Dealers, farmers and Horsch team members from across the globe gathered in Cottage Grove, Minn., June 18, for the grand opening of the company’s new AgTec building, dubbed “the new heart of Horsch in North America.”

Attendees also got their first look at the latest additions to the Horsch equipment line, including a new Leeb sprayer with advanced boom control, the largest air seeder cart on the market, a 90-foot planter with 350-bushel seed capacity and more.

We caught up with Lucas Horsch, CEO of Horsch North America during the event. He tells us the goal with this new equipment is to increase productivity and overcome labor challenges.

“In the ag industry, we are lacking more and more people. Not because we don’t have people, but we don’t have the right people sometimes in the location where we are. The theme we talked about today is productivity. Now we are moving into the 90-foot planter market and the big air seeder market with up to 900-bushel tanks. On the other side, we’re driving our sprayer business forward. When it comes to weed resistance, we need to work more on our quality of application. There are two pieces to it. One is to slow down our operation sometimes, maybe go to a wider boom, and to raise our volume to have better coverage. I’m not disagreeing that you can go with lower volumes when the conditions are right, but with the climate today, we don’t always have the perfect conditions. Sometimes you have a windy day, or it’s too dry that the fine droplets are drying up too quickly.”

Their goal is to double the Horsch U.S. dealer footprint within 3 years.

Watch the full version of this episode of On The Record