There is really nothing more futuristic than lasers, right? My first thought goes to the Death Star when I think about it. Now, imagine a Death Star…but for weeds. That is the subject today as we chat with John Mey from Carbon Robotics. John and the team from Carbon Robotics are developing an autonomous weeder that uses lasers to zap weeds into oblivion. How awesome is that?!?! John and I also chat about his background, deep learning, the future of ag tech, and much more.
Check them out at the links below:
Click here to subsrcibe to the show
Show Notes
- John’s background – Aerospace to AgTech
- The next-generation Autonomous Weeder, a 10,000-pound autonomous robot that utilizes high-power lasers to eradicate weeds
- Deep learning
- CO2 lasers
- How accurate is the tech?
- Can it work during all growth stages of plants?
- Will this replace jobs or help reduce inputs and create more opportunities for workers?
- How can this help fight climate change?
- What has the response been like?
- Are tech like this and driverless tractors the future?
- What has been your biggest struggle designing this?
- What about your biggest win?
- Thoughts on farmer/consumer relationship?
Be sure to follow us on social media!
https://www.instagram.com/farm_traveler/
https://www.facebook.com/TheFarmTraveler
https://www.youtube.com/farmtraveler
Subscribe here:
https://podkite.link/FarmTraveler
Call to Action
Want to stay up to date on the show, consider following our newsletter. As a thank you for signing up, you’ll receive a FREE guide on 5 simple steps you can do to support farmers. Sign Up HERE!
Transcript
May or may not be 100% accurate. Transcripts are close!
Trevor:
All right, well, john may Welcome to farm traveler podcast. How are you doing?
John:
Very good. Thank you.
Trevor:
Thanks. So you’re, you’re with a super cool company. It sounds like carbon robotics. And we’ll talk about that in a second. But kind of tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of how you got started working with carbon robotics.
John:
So my education is in mechanical engineering. And then I’ve been doing robotics for a super long time. Most recently, I was working at a company up in Muckle to that provided robots for Boeing and Lockheed Martin and all those guys to build their airplanes to basically fasten the skins to their substructure. And when Paul reached out, he, you know, his background is software. This is our founder and CEO. He was looking for somebody to do the hardware. So when I found out about its mission, it matched with what I’m, I’ve always been wanting to do, you know, something better for the world. And better for, like humans, basically. So I jumped, like, right at the first chance.
Trevor:
That’s cool. Yeah. So I looked at the website, and basically the whole thing with carbon robotics, it’s a 10,000 pound autonomous robot and basically eradicates weeds using lasers, which, I mean, is super neat. So you’re talking about it’s better for the world. So kind of, what was the inspiration behind it behind this weed here? And what was the whole process of kind of developing it toward is now where you guys have actually got, like the full system going. So what was that whole production process? Like?
John: 4:39
I guess so. You want to start from like, Where did the idea come from? Sure. So our CEO, Paul, he wanted to start a company, you know, he’s started a bunch of tech companies that did really, really great. And then he went over and worked at Uber for quite some time on their AI and deep learning. But he wanted to get into robotics, it was just like this realm, he hadn’t been wanting to do it. So he was gonna sell his airplane, and basically focus on that. And he ended up selling it to a farmer. And that farmer and him started talking about, you know, if they were to do something in farming, like what would be the most helpful thing. And they looked at a whole bunch of different aspects to farming, and found that weeding is like the number one pain point, you know, it’s a huge cost for their, their operation, both in conventional and organic. And so they kind of looked at what’s out there, you know, they saw other, basically cultivating robots, and said, Well, we don’t want to do the same thing as everybody else. So let’s figure out a way to do this, like, using deep learning and using whatever crazy new technologies are out there. And I think they just maybe stumbled upon the idea of laser reading, and then it just took off from there. So it was pretty cool. And they basically had a laser on a on a wood cart. And then they’re like, Can you make this, you know, shoot the ground. And so we got some mirrors, started practicing aiming. And it was like, pretty clear right away that you can kill weeds with places.
Trevor:
That’s so cool. Yeah, I mean, right now it’s so it’s so pricy to spray pesticides on the course, I mean, it’s not the best for the environment depends on what you’re spraying. I mean, depending on your crop, you might have to spray over and over and over again. And so what I mean, what kind of like lasers is using, I mean, I’m imagining it’s not, you know, like your death star laser, where it will blow up everything in this path. But so how powerful are these lasers that are kind of destroying those weeds.
John: 6:47
So these are the same, this type of lasers, a co2 laser, so the glass tube, that’s basically co2 gas, but some other gases like helium. And you run electricity through it, and it excites photons to exit out one side, they bounce around inside this thing, and there’s only one way out, so you can aim it. And that is 150 watts. And so this, this laser could be used with some different focusing elements to you know, cut steel, or aluminum or wood. But we d focus it to help with our accuracy killing the weeds. And it takes, you know, 250 milliseconds, up to 2000 milliseconds. So two seconds to kill a week. Oh, wow, that science. Okay,
Trevor:
so what, what exact part of the weed is targeting like the leaves or the root structure? What exactly is the target?
John: 7:42
Yeah, we originally started by basically doing this, like, you know, quote, unquote, eraser mode, where we would basically burn the entire weed. And we just found that to take way too long. We talked with some biologists that University of Washington and learn that you really just need to kill the Mary stem. So there’s, you know, the undifferentiated meristematic cells, basically at the center, like if you look at a generic weed, like pig weed, you can see it, it’s directly in the middle. That’s where new leads are coming up and out.
Trevor:
Okay, gotcha. And so what’s kind of the average? Do you guys have like an average per acre on how quick it can destroy weeds and an acre of area?
John: 8:25
Yeah, so roughly, you know, you could say, like, half an acre an hour, up to like, two, depending on the weed density. You know, if it’s a, if it’s a field, that’s crazy weedy, like, they didn’t control the season before, and it just got out of control, you’re going to be on the lower end, like half an acre now. But if you’ve done a good job, but you just tidying up the field, you can go, you know, two acres an hour or so.
Trevor:
Okay, that’s pretty good. So how exactly does? How exactly does deep learning kind of play a role into this, because when I’m imagining the whole system is learning what a weed looks like, because of course, it’ll be bad if it targets the actual plants and destroys your whole crop. And so how exactly is deep learning playing a role into that?
John: 9:09
So the kind of like, go to analogy for me, it’s, you know, like Facebook, if you look at your pictures on Facebook, it can identify your face, or maybe it identifies like your brother, and it’s like, is this you know, Ashton. So, it does that by getting just a ton of examples. And so that’s what we do when we get to a new region or new, you know, new crop, we get examples of it. He really only takes about 100 images, which is actually pretty amazing because there’s, that’s, that’s solely due to like our CTO, Alex, Sergei, who’s just one of the country’s best deep learning guys. He also came from Uber. But you know, we get 100 pictures, like day one, and then we label this is, you know, pigweed. This is pursuing those types of weeds, and then we’ll look We’ll label this is spent, you know what click actually where those things are for about 100 images. And then we do a thing called training, basically, you’re just reinforcing the algorithm to make choices along the way that ended up in the result of this is a weed, this is the crop. And then as we go, you know, continue going on that farm will keep getting images and keep pushing those to get labeled. Just so we can keep learning. But really, it takes like two days for us to go into new crop, which is really incredible.
Trevor:
Yeah, that’s really quick. So it sounds like I mean, it’s still learning. I mean, it’s not like you just upload those first 100 images. And it’s done. I mean, it’s still collecting images and still learning.
John: 10:48
Yeah, and like when we’re in production, we’re sampling the field, you know, to get an even distribution. So, you know, in case there’s some specific weed at the northwest corner.
Trevor:
Okay, so how exactly does this whole autonomous wieder work? Like? How often does it get sent out? Is it completely autonomous, like you set a time for it to go? And then how does it get its power? And kind of all that good stuff?
John: 11:12
Yeah. So above the lasers, if you look at pictures, like there’s basically white cabin inside there, there’s a 74 horsepower, Cummins diesel engine, that’s how you feed a diesel, it’s got enough for 24 hours of operation a little more, just so that, you know, the idea was you touch it one time a day. And then that drives a generator for all the power for the computers, lasers, all that. And then has a another PTO shaft that runs a hydraulic stack. And so all of our motors, we have four wheel drive, they’re all hydraulic. And then we have some steering actuators that are also hydraulic. And then, so you’re asking about, you know, how does the How does daily operation look where they’re most of the time, somebody from carbon, because we’re honestly just moving so fast, and going into new crops and new regions that were there to check its performance, make sure it’s killing all the weeds that are out there, and not shooting any the crop. But as far as the autonomy, it’s, it’s going up and down the rows by itself turns around at the end of the rows. sets, it’s it’s more of a supervisory function. In some places like California, actually require you to have somebody in the field, they don’t actually allow fully autonomous things yet. Oh, really? Was that? I mean, it’s, you know, kind of, like, why you don’t have for self driving cars yet? Yeah, that’s, there’s some risk associated. And so they, you know, they’re not comfortable with that on public land, you know, because the robot could easily, you know, in theory, go past the farm, you know, up the field and into a road or something. So they just, they want eyes on it.
Trevor:
Okay. No, that makes sense. So, I know, I’ve seen pictures of it, it looks like right now it’s kind of, for smaller crops. So how can this work for I would say, maybe like a corn or something that’s super tall. So Well, I mean, what’s the plans there? I mean, can it work for taller crops like that? Or is this just kind of for something kind of a little bit lower to the ground?
John: 13:27
Well, we’re primarily focused on, you know, specialty crops like onions, lettuce, carrots, broccoli, all that kind of stuff. But in theory, there’s no reason that can’t work in corn or soy, or, you know, wheat, especially in the early stage where it’s most important to do the weeding. Because that’s, you know, like, that’s the time when the crop is really competing with the weed for nutrients. And once it gets to a certain size, it’s shading out the ground. And so that’s where we kind of don’t need to continue bleeding. We may learn something as we break into those different crops that could encourage us to, you know, come up with a different model that was specialty made for tall crops. Okay.
Trevor:
Yeah, that makes sense. That’s pretty cool. And yeah, I mean, that’s such a good point. Because especially like right after these plants are either planted or transplanted. I mean, that’s when they’re really going to be in danger of like weeds overtaking them. But once you’ve got like a crop like corn, you’re usually going to be good from weeds. I mean, usually. So I know when a lot of people see technology like this, they instantly get scared that’s going to replace jobs. So I mean, how do you guys view is this here to replace jobs or to reduce inputs? I mean, and also with this, you’re creating more jobs for like you and everybody a carbon. And so what’s your whole viewpoint on that?
John: 14:48
Well, to begin with, it’s not replacing jobs necessarily because there’s a labor shortage in farming, you know, so we’re actually supplementing and giving the farmer Some sustainability, you know, and reliable, like, just the reliability in their operation. As far as some of the jobs like the hand laborers that are in the fields, we’d like them to transition to more operating machinery type jobs, like the supervisory function of watching the robot. body and also creates a whole bunch of tech jobs since in Seattle, and which is nice, because it’s good to see. Tech going into something like farming, not just, you know, making like a new Snapchat app or something. Oh,
Trevor:
yeah, absolutely. I’ve seen a bunch of videos on like, super, super small scale organic farms where they have like this. It looks like a hospital bed, kinda. And the person will lay flat on it, and they’ll crawl around. Oh, yeah. Have you seen that? Oh,
John: 15:50
yeah, totally. It’s actually a really great idea. Yeah,
Trevor:
no, it’s a good idea. But I mean, of course, that would be like, nearly impossible to do for like 1000 acre farm. And so this, I mean, this technology is basically that on a larger, larger scale,
John: 16:03
right? Yeah. And our, I mean, a real, real goal here is to help eliminate chemical usage. And that’s not that’s not you know, replacing anybody’s job. Yeah, exactly. I could be replacing the chemical click Next.
Trevor:
That’s true. But I mean, they’ve got millions of dollars they can find someone else to do. I mean, so do you see like technology like this as the future because I know right now, I think it’s case Ah, are they’re developing like driverless tractors? So you’ve got driverless tractors, autonomous weeding machines? So do you think tech like this is going to be the future and ag?
John: 16:40
I think it makes sense. Because there’s just in every, like, job title in farming, there’s a labor shortage. So tractor drivers, hand readers, you know, everybody, I think, if we don’t do things like this, we’re gonna be in trouble with being able to sustain, you know, the country’s food supply. We’re the world’s rather. So it just makes sense. Like, the technology is here, you know, it’s, it’s just making sure, on our end, that we listen to the farmer and, you know, give them what they need.
Trevor:
Hmm. I like that. And speaking of that, I mean, what’s the response been, like, from farmers where you’ve used it on their on their land? I mean, has it been good? Have they been? Have they had any, like, very helpful critiques about it?
John: 17:28
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s been really cool to see it, take off the way it has. I’ve run most of the demos. So we’ve done a couple seasons of like, full season weeding, and onions, you know, in New Mexico and Eastern Washington. But about three months ago, we realized that basically, every farmer wants to see it in their field in their crop. And so we had like demo days, but they’d come see it in Washington, but then they’re like, well, I need to see it in carrots, you know, in California to believe you before buying it, we’re selling equipment, we’re not doing leasing or like, pays, you go, like per acre model. And I started doing demos in California and breaking into crops, and it was just like, as soon as they saw it in their field and invited, like, they immediately go and invite all their co workers, like all the, you know, higher ups of the farm, the decision makers, if the if I’m not already talking to that person, and then it’s like, basically, the conversion rate from demo to sale has been really high. We’re basically sold out for 2022 as well. Oh, wow. Like, in addition to this year, it’s being done. Which is great. We’re getting, you know, the kind of adoption that we were, we knew that this was going to be the situation. So it’s good to see that, you know, happening.
Trevor:
Yeah, and that’s great that I mean, once you’re doing those in person demos, I mean, people can see it on their property, doing their crops, and they have that sort of buy in from there. So that’s awesome. There’s been a good conversion ratio.
John: 19:12
Yeah, I mean, their eyes light up. This is like, most of them are like, this is what we’ve been waiting for. Huh? Yeah, good.
Trevor:
Yeah. No, that’s awesome. And so I would love this so I don’t have a farm. I’ve got a yard. What do you think like maybe in the future, there could be a much smaller scale version of this like going around your yard and taking care of weeds? I mean, do you think that might be something that might come of this maybe in the future?
John: 19:40
We’ve toyed with the idea like my my dad’s asked for one, you know, you can just a handheld shooter version, you could go around instead of spraying chemicals. We’d have to figure out the safety of it. You know, having a person hold a laser is a lot different than a robot with them aiming only down. You know, like, that’s where we get our safety. It’s gonna happen, like, as a hobby project at least. And we’ll see how feasible that would be.
Trevor:
Yeah, that’d be super cool. I mean, I know that I’ve seen my sister has sent me a snapchat of her neighbor. In Germany, they have like, it’s like a Roomba, but it’s a lawn mower. And so it just goes around their yard. Oh, yeah. Adding up everything Aparna does that right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I thought that was super cool. And so I’ve often wonder, like, when are we going to have those big weeders? Kind of like how you have but on a smaller scale? Or maybe even do you see maybe one of those farmers going to take that big system home, and they just let it do their yard or something? Of course, not in a commercial area, just like, on their home, or something.
John: 20:42
I’d say goodbye, like, especially with the weight, you’re gonna lose your grass.
Trevor:
You might get rid of your weeds, but you’re definitely gonna be able to see where that thing went. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, what’s been the biggest struggle during the whole development of this kind of getting people to get on board with lasers? Or the technology behind it? Or maybe the r&d? What’s been the biggest struggle?
John: 21:05
Well, I think, I think it would be the fact that like, the tech is just getting to the point where it’s capable of doing this, like the computers and the the cameras, and the gold and the lasers. I mean, those have been around for a while. But none of them were designed for a farm environment. And so we’ve, I mean, we’ve gone through, like, more iterations than I thought you would need to, but it’s good that we moved so fast and broke so much stuff, because we learned how to like ruggedized, you know, a computer with eight GPUs in it. That is like, you know, pretty expensive and sensitive to vibration, shock, heat, you know, but we’ve broken everything in every possible way and found how to not break it anymore. I mean, the tubular glass, they’re about six feet long. Oh, wow, about, I think 80 millimeters in diameter. So what’s that, like? five inches, four inches. And so you can imagine that being pretty brittle, right? Like that long of a thing. And so just, yep, we froze the tubes. Before we figured out we needed antifreeze. And just a ton of it’s been good, because our CEO, Paul has pushed us super hard to get into the field, like, day one, you know, we kept taking prototypes out there, breaking it, fixing it, making the new, we basically were always in this stride of, as soon as one is coming out of the fab shop. We’re like designing the next one. Like, it’s no, no delay.
Trevor:
That’s awesome. Yeah, I didn’t even think about that. I mean, cuz like you’re saying, like a farming environment is going to be, I mean, pretty tough, pretty unforgiving. And of course, you’re gonna have all this tech in there. So what’s the repair? Like? I mean, can you guys record repair these things pretty quick, or is there a lot of downtime involved.
John: 23:07
So by doing all this prototyping, and breaking things, we’ve learned which components, you know, could break. And the tubes are the number one thing. But not only can they they break, which they don’t, this is the possibility. And there’s so many of them. That we wanted it to be really easy for the farmer to replace. So we made everything like that, like the lasers or the computer, or, you know, all of our little packages. Everything is really nicely packaged and self contained and modular. So it’s like, we just hired a VP of sales and his first time out of the demo. Out of seeing the robot demo. I just had him replace it to. I was like, let’s see how easy this is. I didn’t tell him how to do it. He just opened the hatch. Okay, so there’s water to water lines to power lines. And then you just flip a little latch and pull it out. Put a new one in, takes like two minutes.
Trevor:
Oh, that’s not bad. Yeah,
John: 24:10
so I mean, you know, mechanical engineers, especially from the company that was previously do a pretty good job if they know something, you know, could be needing replaced, making it easy to replace. Because most of the time, especially in like startup world, you’re going to go and fix your own shit. So you just, you know, you go through those pains.
Trevor:
Yeah, that’s kind of different from what you hear about, I mean, different large scale startup companies like a Tesla to where you know, they’ve got, of course, the whole right to repair thing, but replacing their stuff or fixing their stuff is super duper complicated. And then you have people online like di wires, they’re like, it doesn’t need to be this complicated at all. And so it’s good you guys have made it. Super simple to replace. Biggest things, which are, I mean, super tech savvy, super advanced, but still pretty, relatively easy to replace and fix?
John: 25:08
Yeah, you know, I don’t I really don’t necessarily understand the reason for locking people out of that kind of stuff. It’s definitely not our philosophy we want. I mean, if the farmer can replace it, like, you know, immediately without having a cause that’s way better for a product and then let you know that the outlook on our product?
Trevor:
Yeah, I mean, even like companies like john deere, I mean, they have the whole rent repair thing and that going on. So I mean, that’s something that you guys are definitely beating the multimillion dollar companies that so that’s good to hear. Um, so what do you think about, I’ve seen more and more ag tech startups like this kind of booming in the past decade? And so I mean, what do you think kind of started that, like just kind of Silicon Valley, and everybody started to want to have their own impact on the environment? And all this new technology came out? What do you think kind of inspired all this? And ag tech?
John: 26:02
Yeah, I think it’s driven by like, the fact that, in general, I think people want to do stuff that’s, you know, good, like, in general, good for the earth or good for people or good for their, you know, friends. And I think tech, maybe got so heavily involved with, like, maybe stuff that’s a little less important. You know, like, making some app that doesn’t actually increase. Like life, you know, happiness. So I imagine there’s just a lot of people that were like, you know, I want to do something good. And there’s all this tech coming out, deep learning and all that stuff. And farming is just, you know, I think farming has always been innovative. Like, if you go to a farm, you just see like, 10,000 new different things. And so from mechanical engineer standpoint, that sounds like a lot of fun. You know, designing stuff like that, especially because farmers are so sure, like, they’re okay with a little bit of risk. And so these things can look like death traps, like most of the stuff on a farm. And then I think from the software side, like I said, I think it’s just people wanting to do something. Good.
Trevor:
I like that. So did you do you have like an agro farming background? Or is this kind of all kind of new to you, when you when you started this, or when you joined it?
John: 27:45
It was totally new to me. And I’ve loved the journey of like learning about farming, because I don’t think I would have ever gotten that experience just living in Seattle working at a you know, aerospace automation company. Shea Meyers always jokes about you know, the, the buyer who asked to sit on the entry or whatever. I love that. I always think about that. But um, I have spent a significant amount of time at the farms. And I just really enjoy talking to the farmers, and just seeing all the varying ways they can do their, their operations. And they’re just super good people. Like, I haven’t met one farmer didn’t like that, like they’re so willing to, you know, jump in a truck with you. And show you their farm for like, four hours to talk about stuff. Yeah, just yeah, at the drop of a hat.
Trevor:
That’s awesome. Yeah, I mean, that’s quite a big shift from aerospace to kind of working in the ag tech world. So has it made you think more and more about kind of, like, where your food comes from? And have you thought any more about it? Like when, whenever you go to churches or anything?
John: 28:54
Absolutely, yeah, and I mean, I’ve, I’ve always kind of lean towards organic, and I definitely go for organic when I can now. But I also try to encourage, like, my friends, you know, understanding of farming, so I take billion pictures, and I explained things to kind of show them like the pains that farmers, you know, go through. So yeah,
Trevor:
that’s cool. I like that. Yeah, I mean, that’s a fun, we went to, we went to a chocolate farm in Hawaii, and we actually interviewed them on the show. And I mean, they were super nice. They give us like the behind the scenes tour of everything. So I mean, it’s just cool. When you finally meet the people that make your food, it makes it that much more relatable. And you’re like, Hey, here’s the people behind my food. I didn’t tell my friends about this. And so I’ve been trying to tell all of my friends and family about them and they’re starting to buy their chocolate so it’s cool. I mean, it’s just like those little personal relationships kind of bridge the gap between farmers and consumers, which is pretty cool.
John: 29:54
Yeah, I love I love going for, you know, let us that is from a farm. I’ve been to That’s a weird feeling. I don’t think most people, you know, I don’t think most people in the country probably know exactly where the food’s coming from.
Trevor:
Oh, yeah, yeah, no 100%. And so do you think like for farmers that uses technology? Do you think they might be able to use it for their marketing? Like, hey, we’re using we’re reducing spring, we’re using autonomous leaders. Here’s how it’s helping the environment.
John: 30:22
Absolutely. I had this idea to have like a laser weeded sticker that they could put on their produce, either on either on the bag or on like the apple or whatever. And have that be kind of something that like, society goes for instead of and knows that, that means there’s no chemicals, or at least no herbicides used?
Trevor:
Yeah. No, that’s such a good idea. I mean, could something like this kind of work for pests? Also, I mean, if you might have, like a pest outbreak, you can maybe use something to where it targets just the bad pests for a crop?
John: 30:57
There’s no reason it can’t. Yeah, we’ve had farmers ask us about different types of beetles. And we know the deep learning cannot detect it. But instead, a lot of time to figure out how much time like no laser time you would need to do to kill whatever beetle. But I’m sure we’re gonna be doing it at some point. Yeah, I mean, I can ask for it.
Trevor:
I can imagine just like little turrets on top of this autonomous weed, or where like, as the bugs fly by and just kind of zap them. I mean, that’d be pretty cool. Be a little deadly, but it would look pretty badass.
John: 31:29
It’s super fun to watch. Like, I’ve spent, I don’t know how many hours behind that thing, walking in looking at the lasers running, that if you look at our YouTube, it’s just so cool. Like, it looks like a little light show.
Trevor:
Oh, that I haven’t looked at the YouTube yet. But I’m gonna have to go look at it and just kind of see what that looks like
John: 31:47
that yeah, it’s it’s insane to watch it work in like the high density crops like spinach and chards. Because you can’t even see the weeds a lot of the time, because it’s so dense, but the robots seeing it and using that super, you know, surgical laser to get in between and kill the weeds.
Trevor:
Now all about precision, I mean, a lot more precise than just blanket spraying chemicals, whether it will crop Yes, or spray or anything possible. It’s cool. That’s so cool. Well, john, this has been awesome, man. If people want to learn more about carbon robotics, where can they go to learn about you guys and kind of see how the whole developments going for the autonomous leader?
John:
Yeah, so we have a really great website, carbon robotics comm that’ll link you over to like, YouTube, and all that kind of stuff, Twitter, Instagram, and on the website, you can click, you know, contact us. And I read a lot of those, and then I’ll reach out and, you know, if somebody’s looking to do a demo at their farm, we’ll we’ll do that set that up, or invite you to a demo nearby.
Trevor:
So Are y’all pretty much available around the US? Or is there any particular area y’all focus more on,
John: 32:54
we are focused for the 2022 season, or basically the entire year for West Coast. We’ve got customers in Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico’s kind of our farthest. And we’re probably going to wrap that up, so that we can build out that support organization, that’s going to be the most critical thing for the next year. We have technology that works. We need to make sure we support it well, and the farmers are happy. But 2023 will probably break into Midwest. And then I think plan is to go international after that.
Trevor:
Oh, awesome. Well, that’ll be exciting. I mean, yeah, I can’t wait to see you guys. Take over the US and I can’t wait to see more of these on farms. I’m gonna start looking at YouTube videos now. And I’m gonna look at that video. So that’s I think this is I mean, super neat. It’s the perfect blending of agriculture and technology. I mean, it’s a problem we’ve had for years and such a great answer to it.
John: 33:52
Yeah, there’s just so much like tailwind you know, like, it’s good for the planet. It’s good for humans. Farmers love it. You know, our customers love it. Everybody wants to work here because it’s super cool. It’s badass. We’re working on a laser weeding robot?
Trevor:
Oh, yeah. I mean, that’s awesome to hear that every day.
John: 34:09
There’s there’s like, I can’t find a problem with with the situation. Yeah.
Trevor:
Well, that’s awesome. That’s good to hear. I’m glad you like it. I’m glad you like this job. I think this is super cool. Well, we’ll have to touch base with you guys soon. Maybe 2022. Whenever you guys are slowly growing. We might have to touch base with you all again. But thanks so much for coming on the show, john.
John:
Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me.
Trevor:
Again, thank you for listening to this episode with john. I was wanting to include some laser sounds in the intro, you know, because I thought it’d be kind of fun and kind of cheesy, but I couldn’t find anything that wasn’t utterly ridiculous and really corny. So now. So anyway, thanks so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, if you learned a thing or two, maybe you’re new here. Consider leaving a review on Apple iTunes. That helps us out ton. I think right now we’re sitting at something like 69 ratings on Apple, which is phenomenal. So if you haven’t already, please consider leaving us a review. Or if you’re on a platform like Spotify or Google podcasts, consider sharing with a friend or family member. organic growth really helps us reach a whole lot of people and a bigger audience for this show. And we can help people learn more and more about where their food comes from. So thank you so much for supporting the show and we’ll see you next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
thefarmtraveler.com 