1. I can’t speak for 55 years ago. I had then just graduated from high school, but later in life, in the late 70s/early 80s, I had a short stint involved with in-parlor-feeding in the dairy industry, just as electronic recordkeeping started to take off. I have since then had little insights in the dairy mechanization segment of our industry, but I’m confident that the robotic milkers by Lely and others are the most significant innovations since the 3-legged milking stool.

I have had more experience with crop production and, from my perspective, drip-irrigation drastically changed farming practices in arid climates and traditional equipment had to be adapted to this. In addition, a whole new set of implements had to be invented to manage the drip tape (see Andros Engineering).

A drastic change to the fall landscape in cotton country has been the extremely fast acceptance of the round modules in cotton harvesting with the related developments in technology for handling them.

2. CRM software and interactive websites made it possible for our small company to stay in contact with 2,000 dealer stores across 49 states and 9 Canadian provinces. No way you could do that using vehicles and binders with brochures like we did way back when.

3. Bill Fogarty’s columns were the trusted introduction for me to the North American farm equipment industry when I came to this country as a Product Support Engineer attached to Gearmore in California. Farm Equipment continued to be a valuable source of information throughout my 40-year career in the shortline industry.

In fact, a certain Frank Lessiter also contributed to my education early on, especially about the virtues of conservation tillage in any form or fashion starting with a Ridge-Till Summit in Minnesota in the 1980s.

Bill Fogarty went with us to the SIMA exhibition in Paris, France in 1988 as a part of the contingent of the old FEWA (now EMDA) group. It’s when and where I discovered front-hitch technology that eventually became my business for the next 30 years.

As our company became involved with automatic guidance, Farm Equipment’s Precision Farming Dealer Summits became an effective vector for us to reach and network with the main movers and shakers in this segment. It’s a lot of bucks, but we get more bang for them compared to a traditional farm show.”