Russ: Man, so you’ve been at it since the beginning. So, my question to you would be how many years and how many acres did we beta test RightSpot on? I imagine it had to been a lot.

Evan: Yeah, so we started RightSpot field testing in the spring/summer. It was actually like a late spring, June of 2021. So probably rough acres, I would guess 160,000, 180,000, between 14 machines across the United States, and then one even in Australia.

Russ: Cool. Excellent, excellent.

So, you know, I wanna spend the majority of our time today talking about the different problems that RightSpot can solve for folks, but before we do that, let’s kind of clarify some of the problems that guys might encounter.

Evan, would you start us off with that? When you are looking at a typical sprayer, say one that you’ve run yourself, that’s running a normal application system, what are some challenges that, when we started looking at developing RightSpot we’re like, we need to address these challenges?

Evan: The main thing with RightSpot in comparing to a traditional sprayer, for me is like the speed and pressure. When you think of an old traditional sprayer, you’re always going to select your sprayer’s tips and you tell the counter guy, “Hey, I want this gallons per acre at this pressure,” and they give you a tip. RightSpot eliminates the need for that with the nozzle pulsating technology, so allows a wider speed range. Then just making Ag Leader simple is another main problem that we’re trying to solve.

Russ: I do hear that quite a bit. I mean, again, I’ve probably said this five or six times just in the podcast. It’s hard to put an exact number on the value of this, but I think it’s really valuable that a lot of the folks that test, program, and work here actually farm or use it on farms. The age old joke is somebody pops the hood of their car, looks at it and really wishes the engineer would be here to explain why this was put here and this was put here. Whereas, you know, a lot of our engineering and guys that work in the development team actually use the products. It’s a pretty good feeling. So I guess Logan, same question to you. When you think about the problems that RightSpot addresses, what are some ones that you think about?

Logan: Yeah, reiterating what Evan said, that’s a huge one. Just, without a system like RightSpot, you’re essentially out of control of your droplet size of the pressure of your boom, because it’s so dependent on the speed that you drive through the field.

Russ: Mm-hmm.

Logan: You try to maintain that speed to give you the desired pressure and coverage and droplet size that you’re trying to spray, so that chemical or that product is effective when it hits the plant or the target. But that’s really hard to do even in square fields. Even in flat fields, there’s places in those fields that you have to drive around that you gotta slow down. You gotta take a little extra time. It’s a little more technical.

And so when you’re out of control of that, anytime you have to speed up outside of the capacity of that nozzle, you’re getting finer droplets and potentially drift. Or potentially that chemical is not hitting the target because it takes a long time to get to the target. They’re fine droplets, they evaporate or they blow off where it should hit, so you’re missing out on coverage there. The other thing though that I’ll mention too is the turn compensation system. The turn compensation ability of that is a big one. We know that every field’s not square and every field has different obstacles around it that you gotta drive around — power lines or sometimes there’s a culvert or terraces or whatever.

There’s things in your field you have to drive around. Well, anytime that sprayer turns through that field to avoid those obstacles, you’re not getting the same and consistent coverage and rate across that whole boom width when you turn. So RightSpot helps address that and fix that problem by giving you the right rate across your entire boom, no matter how you’re driving through the field and swerving around, curving around. Driving like a Maverick. Yeah, that’s a huge one.

The nozzle by nozzle autoswath, too, has major benefits as well when it comes to cost savings and application savings.

Russ: Excellent. Excellent. Evan, do you have any? You act like you have something to say.

Evan: Yeah, I had another thought. So over the winter here, I’ve been looking at a lot of my sprayer maps trying to get prepared for this, as well as in general, outta curiosity.

One thing that, Mr. Sam Wilson mentioned was the percent of on-rate. So, like in previous, our liquid offerings with direct liquid, you know, you had the minimum flow setting. And the user would always set that, the minimum pressure that it takes to open your drip checks, right? Because you always wanna spray it.

Russ: Yep.

Evan: And it was amazing to me — cause I farm South Central Iowa where nothing’s flat and nothing’s square — t he amount of times I was hitting my minimum flow and over-applying in those areas. And now they overlay the two maps next to each other, the amount of times I was actually achieving the correct rate in that field is incredible.

And it’s night and day difference just lining that up to actually gallons to gallons used in the same field.

Russ: Yeah, I can remember doing some of the very first introductory presentations we did on RightSpot and showing, with previous generations of application, we knew what they were applying, we knew the tip that they had. So we knew generally what rate, and based on that rate, what speed they should be going. And 30 or 40% of the time they were either above or below that speed. So they weren’t necessarily applying the right droplet size. So it’s a big deal.

On top of that, as I’ve been talking about this at different conferences and trade shows… the nozzle by nozzle, but specifically the ability not to have to outline waterways — how much time guys spend outlining waterways in their sprayer — and just being able to drive right through, has just been a pretty darn big deal. So there’s all sorts of things. And specifically related to rising input costs. Logan, you had kind of hit on that.

If you were talking to somebody whose main concern was rising input costs, how would you position RightSpot? And tell him, hey this is really a thing that’s gonna help you?

Logan: Yeah. How would I position it? I would say it’s something that you can do immediately.

You can put this on the sprayer you own today on your farm, and it’ll immediately provide an impact. It’ll immediately save you chemical. Now we’re looking at anywhere from 4 to 8%.

Evan: I was five. I did the math before we did this , I was right at 5%.

Logan: Okay, so the numbers are jiving. And, those numbers increase if you have more oblong, crazy shaped fields with a lot of different things that are breaking ’em up. So the numbers become fairly significant.

And even when you think about 5%… I’m working with a farmer that his overall herbicide chemical bill, everything that went out his sprayer last year that they had to buy was over $200,000 of what they applied last year to grow corn and soybeans. So, you know, there’s a different number of passes and stuff to account for each crop. But overall, that was his bill. And if you can say that again with RightSpot, you could save 5% of that, maybe up to 8% of that. Let’s say you spend more on your chemical program than that every year, the numbers really start to add up to become very significant.

You know, the last couple years we’ve seen fertilizer and herbicide costs go, they’ve just gone crazy. Even relative to seed costs. We’re used to seeing seed increase every year, but the relative increase of those inputs compared to seed has been just astounding. So, people are feeling that, and anything they can do to help reduce the cost of those things is just gonna help put them in a better position to be profitable year after year.

Russ: And you know, we’ve kind of had a little bit of this for a while. But Evan, as far as it relates to record keeping and stuff like that, you know, that’s obviously not going to become any less of a thing. And the more that we can make it easier for growers to be able to collect that data specifically talking about the application report and some of the other things that we’re recording dealing with RightSpot, how is that gonna help a grower with record keeping?

Evan: So with RightSpot, man, you’re always gonna be consistent pressure and you have that large speed.

Russ: Mm-hmm.

Evan: So now, with the SmartReport, you can accurately put your actual boom pressure and capture all that and be able to share that if you ever get audited. I’ve had cooperators of mine, or beta field testers, that have gotten audited. Was it the EPA or NRC? I don’t even know who audits those people, but the auditors…

Logan: The auditors. Show up in black cars. And they wear suits.

Evan: But anyways, he presented his whole three years of SmartReports and she was absolutely astounded about the amount of information and the quality that was actually there. So what the InCommand is actually producing, and with RightSpot being able to deliver a consistent boom pressure, I think that would be sufficient for anything.

Russ: Yeah, it’s amazing. You know, I’ve had the pleasure to work at Ag Leader for a little over 25 years now, before we even had any type of application product. And, you know, talking about even just doing some site verification stuff on a YM 2000, to doing our application rate in the PF series all the way up to now, nozzle by nozzle.

It’s just an amazing thing to be able to say, “Hey, you know, Ag Leader really does know application”. And it’s a fact. We really do.

So Logan, when somebody’s looking at investing in RightSpot, I know it’s gonna vary from sprayer to sprayer — the nozzles vary, the spacing, the boom, obviously the sprayer itself will affect pricing — but, what kind of investment is somebody looking at generally, you know, for a typical sprayer?

Logan: I would say it depends on if you need a display. And if you’re starting from scratch, there’s a lot of that that could go into it. But I’d say a good range to be thinking about is probably fourty to fifty-thousand dollars.

Russ: Okay. But again, you already talked about the percentage savings. So the ROI is there, it’s real. Not to mention, like I said, breaking that block between pressure and speed and droplet size is a big deal.

Logan: ROI is the big thing right now because man, that’s real money.

Russ: Mm-hmm.

Logan: And return on investment for any technology purchase is a really important weight on that decision. If you think about it holistically, ROI, while it’s a really important thing and really valuable, the other stuff too that comes with it is gonna greatly improve just your overall experience out in the field when you’re spraying.

I think of like coverage, and just what that does. If you think about some of the weeds we’re fighting today and some of the challenges that we’re running up against…

Evan: The chemicals we gotta spray…

Logan: The chemicals we gotta spray, the resistance of weeds, and we know nature… What is it? The Jurassic Park saying,” Nature finds a way.” You know, that like, that’s what our weeds and our bugs are doing. You know, the more exposure they get to chemicals, the more likely it is that they will become resistant or be able to overcome the ways those chemicals are affecting them or controlling them.

And RightSpot can really help you to get a good coverage, to get a higher likelihood of controlling that pest by maintaining that booming pressure. So it’s almost like an investment into the future of your farm as far as mitigating some of the risk, not all of it. We can never control all of the risk and resistance.

Man, if you can prolong that challenge for you and your farm for five years from when you, from maybe running a traditional sprayer, then that could mean some big dollars and cents down the road too.

Evan: You know, another thing that I had a guy comment to me one time, he tested RightSpot for me last spring and summer, he wasn’t afraid to put his son in it.

Russ: Yep.

Evan: Okay. So going across, you know, you got fence posts, you got telephone poles. His son might only be going five, six miles an hour, but is doing the exact same job as when you’d be going 12, 13, 14 miles an hour. So it was actually being able to put a less skilled operator that might not operate a sprayer for 10 years or whatever and actually being able to do an effective job that way as well.

Russ: You guys talking reminds me of two things actually. I remember seeing a satellite photograph from one of the guys that did testing with us, the year prior to him actually testing with us. And he had a big curved turn on the corner of one of his fields. And you could see the difference in the weed pressure on the outside of those booms, where it wasn’t getting the correct application for that.

And Evan, to your cooperator who was having his son run in there… You know, of course everybody’s talking about finding decent help and there is a skill to running a sprayer. You’ve got, you know, there’s certain things you have to do to run the sprayer. And to be able to take some of that chaos out of the operator’s hands, you know, hopefully a grower can find somebody that maybe hasn’t run a sprayer their entire life and be able to jumpstart them into operating a sprayer with RightSpot. Because the display is easy to use, because it’s got nozzle by nozzle shut off, because it’s taking care of a lot of these things. So that’s actually a pretty big deal, I think, as well.

Evan: Oh, that’s for sure.

Logan: Absolutely. It lowers the barrier of entry of getting a qualified person in the cab to get the job done. And it can be very challenging, you know, with weeds and with just managing your weeds through the growing season. You don’t have, always, a lot of days that are good and fit for spraying. And maybe you can’t be the one, the one that has all the experience, you just can’t be the one in the sprayer that day. Well, this can give you some more confidence to put somebody else in the cab to get your field sprayed when you gotta go do X, Y, Z, down to a thousand other tasks it could be, on that day where it’s just prime, it’s perfect for spraying, but you just can’t do it. So that’s a big one as well.

Russ: Yeah, I totally agree with that. That’s a good point. I mean, my question about the ROI… There is the dollars and cents… Farming is a business. You need to be able to have it be profitable to keep it going, but at the same time, there’s all those things you don’t think about. Like record keeping, something that is just happening. You’ve got the little less stress because you know that, okay, I don’t need to necessarily run this exact, particular speed if I need to run a little slower because the ground’s rough or I’m slowing down to make a turn. Or if it’s a big, long pass and I can run a little faster, I can run a little faster. Not have to worry about changing that pressure at all. So those are all really big things that, they are a return on investment, even though you might not be able to put a exact dollar sign on ’em. So I think those are pretty big.

Logan: Yeah. You know, going back to the days — we know for planting you’ve got a small window to get the seed in the ground. Well, spraying is also very challenging in the summertime. There’s wind, there’s also rain, there’s certain chemicals that need to be on the plants for six hours before the rain. So the windows just get really small. And we’ve heard some cooperators say, man, with RightSpot, I’ve actually been able to spray, you know, fifty, a hundred more acres a day than I was before.

So that’s one of the things we’re looking at, too, with RightSpot is what type of efficiency gains can you get with that system when it’s on your sprayer? Because now you have the ability to speed it up and not see the penalties that you would’ve seen with your old sprayer by speeding up. You can still maintain that target droplet size, that coverage, that rate, control it super accurately and kick it up a mile an hour, two miles an hour.

Russ: Excellent, excellent. Now a question I do get quite a bit, and Ag Leader addresses it very well, is our ability to scale up. Meaning I could start with this particular widget, whether it be a display or something, and then I can add stuff to it. Would one of you guys like to speak to — I do get this question — somebody could start out with our DirectCommand system… now, I guess I didn’t say that we have L2, which is our base part of it, and then RightSpot, which is the nozzle by nozzle.

Would one of you, kind of help us out here and unpack, what improvements did L2 bring versus what we had previous to that? And then on top of that, going from L2 to RightSpot, what are the differences there? But first off, what did L2 bring that we didn’t have before?

Logan: So if you compare, if you look at L2 as being, now our base liquid product controller, so that was kind of inspired from the ISO liquid product controller, and ISO liquid was —

Evan: But, simpler.

Logan: But, simpler.

Russ: Yes. Yes. Thank you.

Logan: Yes. Simpler. But if you look at what ISO liquid brought from DirectCommand, ISO liquid brought additional section control, so you can do more than 10 sections of auto swath with, let’s say, L2. It also had some more advanced features built into it as well, for like pressure control, droplet size monitoring, and pressure fallback.

So if you’re not familiar with pressure fallback, it’s a feature that automatically switches over to pressure-based control when the flows are low. So let’s say when you have one section on, and you’re driving slow, the flow meter on your sprayer might have a challenge of actually being able to provide enough feedback to control the system accurately. So you had this sine wave effect of application. You had it dropping down too low, going up too high. It was kind of hunting to find the rate.

Russ: Yep.

Logan: Well, ISO liquid and L2 address that, so they have pressure fallback. And that’s kind of the era in which we really started to look at… compared to what’s out there, DirectCommand and a lot of other controllers out there… what are some other new features, new things that we need to build into this to make it better, to make application better for the operator? And those were a couple things.

Droplet size monitoring was just a really nice feature to get people to think about the droplet size they were applying. We put the droplet size gauge right on the map so they could see, oh, on this tip I’m going from a medium to a course. Or from a medium to a fine. If you don’t have the book in front of you, you don’t really know what’s happening. You just see your analog pressure gauge bouncing all over and think, oh, it’s probably not good. But now you can actually see what the impact is on the drop.

Evan: And it’s logged.

Logan: And on L2, it’s logged.

Russ: Oh, okay. I actually didn’t remember that. See, even I learned something today.

So then going from L2 to RightSpot, obviously the big one is gonna be, we don’t have to worry about that pressure fallback cause we’re dialing in a pressure. And because we’re controlling nozzle by nozzle, that’s not even a thing.

But, some questions by people, how many different nozzles can I control? I wanna say sections, but that’s not necessarily the right word to use, but what other advantages do we get from upgrading? Because the other thing I should say is, if somebody buys an L2 system, upgrading to RightSpot is not rewiring the whole sprayer. It’s just adding the extra components, so it’s very scalable. If somebody didn’t want to jump all the way the first time.

So Evan, you look like you’re busting to say something.

Evan: We can do up to 144 RightSpot nozzle valves. So if you had L2 purchased already, you would have everything sprayer flow control side already installed and we’d just be adding the components at that point. So it is scalable in that way. With RightSpot, you get the turn comp and the speed range advantages and then nozzle by nozzle auto swath.

Russ: Excellent, excellent. Now, as far as serviceability goes, what are gonna be the things that year after year guys are gonna wanna look at on the RightSpot system to address, to make sure they’re operating at maximum efficiency, and how do we help folks with that?

Evan: Yeah, so really, the main wear part for the RightSpot system will just be the pop it or inside the nozzle valve assembly. And we’re saying they’re good to 2000 hours.

 That’s running at 60 psi with 32% nitrogen.

Russ: That’s pretty good. And we have field service kits for those, and it’s a really quick change out. What is it, five minutes to service one?

Evan: Yeah. Two minutes a piece, or so, you could have it off and then the new part installed.

Russ: Excellent. Excellent. So guys, here before we conclude for the day, what have I missed? Oh, wait, I thought of one thing, something that we haven’t had in any of our previous versions before. Support for some of the John Deere sprayers who, which one of you guys want to address that?

Evan: Yeah. So we have, support for the John Deere sprayers for actual flow control now. So in the past we’ve only done section control on them, so with L2 and RightSpot, we’ll do John Deere hundred up to actually the 4940 series.

Russ: So that’s a, that’s a really big deal for us

Evan: And its a large range.Yeah.

Russ: Especially for, even, even at home for me. So I, I was definitely happy to see that. And then, before I forget, were we talking, we were talking about some install kits earlier today.

Evan: Yeah, so from, ISO Liquid L2, the L2 and RightSpot have a, a larger offering, newer machine styles, like the RoGator C, the 50 series Apaches that we will be supporting with L2 and both and RightSpot.

Russ: Excellent. And as always, we’re always working on new kits as well. Yeah. So, you know, everybody keeps their eye open with that and, hopefully we’ve got a kit for their sprayer in particular. So anyway, gentlemen, thank you for joining me today, Logan, Evan, it’s been a pleasure as usual.

I even learned a few things about RightSpot myself, so thank you guys very much.

Logan: You’re welcome.

Evan: Thanks Russ.

Logan: Before we end, I, we were supposed to ask you, Russ, about getting. Getting hit. We were riding by a car. Were you jogging? Were you, oh gosh.

Is there a story here that we’re not there? Is sharing.

Russ: There is. So, you know, people joke that getting in shape will kill you. It nearly did kill me. Well, it’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I was in Fargo, North Dakota, a year or two ago and was just out jogging in Fargo and was jogging.

Logan: You were trying to get out of there, probably.

Russ: Well, you know, I was having a good time just listening to some music and jogging along and I was jogging along in like a four-lane, not a freeway or anything, but a main highway in Fargo, and I’ll be darned, I was.

Looking ahead and there was a side street that piped into this four lane and there was this Jeep Grand Cherokee that was sitting there with two ladies in it. And I could have sworn I caught their eye cause I really tried to do that cause that ain’t how I want to go . And I got up to just about a third of the way past ’em and I seen, I was two foot in front of this SUV and I saw it start coming towards and I’m like, well here we go.

And so it luckily it wasn’t going very fast cuz I’m old and. , but I was able to kind of put my hand on the hood and kind of spin around and, and get around there and it, it happened to be a, a mother and her daughter and they, they, I mean, they felt absolutely terrible cause they were just trying to get out into traffic.

And I said, no, no, I’m good. I’m good. Cause I felt, I felt fine. And so, you know, after they, they boy, they surely apologized like, nobody ever had. And so I kept kind of jogging a little bit and man, then my hips started to hurt a little bit. I’m like, oh, I’ll turn around, I’ll jog back. So I turned around and started jogging back and my body said, no son, you’re, you’re walking

So it was like a mile and a half, two mile walk back and I had to called back cause we were gonna go out to eat and get a, get a bike for supper. And I to say, Hey, I’m gonna be just a hair late cause I’m going a little bit slower. And the funny part of the whole thing is when I would jog at home, cause I live out in the country, I would always share my GPS location with my Becky, not, not your Becky . You know, you’re, you’re a married man. And I’d say, Hey, if this icon stops for more than a couple of minutes, you best come find me cause some drunk farmer ran me down and kept going. So I would always joke about that. Luckily, nothing’s ever happened. So I got back to the hotel and I called Becky and I said, hey, you remember why I always share my location with you when I go out and.

And she goes, yeah. And I said, well, guess what happened to me today? Man did she dressed me down. I probably deserved it. Anyway. Yeah, that’s, that’s the whole, uh, getting in shape will kill you story.

Logan: So do you still run?

Russ: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. Outside. Some outside. I, when it’s nice out, I will it, for whatever reason, my body prefers a treadmill.

I don’t know if it’s cuz of the belt or whatever it is, but yeah, there’s, there’s less danger on the treadmill.

Evan: There’s no drunk farmers.

Logan: There’s no farmers period.

Russ: No. No. Unless they come down to say hi. So, Most of my stuff is done on a treadmill, whether it be in my basement or at a hotel workout center.

So, yeah, that’s a pretty good story.

Logan: thank you for sharing.

Russ: And thank you guys for joining me today.

Logan: Oh, of course.

Russ: And helping me out on the podcast. I appreciate it.

Logan: Yeah. Appreciate it, man. Thank you.