-

Chad Fiechter: Allowed.

Todd Kuethe: We’ve talked a lot about, research.

but the other thing that we do as professors, we teach. And you’ve mentioned a couple times about sort of like the need to find talent or people to work in your space. So if we told you we can give you, like, I don’t know, however many students you want next, two years from now or a year from now.

Yep. and you say, “Well, I will hire them all for you if they can do these things.” What is it that, what are those things you want us to give them or help them with for you to be interested? Or, and you meaning sort of like you- Mm-hmm … and your colleagues, right?

Andy Campbell: Right. No, it, you know, very technically right now, if you have a Salesforce developer, I will take them.

Okay … specifically to a platform that we’re running on, that for us is a premium. But also beyond that, you know, the technical aptitude of understanding data and being able to manage projects, which kind of agnostic, to any type of system, even to any industry, is really important. We have some people in here that, our data scientist came from the Air Force and the grocery sector, but has learned, within this process.

And, so I think as long as you have the attitude over aptitude, primarily, but then the ability to, understand data, data governance, and, the importance of how data can be used to make informed decisions. So through the scientific research process.

Yeah. Which again, gets back to fairly basic. If they have an understanding of the industry on the ag side or even the construction side, that’s an immediate bonus because then all of a sudden they on-ramp a little bit faster. Or if they have a deep understanding on a software platform that we run.

So whether it’s coding on Python, SQL, or like I said, Salesforce, obviously that’s a huge plus, and then they can learn the ag side. So having an industry depth of knowledge is helpful, but by far and large, the people that have done the best here and that, are still sticking around, that are making big, differences, are just innately curious, on what they do and, humble in the way that they wanna learn, like just going in and soaking it up.

Todd Kuethe: So we had a-

similar conversation with, another person that works in the tech startup, space about a year ago, and the thing that I’m always curious to ask about, which is like, which percentage of the people you work with and have interacted with are sort of like farm people that like get into data- Mm-hmm

versus like sort of data people that are like, “Well, I’ll work in farm,” if that makes sense, right?

Andy Campbell: Mm-hmm. Where do you start from?

Todd Kuethe: is it a pretty even split or what, what, is there one they see more than the other?

Andy Campbell: No. Way more on the… And I’m sitting right in the middle of Iowa.

Yeah. so you’d think you’d be pretty heavy on the farm side, and, there’s myself and two others here that are farm and data aware, some more heavy in one than the other, and pretty much everybody else is either- not involved in either, or just heavy on the data computer side, and then, I’m teaching them how to farm.

Todd Kuethe: Okay. Yeah, we met some guys that worked for a robot company.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: That they were like, “No, we’re just really into data,” and like there’s ag robots. It’s like we’re interested… We’ll robot anything, right? Yeah. it’s always interesting to me.

Andy Campbell: You can move faster if you understand both.

That’s the one thing I will say, ’cause then you don’t have to always ask somebody some of the simple questions. You just know what the next logical step is ’cause you know the job to be done. and that’s a lot of what I do here, is just kind of explain to people how the row crop industry works, how farmers are gonna buy, or how dealers would sell to farmers and what’s going on.

But if you innately know that, then sometimes you can skip some of those questions and those steps and just develop and move a little faster.

Todd Kuethe: Okay. So then you mentioned Iowa a couple times, which- Mm-hmm … also brings up another question. It’s where

Chad Fiechter: Caitlin Clark’s from.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. Yeah. She’s a legend. Yeah. That’s like, this is gonna be like,

this is gonna, we’re gonna replay this back someday that you didn’t know who Caitlin Clark was.

Chad Fiechter: Okay.

Todd Kuethe: Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is… You’re gonna look like the-

Chad Fiechter: Hang on.

Todd Kuethe: You’re gonna look like the- I’m being misconstrued … you’re gonna look like the people who didn’t know what the internet was.

Chad Fiechter: Hang on. I know who Caitlin Clark is ’cause she plays in Indiana now. I also know that she played at Iowa. I did not know that she was originally from Iowa. Okay. that’s the dimension- that I was made aware of today.

Okay. Good call. Now, granted- That, that’s- … am I, am I still under a rock? Yes, I’ll admit it.

Todd Kuethe: Okay. Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: Okay. But, but I didn’t do the egregious thing that you’re painting me as doing.

Todd Kuethe: Okay. You’re right. Okay. You didn’t know who she was. Yeah. Yes. Okay.

Chad Fiechter: Go ahead.

Todd Kuethe: Iowa, and we are in Indiana. Mm. So the other thing that I think, like particularly working in the ag space, there’s usually this sorta like Purdue works with people in Indiana, and if you’re in Iowa, you go to Iowa State or work with Iowa State or hire people from Iowa State.

And like even, like we are, we’re 90 miles from Champaign, Illinois.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Right? Like, like there’s, they’re not, they’re not worlds apart. But, do you think that… W- where do you see that now and where do you see that kind of in the future?

Andy Campbell: About the kind of the separation- For- … the geographic regional separation.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. A- and, and as we think about sort of like businesses and universities and hiring and-

Andy Campbell: Mm …

Todd Kuethe: like what, what do you th- what, what are your thoughts there?

Andy Campbell: Yeah. I see that, I don’t wanna say degrading or like eroding, but, I see that changing a lot faster as we go forward here.

maybe different for the undergrad side of things, just because you have in-state tuition and, and everything. But one thing that really makes me think about this is I had a conversation with a CEO at a very large Canadian dealer, this past week, and he just made the quick mention that, “Hey, you really have to understand how Canadian agriculture works to sell up here in Canada.”

And he gave me a great education overview of how the canola market is working, and the lentils and the pulses and how their trade partnership works. And it’s just fascinating. and he’s already enlightening me on all this. And it just made me realize it, because equipment, it does have challenges crossing the border, but data doesn’t.

Yeah … and the world is shrinking, I think, so fast in the terms of how we’re using this mass amount of data to make the types of decisions, that if, you know, we’re gonna kinda succeed as a overall farm economy, that your regionality matters for some things, soil and, and all that, but, I think we have to expand out beyond just our small microcosm because Honestly, row crops are a commodity, and so you have to, I think, leverage, these other partnerships, you know, further out in order to collectively advance forward.

Todd Kuethe: Well, I also think there is something, especially talking about the undergrads, like, there’s a lot of great, like, non-farm jobs in the ag sector, right? But you generally have to move to wherever those are.

And they’re probably not in your home county, right? So, like, and most people- that live in a rural area and like it, like their rural area, but it doesn’t necessarily mean I wanna go to…

If I like my small county in Indiana, doesn’t necessarily mean I wanna do something similar in Oklahoma, right? Mm-hmm. Or, but, like, but for a lot of jobs now, too, in the ag space, like it’s not necessarily in a really rural area. They, like, there, there’s not a lot of difference to me, I’ll start a fight here between the two of you, I don’t see a lot of difference between, like, Fort Wayne and Des Moines.

But- But yeah, but like you talk to people- … in either space and they’re like, “Oh, wait a second.”

Chad Fiechter: Yeah. It’s okay. I’ll let you have that opinion.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. I mean, I guess one of them has Johnny Appleseed,

Chad Fiechter: right? I, okay.

Andy Campbell: I’ll, I’ll give you that.

Chad Fiechter: Okay, so I think this is something that I, I think you’re alluding to something that is Really interesting.

You just said it too, Andy. Like this idea that the awareness of the global or at least non-regional economic factors pressing down, right? It was, I think it was easier as a kid to perceive that I was sort of on an island, versus now it feels like no, no, no, we- we’re aware.

Like the- Yeah … choices that are happening globally are affecting us, and that is clearly affecting the ag economy. I think that’s a really cool thing. But that’s come over time. What I wanna know, Andy, is you’ve been doing this job now for a long time. what’s something that’s kinda blown your mind that you didn’t expect when you were coming in?

Or what’s some of the recent ideas that you’ve had, just sort of as you’re interacting with people around, like the Canadian thing is sweet.

Andy Campbell: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think the dealerships that I interact with, it could be small, like super rural North Dakota or wherever else, and you start to talk to them five or six years ago, and you had to be careful on how you mentioned the word data and technology, because it was very much a, “Hey, are you gonna take my job?”

Like, “I know how to do this better than you,” and, and I, you know. Almost, just a pure reluctance, on that. And now you have the same conversation, sometimes with the same people, but definitely the same dealership and the same regionality, and, now they lead off the conversation with, “Hey, I just built this agent, that is now looking at these, you know, these data sources, and I’m extracting this from here.

How do I get your data in? Can I do it through a, you know, a file drop or an API?” And this, you know, same just pre-pandemic we’re having these conversations with people, they’re like, “Don’t touch my data. Don’t do any kind of file sharing. I, I…” And it has completely changed in a relatively short period of time.

We run an innovation council with our dealers all across the United States, and the, almost the impatience of them, and I’m glad. It’s because they’re impatient. They’re like, “How come this isn’t built yet? Can we do this?” Mm. Like, “Could I theoretically take these ideas?”

it has blown my mind on how data-forward they have become, and I don’t know what has shifted. But it’s fascinated and it’s challenging, too, because, like I said, we can’t hire fast enough to do all the work that we wanna do in front of us. So that’s probably been one of the coolest things. But then getting, Todd, even to your point earlier, where you’re like, you know, can you do all these things in small town areas or do you have to move into these semi more metro areas?

Yeah. And again, I would’ve said five years ago, yeah, you had to move into more metro areas. But now, like I said, I’ve got dealerships that are in small-ish communities, you know, 5,000 people, but the people that work there live out in the country on their own farm, and, they’re working with us on AI technologies.

and they’re, they’re vibe coding. So, you know, there’s not a lot of those jobs out there, but there are some. so it’s, a lot’s changed.

Todd Kuethe: It’s funny, ’cause I was thinking, like, when we were kids, like the standard bad guy scene in a movie is, like, there’d be a barn somewhere, and they’d open it up, and it’d be, like, full of computers.

Yeah. And now that’s standard. Yeah, exactly. Yep. it’s not like a- Yeah … they’re not spies. they’re just farmer dudes.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah,

Todd Kuethe: yeah. Mm-hmm. I love it Oh, yeah.

Andy Campbell: Yeah, if I could show you guys the servers behind this wall right here. Oh. There’s literally, it’s just packed with servers.

Todd Kuethe: Man, that’s awesome. Okay. So, we should be respectful of Andy’s time.

Chad Fiechter: Yes.

Todd Kuethe: do we need to pivot to how we wrap this up with the lightning round? We do. Or do you have-

Chad Fiechter: no, no, no. I just wanna give Andy… Andy also has a podcast-

Todd Kuethe: Oh …

Chad Fiechter: that like I wanna make sure- Yeah, Andy- … that we make people aware

we have seven people- that listen to our podcast. So for the seven people- … where could they find your podcast? What’s it called?

Todd Kuethe: Hopefully they’re not all riding in the same car- ’cause viewership will plummet.

Andy Campbell: Yes. Well, they could actually make it plummet a little bit more and then turn on our podcast.

So we’ve been running Beyond the Hood podcast now for almost two and a half years. and the whole idea came about when I talked earlier about providing thought leadership and the better educator wins, is we wanted to give our main audience, our farm equipment dealers across country, a chance to look out beyond the hood.

Stop looking just under the hood, but how do you focus on your business and look beyond the hood? And so yeah, we’ll bring in people that I, have a chance to meet and think that are interesting and have some perspective to share that allows dealers, usually when they have windshield time driving between farms, to think like, how can I see this industry differently?

So it’s been fun.

Todd Kuethe: I wonder how many downloads they get because somebody accidentally thinks they’re downloading an urban- Oh … planning podcast.

Andy Campbell: Yeah. And so not- Sure … something that we thought of ahead of time, but- I love it … we’ll take a few of those, you know, random downloads.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. You never know. Man, they’ll be like, “You know what? I was gonna listen to this thing I thought was gonna be about like, community centers- Yeah … in poor neighborhoods, but now I’m really into tractors.”

Should we do the lightning round? Yeah. We need to do the

Chad Fiechter: lightning round.

Todd Kuethe: Okay. Yeah. Andy, we like to end, our listener, we recognize, has been bored for some of this. when we were talking, not when you were talking. Oh,

Andy Campbell: of course. Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: And we’re trying to bring them back with a little, little punch at the end.

So we ask a lightning round. So the idea is that you have to answer these like quickly, short answer.

Okay. So the first one, which is, if right now TractorZoom could take something that you have and now double it, one thing, what are you gonna double?

Andy Campbell: our data and engineering staff

Chad Fiechter: I think you should do the time machine.

Todd Kuethe: Okay. So you can do it. Do you wanna do the time machine? I always ask these. You should ask it.

Chad Fiechter: Okay. But I’m always more interested in their personal use of the time machine than the business. So

Todd Kuethe: we’ll start- I have to specify that it’s a business issue time machine, ’cause otherwise I don’t want people recre- like, doing recreational time machine.

Chad Fiechter: Okay.

Todd Kuethe: We gotta take it seriously.

Chad Fiechter: All right, so it’s a business time machine. You can go to any time, future, past, But it’s for business purposes.

Todd Kuethe: When are you going?

Andy Campbell: Definitely gonna go to the future.

And I think I’m gonna skip ahead 20 years

Chad Fiechter: 20 years

Andy Campbell: I, I think 20 years into the future, it’s not gonna be within the next 10.

Tooling takes too long, but within 20 years, I think our, farm equipment will look significantly different, way smaller. I think you’re gonna see swarms of farm equipment all over the place in the United States.

Chad Fiechter: Oh. I like that. I

Todd Kuethe: like it.

Chad Fiechter: You’re also the first person who’s went into the future.

Yeah,

Todd Kuethe: everybody else is going into

Chad Fiechter: the

Todd Kuethe: past.

Andy Campbell: I got data. I know what happened in the past.

Todd Kuethe: Oh, that’s an interesting concept. you time travel already, right? I wanna violate a little bit of the sanctity of the lightning round to just ask a follow-up.

just give us- a little picture of what you’re stepping off this time machine- there in Iowa. Like, what do you, what are you seeing? If you’re right,

Andy Campbell: if I’m right. 20 years into the future, so getting, yeah, essentially close to the turn of the century, I think we’re seeing a tipping of the world population.

Yields are way higher though, and so essentially all the farm fields are a little bit smaller, concentrated. I don’t think we have acres on the fringes as much anymore. And I think you look out into the field and you see something about the size of a Geo Metro, going along and…

But they’ll connect to each other. And so you might have, across a large farm, six of these all connected together, pulling modular, you know, a little bit of planter-type of systems, sprayers- Hmm … certainly see-and-spray type of systems. But then in the next field over it, which is a smaller farmer, you don’t have a smaller machine, you just have two of those machines.

And so from an equipment flow standpoint, you don’t have to go from an X9 combine and try to figure out how a small farmer wants to buy a used X9, you just find a smaller farmer that wants to buy two swarms of what you have. And so I think that flows so much better. And then the technology will be better.

The AI, I mean, nobody’s gonna be sitting in that thing. there’ll just be a common operator. I mean, I could be farming it from two hours away with little… Probably won’t even have a touchpad by that point in time. It’ll be embedded.

Todd Kuethe: I kinda like that. I’m just, I’m, like, I’m s- I, like, I just wanna live in this space for a little bit ’cause I’m like, what are we doing with all the unused land?

I’m walking around. in my mind- Mm-hmm … I’m, like, going for a walk.

Andy Campbell: Shared common space, that

Todd Kuethe: would be- Probably, it’s definitely not my current dog. The question is do I have a new dog in the future?

Chad Fiechter: Probably in-

Todd Kuethe: I don’t know. I could go either way …

Chad Fiechter: it’s definitely not your current dog.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah, definitely not my current dog. No. Sadly. It doesn’t work like that. Sadly.

Chad Fiechter: Biology.

Todd Kuethe: S- oh, I don’t know, though. Technology, you never- It’s true. I, I don’t know. Okay. Mm. Man,

Chad Fiechter: That was really good.

Todd Kuethe: Okay, so the last time that you had trouble sleeping ’cause you were thinking about something related to work, what were you thinking about?

Andy Campbell: It would’ve been, like, four, four nights ago. I was in Chicago presenting at this, ag executive summit, and I had, put together this presentation a couple weeks in advance. They needed the slides early. And we go out for drinks the night before, I meet everybody that I’m gonna present to, and I have been writing analyses, for these papers, and I was essentially gonna rehash that and share that information with them.

And everybody at this executive summit came up and was, kinda clapped me on the back, saying, “Hey, I read that piece that you did in, this publication.” Everybody had read it. And I’m like, “Well, crap. what I’m gonna present to you tomorrow is not new.” And, so I went back, and they also were saying, like, “What’s it gonna be like in six months?

You know, 12 months? What’s it gonna be like next year?” Which I did not prepare. So I stayed up till the next day- essentially crunching new numbers, and, had to weave that into the preexisting presentation. So that, is very fresh in my mem- memory.

Todd Kuethe: So we’ll have to, play this for our students, that’ll be like, “This is when it’s good that you, like, stay up late working last minute.”

Yeah, right. You’re Right? Mm-hmm Like, there’s the good situation. It’s not where you’ve intentionally- Yeah … fallen into this.

Andy Campbell: Right. It’s not true procrastination. Although, I will tell you that probably my undergrad years have prepared me well- Yeah, exactly … for, Yeah, yeah Exactly.

Chad Fiechter: Right. Yeah … for that situation.

Me too. Me too. But man, I sympathize with you because I’ve had that too, where you submit your slides early, and then all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh, no.”

Andy Campbell: Mm-hmm. ”

Chad Fiechter: They know all this stuff already.”

Todd Kuethe: I had one, my first, academic conference I went to out of graduate school, right? So now I’m like, “I’m fully an economist.

I belong here.” And I spent, like, three-quarters of the time just talking about my dataset, and then I realized later that day that, like, everyone in that room had been working with that dataset for years. I had just learned about it. So, like, they knew, they have forgotten more than I already knew at that point.

Mm-hmm. Chad, you got one more to bring us home?

Chad Fiechter: I want, I wanna ask a quick question. Are we farming the same crops with swarms, or are we farming different things?

Andy Campbell: That is a great question. In 20 years?

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Andy Campbell: I think we’re farming some of the same, mostly different.

Yeah, I don’t see… If you just look at, like, the past 10 years on how much more competitive Brazil has gotten towards us, and I know even here recently they’ve had some hardships and they’re not, you know, impervious to some of these global macro factors. but I don’t see how we can continue to compete on the global scale on wheat, and even soybeans and corn.

They’re commodities. It’s named that for a reason. And so I think we have to differentiate. And, you know, with genetics and AI, there’s some regulation stuff, but I see a lot more opportunity for specialty crops if the labor is automated.

especially the weed control, if that can be, organic and fit some certain needs, and harvested more frequently. so I think half of it might still be commodities, but I really think you’re gonna see a lot more specialty, high value, closer to the consumer type of crops.

Todd Kuethe: 20 years is not that long away, and we’re gonna be retiring then.

I feel like right now we should start the Indiana Banana Company- Ooh … where we’re gonna grow bananas in Indiana in the future.

Chad Fiechter: can I tell you something that happened this weekend? I had a buddy that taught me that you open a banana by breaking it in half. Have you ever done this?

Andy Campbell: I’ve tried it.

It just, It turns to mush. I can’t do it well.

Todd Kuethe: I open it from the non-stem end. I’ve always, my whole life, opened the stem end.

And then I watched a video that was like, no, monkeys open them like at the- by pinching this other end, and that’s how I do it now.

Chad Fiechter: Okay.

So is breaking a banana in half a feat of strength? Was I just with someone who was really good at it?

Todd Kuethe: Did you break a banana?

Chad Fiechter: No, I didn’t, I didn’t want a

Todd Kuethe: banana. I break apples in half. If you had an apple right here, I’d

Andy Campbell: show

Chad Fiechter: you. You break an apple in half? Now

Andy Campbell: it’s getting impressive.

Todd Kuethe: Like that, yeah. Like, that’s like when I go hiking, I like to just split that apple, eat it all, seeds and everything.

But banana, I’m… Well, it must’ve been a real green banana.

Chad Fiechter: I don’t remember. ‘

Todd Kuethe: Cause like if it’s got a bit of brown in that, you’re just making banana bread in your hands.

Chad Fiechter: It looked awesome though. Special.

Todd Kuethe: Okay.

Andy Campbell: I’m gonna try it.

Chad Fiechter: Indiana Banana Company.

Here we go. So. Andy, thanks so much for taking some time to chat with us.

Todd Kuethe: And if you want, we’re gonna just… I’ll have to verify with Chad, but we’ll give you 10% of Indiana Banana Company- just for being here today, if you’ll take 10%.

Andy Campbell: 100%.

Todd Kuethe: 10%.

Andy Campbell: Oh, 10%. Yeah. I suppose. 10%. Yes, definitely.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah.

Andy Campbell: I’ll take it.

Todd Kuethe: All right. Thank you so much.

Andy Campbell: Thanks for having me. This has been fun.

Chad Fiechter: All right. See ya, Andy.

All right, we hope you liked that conversation with Andy Campbell.

He was gracious enough to spend a little extra time with us. We actually went beyond the time that we had allotted for the conversation. but again, wanna remind people, if you have data and wanna do cool stuff with us, send us an email. Let’s have a conversation about it.

Todd Kuethe: I, I love it. I got nothing to add other than please like and subscribe,

I don’t know the terms. I’m a little bit behind the times. But subscribe, listen, download, tell your friends.

Chad Fiechter: Is there potentially another term?

Todd Kuethe: I don’t know. Do people still like? I don’t know if they like.

Chad Fiechter: Oh.

Todd Kuethe: I don’t know.

Chad Fiechter: Subscribe and download.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah, just, just come back.

Come back in a month. We’ll keep learning about the ag economy together. How about that?