Big Iron, Big Picture: How Ag Equipment Manufacturers are Pursuing Sustainability Solutions, with AEM's Curt Blades

Farm data drives your ability to leverage sustainability insights.

And farm equipment drives your ability to collect data.

So it's fortunate, then, that the agriculture equipment manufacturing industry is embracing the challenge, pioneering new technologies and advocating for policies that support sustainable ag in North America and around the world.

In this episode, we'll meet an important leader of this conversation, Curt Blades, the Senior Vice President of Industry Sectors and Product Leadership at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers.

AEM represents more than 1,000 companies in North America that build and support agriculture, construction, forestry, mining and utility equipment.

And since he joined the association leadership team eight years ago, Curt says there has been a shift in the way that the industry talks about sustainability.

In this episode, we'll discuss why that shift has happened, what it means and how it benefits growers.

Plus, we'll talk about how AEM is helping growers tell their sustainability story and advocating for policies that will support sustainable ag for years to come. 

Episode Transcript

Curt Blades 

I mean, it’s kind of a universal truth in agriculture: tractors are fun. You can have really good conversations with people when they have a smile on their face. 

And then you can hit them with the facts. 

So the future of agriculture is going to be sustainable, period. It has to be. It has been for centuries.  

Dusty Weis 

Welcome to the FARMSMART Podcast presented by Nutrien Ag Solutions, where every month we're talking to sustainable agriculture experts from throughout the industry. As the leading source of insight for growers on evolving their sustainability practices while staying grounded in agronomic proof, FARMSMART is where sustainability meets opportunity. 

Sally Flis 

We don't just talk change, we're out in the field helping you identify the products, practices and technologies that bring the future to your fields faster. I'm Dr. Sally Flis, Director of Program Design and Outcome Management. 

Dusty Weis 

And I'm Dusty Weis, and we're joined now by Curt Blades, the Senior Vice President of Industry Sectors and Product Leadership at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers. Curt, thanks for joining us. 

Curt Blades 

Yeah, thanks for having me on today. 

Dusty Weis 

Absolutely. Weren't going to miss the opportunity to get to pick your brain here about how sustainability looks from an equipment manufacturing perspective. And of course, the Association of Equipment Manufacturers is an interesting organization with far-reaching impact on the world of agriculture.  

You represent the interests of the companies that build our farm equipment, get them to work together on big picture issues and help them advocate for their needs and the growers that they serve. 

This is a little bit unconventional here, but there are so many different brand names that AEM represents. I wanted to just if you're up for it, I want to run a stopwatch here and see how many of those brands you can name in 30 seconds are you up for that? 

Curt Blades 

Sure, I'll give it a shot, but of course, as an association, we represent the storied brands that your listeners in the ag community are familiar with: AGCO, John Deere, CNH, Kubota, CLAAS, KUHN, Krause, KRONE, Great Plains. 

What's particularly interesting for this conversation would be when we go into some of those things you wouldn't think of on equipment manufacturers, so it's those technology companies that are represented inside of AEM:  Topcon, Trimble, AG Leader, as well as irrigation companies like Valmont and Valley and Reinke and all of these companies that basically do anything that touches agriculture. 

Be remiss to also not say that AEM represents the dairy industry and dairy equipment. So robotic milking. So lots of cool things. And that's just on the ag side. We haven’t even began to talk about construction like Caterpillar and Komatsu and brands like that. Bit more than 30 seconds, Dusty. 

Dusty Weis 

No I think you ticked a lot of boxes there. I'd say A+, what did you think, Sally? 

Sally Flis 

Yeah, no, those were good. Yeah, I've got to know AEM a little bit through some other organizations that we're members of alongside of you guys like Field to Market and the Council for Ag Science and Technology. So, excited to get to visit with you today about those overlaps and all the brands that you represent and some of the programs that we have on the ground. 

Your previous title was Vice President of Agriculture, and now you've got a lot more words after your title, similar to me, where we try and add lots of description to titles. 

Dusty Weis 

Business cards two feet long! 

Sally Flis 

Exactly, in these corporate or organizational titles. So what is it that you're responsible for in your role today? 

Curt Blades 

Well, I was hired at AEM about eight years ago specifically to run the ag division. You know, obviously, it's my passion as a farm kid. We’ll maybe talk about that a little bit more, but that had me responsible for all of the ag equipment and the interoperability that happened with the ag equipment.  

A number of years ago, we started to realize that the issues that were front and center for agriculture were universal. Things like interoperability, things like sustainability, you know, doing more with less, cybersecurity. All the hot topics of the day are bigger than one particular industry. In fact, what we found is that when we approach it holistically, we're a lot more effective.  

So my role changed a little bit, where I have the ag as my responsibility but also oversee our construction sector, utility sector, forestry, mining, utility. And then that includes things like our sustainability efforts as well as the majority of our technical and regulatory work.  

So it's a whole breadth of things that all sort of coalesce together that support the industry. But really, you know, I spent a lot of my time in the ag industry because that's where my heart and soul is. 

Sally Flis 

You guys sound a lot like us, where you touch a little bit of everything across the board, where we go all the way from the manufacturing of products to selling, to everything in fertilizer, from forestry to your conventional crops that we think of in corn and soybeans and whatnot. So lots of great alignment between the two organizations here. 

Curt Blades 

Absolutely. Well, in fact, I think what we find is that, you know, the more you have conversations, even with kind of nontraditional, you know, friendships like Nutrien and AEM, the more we find we’ve got a lot more in common. And I think when we talk about agriculture, the more we can work together, it’s just always better. 

Dusty Weis 

The road that you walked to get where you are right now, Curt, I mean, you've spent your entire life in agriculture, basically, growing up on a farm in Missouri. I want to talk about—because this is a sustainability podcast at its heart—I want to talk about how that conversation around sustainability has evolved from your perspective, particularly over the last seven or eight years since you started working at AEM. 

How has the conversation around sustainability changed? 

Curt Blades 

Well, I'll tell you, eight years ago when I started at AEM, I remember having conversations around sustainability and introducing that idea. This was about, about the time that the UN SDGs were starting to get some headlines. We all know that there are some, you know, those can be a little bit politically charged. We even know that the topic of sustainability can be charged in agriculture. 

But if you think back eight years ago, it was almost forbidden to talk about. But I think what we quickly realized is that when, sometime in the last five years, the ag community pivoted, the attitudes in the ag community pivoted. We recognized that we could be part of the solution rather than just being defensive. And when we opened up a hand out to some of the environmental groups rather than a fist, it changed the conversation sharply. 

And that's been something I've really been proud of, of the entire ag industry. When we look to all of the discussions around sustainability, we've been doing it for years, but instead of us being defensive and saying, “You don't know anything about agriculture,” we have a conversation with those that don't know about agriculture and say, “Here's what we're doing today. Here's what we could be doing in the future that's even better.”  

And it's really changed the dialogue. And frankly, it's changed things like regulatory work. And even the Farm Bill as we're having those discussions. And it's just really a change in the attitude among the farmers and the ag community in general in being proactive about our sustainability messaging. 

Sally Flis 

Curt, one of the big parts of what you guys do and what equipment manufacturers do and what some of your members that you mentioned around the digital data side do is providing that information to growers to be able to make decisions on any practice in the field, which is going to drive sustainability as we get more and more efficient with all the inputs and products and practices we're applying. 

So what are you seeing coming down the road as new stuff that might be coming from some of these organizations that's just going to help continue to make growers and organizations like us, like Nutrien, that do custom application more and more efficient with everything that we apply to the acre? 

Curt Blades 

It's all about data. And you think about the data is collected oftentimes from machines. I remember when my family first got into precision ag, we would get pretty maps and we had pretty maps and they're great. You can look at pretty maps. What does a pretty map do for you. Well it, it's pretty. When you start turning that into data and using it as insights, that makes a really big difference. 

And I think, you know, 20 years ago when precision ag was just first being adopted or even looking at a yield model as kind of like a fuel gauge. It's like that was good, but that was very tied to the person that was seeing that information in real time, and it was up to them to use that information and remember it and make those changes next year. 

What we're seeing now, because those data layers are becoming very rich, because it's constant collecting of data every time there's a pass over the field or using satellite data or whatever it might be, because those levels of data are getting so rich.  

Couple that with, you know, the computing power that's available and artificial intelligence piled on top of that, that institutional knowledge that’s generated for, you know, over decades within farmers, quickly can be augmented with artificial intelligence and data where the decisions are made much better, much more efficient, allowing a farmer to make the most out of their possible acre than they possibly can. 

And the cool thing about that is that you've got the machines that have the ability to act on it right away, and the great products that are able to be formulated in a way to not just do a broad acre application, but treat not just the individual section of the field, but in some cases, the individual plant. That's remarkable. 

And those are not products that are pipe dreams. Those are products that are either commercialized today in limited basis or just on the verge of being commercialized in the next day or two. 

Sally Flis 

For sure. You know, one of the things that we have, our sort of flagship program at Nutrien Ag Solutions for growers in the field around sustainability and carbon is called Sustainable Nitrogen Outcomes, where we're working with growers to reduce their nitrogen rate using enhanced efficiency fertilizers in order to reduce those emissions associated with using the nitrogen fertilizer that we need in the field. 

A few years ago, AEM did a study around the environmental impacts, positive impacts, from using variable rate technologies. What were some of the highlights from that story? Because it's definitely a practice that our growers are using to achieve participation in our programs. 

Curt Blades 

So thank you for the call out of the environmental benefits of precision ag study. That was a high point, frankly, of my career and being able to tell that story. But really what we found is that we recognize that, you know, a farmer, or anyone in agriculture, knows just by logic, a tractor that can drive itself in a straight line and a piece of application equipment that is using variable rate technology, logically, it just makes sense that it's doing better.  

It's either using less fuel or it's using less active ingredient, but there's nothing quantifiable that pointed to that. So we tried to pull all of the data together that we could to sort of put some stakes in the ground of what that actually meant. So one of the things that came out, you know, loud and clear, first of all, the fuel savings and the water savings and active ingredient savings were better than we ever expected them to be, which is pretty cool. 

And what's really even better about this is that farmers don't adopt precision ag technology because of the environmental benefits. That just happens to be a nice little ride along. So this isn’t a choose environment or choose yield. This is where you get the opportunity to do both. So that was one thing that was particularly interesting.  

Another thing that was particularly interesting, I think you guys at Nutrien would absolutely agree with us that, in the case of fertility. Sometimes it's not less fertilizer being applied, but it's just better fertilizer being applied. 

And that's part of the story as well. It's very quick to get into a conversation when you talk to an environmentalist is they want to use less. And we were really, now we're armed with the facts to say no. The answer might be less, the answer might be more. But more importantly, the answer is better. And so that, you know, goes to the Four R’s responsibility we talk about. 

But it's really, it’s like now we have the tools with the data and the application technology to make sure that the fertility is being applied exactly where it needs to go and that there's no runoff, that the environmental impact is minimal, and we're getting the most possible yield we can out of every individual acre. 

Dusty Weis 

I mean, Curt, we talked about it a lot when I worked at AEM and this was more than five years ago now. But we were talking about these things at that point too, and we certainly put it out there into the world that these are practices that are better for the environment. So do it for the environment, but do it for your bottom line, too. 

And at the end of the day, these practices benefit both the environment and growers. But as we've seen greater adaptation of some of these sustainability practices, how have your members then changed their product offerings and business practices to support increased grower interest in sustainability? 

Curt Blades 

Well, I mean, I think you kind of hit on it with the first piece is like, what's the killer app? Why does a farmer choose to adopt precision agriculture? Or any of these? Make any of these changes? And, you know, just like my family and all of the customers that we're talking about here, they are all businesspeople as well. 

Part of that message is you want to be able to leave a legacy for your family farming operations. So the soil's got to be maintained for, in my family's case, for over 100 years or for the next generation, for sure. In order to be able to do that, you also got to make money and you got to make money for the next five years. 

The first answer we've got to solve is that economic answer or find that killer app. In the case of precision agriculture, that killer app was oftentimes autosteer. A tractor that drives itself. A farmer immediately gets that. Even if there's not an immediate economic payoff, they get that from an emotional standpoint, from a ease of use standpoint, and then quickly from a fuel saving standpoint. They get that right away.  

That killer app is what gets them in the door. Then you start to pile things on top of it. That's what sort of leads to the next thing. So yeah, a tractor drives itself. That's great. Oh, and while it’s driving itself I collect this great data, and that great data is telling me that I can reduce the amount of active ingredient and get more yield and perhaps save some operational efficiency. 

So it's sort of you got to start somewhere. But if you say, you know, do this because it's better for the environment, that's good. And that will get some farmers excited. But it certainly has got to pay off economically for them to begin with. 

Dusty Weis 

Well, and as we say all the time, sustainability is a journey. And no farm field is the same. And certainly that's what we see in the way that these practices are implemented across North America here. But not too long ago, you and I were both out in Washington, D.C., at a big event that the Association of Equipment Manufacturers put on where we actually had a lot of this big iron out on the National Mall. 

We were telling our sustainability story. And so I want to touch on that coming up in a moment, along with some of the other really cool, cutting edge stuff that's happening in the equipment industry. That's all coming up in a moment here on the FARMSMART Podcast. 

Dusty Weis 

This is the FARMSMART Podcast presented by Nutrien Ag Solutions. I'm Dusty Weis, along with Sally Flis, and we're talking today with Curt Blades, the Senior Vice President of Industry Sectors and Product Leadership at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers. And Curt, as we were hinting before the break, a couple of weeks ago I got to go out East with you all from the AEM team. And, we were out there for the Ag on the Mall event. 

It was really cool. We had, what was it? 30, 40 different brands. All of them had their equipment sitting out on the National Mall, with the Capitol as a backdrop, with the George Washington Monument as a backdrop. And the whole reason that we were doing this was because AEM wanted to highlight some of the new and emerging trends and technologies that are really positioning agriculture on the cutting edge of technology and sustainability. 

What are some of the coolest things that you saw out there, and what are some of the brands that you would call out as being on the vanguard of this shift? 

Curt Blades 

Well, the coolest thing they saw on the Celebration of Modern Ag on the National Mall was, you know, not necessarily calling out one brand in particular, but just that whole opportunity to tell the story of modern agriculture to an audience that's not used to hearing it and, frankly, needs to. And we're right in the throes of Farm Bill making season. We're right in the throes of conversations around environmental stewardship, from folks that are making regulations that have never been on a farm before, or using data that might be 10, 20, 30 years old, and certainly paradigms that are 10, 20 and 30 years old. So the most exciting thing about the Celebration of Modern Ag on the National Mall was telling those stories. 

It's kind of a universal truth in agriculture, tractors are fun. Tractors are not offensive. You can have really good conversations with people when they have a smile on their face. And that's pretty neat. So you say you show off a big piece of iron or a big tractor, a big combine, big sprayer. It's like, that's really cool. And then you can hit them with facts and you don't get to have those if you're just having a conversation at a tent. So that's really the fun part.  

But your question was what pieces of technology were particularly interesting? We had everything from your tractors that could drive themselves to the latest detect and react types of equipment, whether it's spraying equipment or planting equipment or manure management. All those things were pretty neat.  

One of the things that I was particularly excited about was one of our manufacturers had their mobile soil testing lab. There are just a few of them around in the world today. It's capable of being shipped in a sea-land-air container to everywhere around the world for mobile soil testing.  

We start talking about data. It all does begin with good information for beginning, and if you have good soil data and having that readily available, that gives you that benchmark to really be able to make improvements. Right now that soil test is happening, it gets sampled and it's mailed off to a lab, and it's a little bit of a burdensome process. But when you think about what that means, certainly here in North America, where we've got broad acre farms that might be able to afford to take advantage of that technology, it's a big deal. 

But when you think of a portable technology and apply that on a global basis to some of these countries that are, you know, not particularly good stewards of the land and knowing what their soil health looks like, that has a tremendous impact on the global sustainability message and agriculture. So that becomes really interesting because you think about the transformational… That's a technology that just builds on one another. That's pretty fascinating. 

Sally Flis 

Yeah, that's really cool that that whole global aspect of, how do we improve soils at a global level and not just in North America? I know one of the things we struggle with, and a lot of our conversations with global brands and partners is a lot of these programs that they want to implement are designed around areas where you still need something like soil testing to happen, versus the level of practice and product and technology information that we see in a North American farm.So it's really cool to hear that there's stuff like that available to get out there and start improving soils around the world to the benefit of all of us.  

And Dusty, you know, this is our 51st episode. I don't think we've done an episode where somebody hasn't said data in the recording. So we all know data is that critical piece to the sustainability puzzle. And if we can't measure it, we can't manage it and we can't tell what our impact is.  

So what is the equipment industry working on right now to help accommodate that flow of data, from equipment to companies like Nutrien Ag Solutions, who are going to do that calculation and accounting and get those reports to their downstream customers that are buying the products off these farms. 

Curt Blades 

Well, Sally, that is a trillion dollar question. It's not a million dollar question, not a billion dollar question, but a trillion dollar question, because we know that, you know, data. There we said it again. It exists in lots of different levels. And historically, you know, our two industries, if we refer to Nutrien Ag Solutions as more on the crop protection side and my industry on the equipment side, we've not done a great job of communicating. We've done okay, we get a passing grade, there's room for us to do better. But in the meantime, you and your peers are also not necessarily great with communicating with one another. And those of us of, you know, the members that I represent in different colors, I can get them all in the same room. I can't get them all to agree. 

So there is a lot of effort that's being made to solve for interoperability, solve for interoperability on the machine side to make sure that, you know, when you plug in to a machine to one another, that they can talk to each other and they can control one another, that's one piece of it. Then the second half of that is the data. 

We're founding members of a group called the Ag Industry Electronics Foundation that's responsible for implementing ISOBUS, and that's happening on a global basis. We try to do that on a pretty good basis. We got a ways to go before we solve that challenge.  

Likewise, we're very strong advocates of AgGateway and that data interoperability that goes right in line with that. And AgGateway and AEF formed a relationship that's been facilitated by AEM and some of our partners around the world to ensure that interoperability is happening both on the machine side as well as on the data side. Well, we got a ways to go. And the first step is we begin to have those conversations, begin to tear down some of those longstanding walls. 

Sally, you mentioned your former relationships with, in the association space. We've got some other partners in the association space that are also kind of all on this journey together. But it's not easy because we want to, you know, live up to the principles that we all enjoy here in North America, where it's rapid competition and innovation that allows things to happen and balance that with, creating a level playing field that allows for interoperability. 

So that's a strong balance. We're trying to work it out. We got some work to do, but I'll tell you we've got to get this solved. Otherwise it's those some of those decisions are going to be made for us. So I look to some of the work that's being done in Europe where things are being dictated. That concerns me a little bit. 

And also when you look at what maybe some consumers are demanding and maybe even some of the storied brands, consumer packaged good brands that are beginning to demand, if we as an ag industry don't get our stuff together that is farmer friendly, we might find that we are thrust into a system that is maybe not as farmer friendly as we would have wanted it to be. 

Dusty Weis 

Another imperative that we certainly face when it comes to data is the notion of being able to connect to the internet, connect to the cloud, and actually get some of the insights from that data. You can have all the data in the world, but if you don't have good access to the internet, it's not going to do you a whole lot of good.  What is the equipment industry doing to help increase the access to quality broadband in rural parts of the country? 

Curt Blades 

Well, rural broadband is paramount for all of this technology to work. It's a job creator. It's a great equalizer. All these things kind of, you know, matter. I mean, think of how different your life was just 50 short years ago, before you had an iPhone in your pocket where you had constant access to that data and you multiply that to a farm field and it's night and day about what is available. 

We've been able to adapt using edge computing, some other things, that allow us to sort of do the best with what we can. But that means that not all the technology is being able to be taking full advantage of. And we began to introduce artificial intelligence and real time decision making in the field. It's imperative that we have wireless infield connectivity constantly available. In fact even the conversations we have with anyone that will listen, but specifically the FCC and policymakers, is in rural America. 

We love to be able to stream videos like everybody else does in the world, but that's really secondary. What's really important to us is that it's not so much the size of the pipe, but it's the consistency of the pipe and the parity of the pipe, the upload of the data and the download of the data being able to be as equal as they possibly can be. 

So we've been very active in our conversations with the FCC, specifically as they've been working on this. USDA has been working on this as well. Place some people on various committees to inform and tell that story, because, again, if you don't know it, you don't recognize it. You automatically say, well, rural America needs to be able to have this for streaming Netflix or better education and rural health care.  

Those are very important things. I don't want to downplay those things at all, but those needs and those use cases are a little bit different than agriculture. So we want to be able to tell that story as well. So we've been tireless in promoting rural broadband, using our advocacy voice as loud as we can, whenever asked. And we do this, you know, both at the state and the federal level and even on the global level. And then the final thing that we have been very adamant in saying is that there's no one solution for rural broadband, because in some areas, some of the existing technology is perfect. It's just not dispersed or it's not affordable. In the other areas, we might have to look to some new solutions that are not out there. 

And so I think any, any and all solution is what we sort of advocate for, as long as it has those principles of consistency, of being on and parity of upload and download. 

Sally Flis 

So, Curt, you mentioned that you guys had some robotic equipment or self-driven equipment when you guys were on the mall a couple of weeks ago. And so I would be remiss if I didn't ask, when are the robots just going to do all the work for us and AI is going to fix it? How do you guys respond to a question like that? Because I'm sure I'm not the first person to ask a question about robots and AI just doing all of the work for us in the future. 

Curt Blades 

Well, I'll butcher somebody’s quote and I apologize, I don't know who it was, but it basically says we tend to overestimate the speed at which technology disrupts society, and we tend to underestimate the impact. So I think, you know, when our robots are going to take over agriculture, probably not anytime soon, but they will. And it might be overnight. 

What's really interesting, and you get into some thought conversations about form factors. Let's go to a different industry. The Cybertruck. One of the most interesting innovations in that particular piece of equipment is they call it drive by wire. But essentially it's for the first time, the drive train of that truck is not mechanical. It's driven completely electronically. So you think about that. That's kind of a minor deal, but in the grand scheme of things, of the form factor, a harvesting machine like, look behind me here, I've got one that is a model of my, my grandfather's pull-behind harvesting machine had a 30 inch header on it, Just to put that in perspective. 30 inch header pull-behind, that form factor has really not changed in a hundred years. It's centrally controlled with a central power source that’s driving everything.  

When you move away from that power source, so maybe being drive by wire where it's electronic, or maybe some different sort of power source, those form factors will change. Those form factors will change, and then that becomes very different. The amount of weight on a tractor or a sprayer that's dedicated to make the size that it needs to be from an operational efficiency standpoint is pretty immense. 

When you remove that need for labor and you have it be automatic, it changes the form factor in a pretty remarkable way, and it opens up a whole different level of design criteria. So robots are coming. They're going to change our world. But I wouldn't say that it's going to happen any time soon, but it's certainly fun to think about what that's going to look like in the near future. 

Dusty Weis 

And they might not be big giant robots. They might be swarms of itty bitty little robots that crawl over the field very, very quickly. Because that form factor, as you said, has completely changed and evolved. 

Curt Blades 

Exactly. That's what becomes really interesting is that our paradigms will change, but I would say that we're seeing automation in areas we wouldn't have dreamed of them happening in the last five years.  

Let's think about strawberry harvest. You know, a strawberry is unique. A strawberry they, you know, on a vine, they don't all ripen at the same time, they're soft. They have to be handled with, like, kid gloves. That's why it's all hand done. 

Dusty Weis 

Yeah. Anyone who's ever tried to pick strawberries with a toddler will tell you how delicate they are. 

Curt Blades 

Exactly, exactly. They also make a mess. But if you think about, you know, during the pandemic, we had we had a real farm labor crisis and that sort of lit a fire underneath some of those innovations that were happening around strawberry harvesters, where you think of artificial intelligence and optical sensors that all of a sudden can pick whether a strawberry is ripe and then delicately handle that in a way that only a human hand has been able to do in the past. That's remarkable.  

Dusty Weis 

As we're sort of looking to the future here and kind of starting to wind the conversation down. I'd like to keep on staring over that 20, 50 year horizon, but ask you, Curt, what do you think the future of sustainable agriculture looks like? 

Curt Blades 

Well, I wouldn't say that it's “sustainable agriculture.” I would say “it's the future of agriculture is sustainable.” And I think it's inevitable that we can't divorce the two. My family's been in business for 100 years. We haven't been in business for a hundred years because we were not sustainable. We just didn't call it that. But I think we are doing a much better job of being intentional about the things that we do as an industry. 

So the future of agriculture is going to be sustainable, period. It has to be. It has been for centuries. We're going to continue to get better. We may make some missteps along the way, like we have in the past, and we might find some new technologies that revolutionize the way we produce crops that we can't dream of today. 

But I think the attitude will continue to be moving towards the idea of doing more with less and protecting our soil as best we possibly can. And being as efficient and operationally-efficient at the farm level as we possibly can to generate profitable income for generations to come. 

Dusty Weis 

Well and that’s just it. By definition, it has to be sustainable because otherwise it won't be around in the future. But, it's certainly a great perspective that you bring to the conversation, and we're really glad that we were able to have it with you here and hear about sustainability from the equipment side of the conversation, but we appreciate your making the time. 

Curt Blades, the Senior Vice President of Industry Sectors and Product Leadership at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the FARMSMART Podcast. 

Curt Blades 

Thanks for having me on today. 

Dusty Weis 

And that is going to conclude this episode of the FARMSMART Podcast. New episodes arrive every month, so make sure you subscribe to the FARMSMART Podcast in your favorite app and visit nutrienagsolutions.com/farmsmart to learn more. The FARMSMART Podcast is brought to you by Nutrien Ag Solutions, sound engineering and editing by Matt Covarrubias.  

The FARMSMART Podcast is produced by Podcamp Media, branded podcast production for businesses, podcampmedia.com 

I'm Dusty Weis. For Nutrien Ag Solutions, thanks for listening.