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Justin Brady: From the Jethro’s BBQ studio, I’m Justin Brady, and this is the Iowa Business Podcast. Iowa fields already, and are going to, look way, way different than they do right now. Or maybe not, actually, because as we see new technology come out, robots coming– on the field, That’s a lot of money But believe it or not, there’s a little high-tech AI workaround to make the old stuff new again. That’s what we’re talking about today with Craig Rupp, the founder of Sabanto Ag. Craig, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it.

Craig Rupp: And thank you for having me, Justin

Justin Brady: Absolutely. Before we get started, everybody, as a reminder, Denton’s Davis Brown is one of the beautiful collaborators on this show. They don’t just collaborate, they don’t just help fund the show, they actually bring in their top attorneys to break down very difficult business issues for you. We just had someone in here talking about, Joellen Whitney talking about AI regulations and AI security, and why collecting tons of data at your organization and counting strokes and… That actually might not be a good thing. You might wanna be careful on that. Uh, Joellen discussed and broke down what leaders should do with AI and monitoring at the workplace. Make sure to check it out. It’s super cool. Only 15 minutes, and it breaks the whole thing down at iowapodcast.com/business. Craig, like I said, thank you so much for coming in here. I wanna start this out with some… You are an AI farm equipment ag dude, and I wanna start this out I wanna start this out with- um, there’s some cool Iowa stories, um, that I wanna break down for everybody, and one of them is Sac City. This is, like, one of The– This is like maybe Sac City might be a historical in the, in terms of AI ag

Craig Rupp: Uh, as a matter of fact, Sac City. It was, uh, in Sac City in 2019, the, a farmer’s first field was planted autonomously by a robot.

Justin Brady: And This was the first one that we know of in history? As far as I know, it’s the first one we know of, of actually going out and planting an actual farmer’s field And that was 2019 here in Iowa

Craig Rupp: 2019, myself and the Belcock brothers in Sac City, Iowa

Justin Brady: so, uh, you said autonomous planning, so break down how this works, then I’m gonna ask you about more stories. But back in 2019, we didn’t have fully autonomous robots yet. Um, but

Craig Rupp: Uh, yeah, we did. But

Justin Brady: wasn’t fully autonomous, but it was kind of fully autonomous because of what you did. That doesn’t make sense to the audience, but it makes sense to you. Break down how the technology kind of skirts around, like, full autonomous original equipment.

Craig Rupp: Yeah. So what I did was in 2018, I had this wild idea that I’m gonna st- I’m gonna bring autonomy into agriculture. And what, what could I do to basically send a message to the industry? And I thought, “I’m gonna pick the hardest field operation, planting.” And so what I did was I leased a JCB 4220, a 220-horsepower tractor. I went and bought a, a 18-row, 20-inch soybean planter, row crop planter, but I, I was planting soybeans ’cause I thought farmers would let me plant their soybeans. And then I threw it on the back of a Peterbilt 389, and I couldn’t get a truck driver, so I went and got my, my own CDL, and, uh, spent the winter developing this. And in the spring of 2019, I went out, and I had a list of farmers that were willing to try, uh, or see an autonomous tractor plant their bean fields. And, um, so I started in Sac City, Iowa, with Belcox, and then I, uh, headed to Nebraska, uh, and then I, m- uh, Minnesota, and then Illinois and Indiana.

Justin Brady: So this is, this is, interesting because you aren’t building the entire machine. You’re building a technology that goes on top of existing machines, correct? To, to simplify it.

Craig Rupp: Yeah. And, uh, so at the, at the time, and, and still to date, I, I view autonomy as an accessory to off-the-shelf equipment. And, uh, you know, farmers have invested a lot of capital in the tractors that they have, and instead of going out, having to spend, you know, $500,000 to a million. I mean, there, there’s a tractor now you can buy, it’s, it retails for about $1.2 to $1.3 million. And meanwhile, my, uh, um, my thoughts were, you know, your next generation tractor’s already just sitting in your machine shed. Mm.

Justin Brady: Mm.

Craig Rupp: And I didn’t wanna go through and build a brand-new tractor that happened to be autonomous. So I had some rules or principles or, or, uh, tenets of the company. Number one, um, I think autonomy is not an all or nothing proposition. Mm. Meaning that tractors will still have seats and steering wheels. And I, and I viewed autonomy like cruise control, meaning that, you know, nobody uses cruise control to back out of their garage. And there are times, trust me, there are times where I need to move this tractor from point A to point B. I don’t wanna go around, run around, look for a, a controller of some sort. It’s not gonna be charged. It’s gonna be lost. God knows where it’s at. I just wanna jump on the thing and move it from point A to point B. Meanwhile, tractors have, uh, they have use other than performing field operations. You can push snow in the winter. You can use them for all sorts of, all sorts of tasks, and creating, um, I guess a, a bespoke, a purpose-built machine for only autonomous field, field operations, I, I didn’t see that as a, as a good path going forward. Yeah. So this gives you a lot-

Justin Brady: of flexibility. How, how many, um, I guess just a wild question here. How many, uh, like antiquated or outdated or unusable, not unusable, machines do you think Iowa farmers, farmers in general, have sitting around that if you were just to retrofit or add on your autonomy tech on

Craig Rupp: No.

Justin Brady: could activate them? Like, is this A lot of machines yeah. There’s a, there’s a heck of a lot of machines out there. So the other, I guess the other principle or tenet that, that I– When I looked at autonomy, I thought, “Okay, great. It’s gonna solve the labor problem.” But I looked at it like it’s gonna go well beyond just solving the labor problem, and I think, I think it’s gonna fundamentally change agriculture- Hmm

Craig Rupp: and how field operations are performed. I think it’s gonna change the, fundamentally change the equipment industry. And I’ve been saying for years that I think we’ve peaked in horsepower, and I think autonomy’s gonna bring horsepower in the other direction.

Justin Brady: That’s interesting. You Mentioned ’cause that is one of the things people think about is if we can get a bunch of autonomous vehicles, um, that saves on labor costs. And obviously we’re not talking about laying off or firing people because farmers today, today, I mean since 2019 even, have been struggling to scale with labor costs. It’s already an issue

Craig Rupp: It absolutely is

Justin Brady: um, w- speaking of labor costs, what are we talking here? How much… Is this more of a farmers can stay at current staffing level, levels and scale? Is this more they’re all underwater right now in terms of productivity and can finally catch up? Is it a little of both? What does that look like?

Craig Rupp: Well, uh, let me, let me tell you the dirty little secret. Um, after I deployed about 50… I should say I, we deployed about 50 systems into the industry, I started to see a trend. You know how many people we replaced?

Justin Brady: How many?

Craig Rupp: Zero.

Justin Brady: Your autonomous tractor stuff replaced zero people so far.

Craig Rupp: Yeah. So farmer, farmers are adopting autonomy for one of two reasons. Number one, they wanna scale their operations with the people they have. So instead of having this person sit on the tractor all day, what they’re doing is th- they’re having them do more important work.

Justin Brady: Ja

Craig Rupp: Okay? A. And B, I’m seeing farmers that are using it, um, to reduce their capital expenses, exactly what I had forecasted. I can run… You know, that tractor I mentioned, um, you know, and I, I don’t wanna pick on John Deere, but the j- the 9RX 830, 830-horsepower tractor for $1.2 million. You can buy 18 100-horsepower tractors for that same amount of money. So you can get 1,800 horsepower, 18 little 100-horsepower tractors. You can buy 18 of them, 1,800 horsepower for that 830 horsepower. Now, if you look at it, it’s double the horsepower, and if you run one, if you run that 830 for 12 hours and the, the 100, you know, 100– 1,800 horsepower tractors for 24, you got 4X the amount of work that can be done compared to, uh, that 830-horsepower tractor

Justin Brady: So is it foreseeable then that there’s going to be, um, a, not a rush, that’s probably the wrong word, but are we gonna see farmers scrambling to buy or, or rejuvenate older equipment that they thought was obsolete?

Craig Rupp: I, I think, uh, you know, the older equipment is, is, is, is very, very manual. Oh, sure. Y- y- you know, if you, if you look at newer generation smaller tractors, you know, they’ll, they’ll have a shuttle transmission, easy to control. They’ll have, um, power brakes. They’ll have, you know, th- there’s, there’s, uh, there’s certain capabilities on the smaller tractors, uh, the newer, smaller tractors that, that are not on the older tractors. But I could see that. There’s, there’s quite a lot of, um, there’s quite a l- quite a lot of iron out there that still has some useful life

Justin Brady: Yeah. So break this down because at this point we’re explaining overall what it does and how it works kind of. Um, but break down how it works. Is it basically you attach a servo motor to the steering wheel and something, and a little actuator in the pedals, and then you attach cameras onto something, and then there’s a brain you devel- Like, How does this whole thing work? ‘Cause A lot of farmers are like, “I don’t know, man, like- …I know how to operate my thing. A robot’s…” That’s gonna be a heavy- haul to convert this thing into autonomous vehicle, but you’re Already. been doing this since 2019. So give farmers an idea of how they can convert Any almost any tractor or piece of equipment they have in their farmland and make it autonomous.

Craig Rupp: Yeah. Okay, so we support 24 tractor models right now. Mostly John Deere, some Kubota, and, and Fendt as well. Um, so you buy an autonomy kit, a retrofit kit from us, and it attaches to the tractor that you already have, one of the 24 models. And on it includes there’s a dual GPS GNSS receiver. There is, uh, connectivity, cellular modems, and we also support Starlink. Uh, there’s a controller on there, and then there’s a handful of actuators and sensors, and a hydraulic valve. That’s, that’s how we control the steering, through hydraulics right now. Oh.

Justin Brady: Really? Wow. okay

Craig Rupp: And then, uh, and then we have mission control up in the cloud, and what you do is you control it and monitor it from, uh, your cellphone or from your house. Um, you know, incidentally, you know, I’ll give you an example. I have a lady in Ames. Uh, what she does is she, uh, monitors 23 tractors at once. She’s doing it right now.

Justin Brady: Really? In Ames. In Ames. There’s a lady from Ankeny who works for us. Um, I will argue, um, and I will, I will wager that she covers more acres than any other farmer in the United States.

Craig Rupp: Last year, dude, she did about 300,000 acres by, by herself. By herself? Yep. And she’s never driven a tractor in her life

Justin Brady: hilarious because she’s just using this tech

Craig Rupp: And she’s using this tech, yeah. She controls tractors all the way from Florida up to Pennsylvania or to Texas and whatnot

Justin Brady: Oh, I didn’t even think about that because this allows people to be not geo- geo-locked to one little area. They can essentially farm the whole country with a very diverse set of agri- very diverse set of crops-

Craig Rupp: Yeah, and when one location. yeah, and what’s inter- yeah, what’s interesting too is, um, we’ve completely opened up the pool of available talent. Like I said, this lady’s never driven a tractor in her life, and right now she’s controlling 23 of them

Justin Brady: Yeah. And this is because it’s not just about the autonomy or remote controlling. Your, your technology also already knows how to drive tractors and already knows generally what they’re supposed to do, like seeding or- Absolutely It already knows that stuff It’s already programmed. Absolutely So Once- you do this stuff, so, so someone without tractor-driving experience, this might be the wrong way to say this. Farmers are probably like, “Tractor driving? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever…” But someone who has Never been in the been in a tractor in their life. theoretically could know how to drive tons of them

Craig Rupp: Absolutely, and that, and, uh, and, and we’ve proven it

Justin Brady: That’s crazy. So break down the use cases then. Like, ’cause I, I just struggled right there on use cases. I’m like, well, seating, because you already talked about that. What are you seeing people doing with this stuff?

Craig Rupp: Okay. Uh, so

Justin Brady: Some of us, and just some of our listeners, are business executives, some are investors, some are people in agribusiness, and some are me, right? So what are, what are the use cases that you’re seeing your customers do?

Craig Rupp: Okay, so, um, so another… So let me go back and, uh, another tenet is, um, you can’t be everything to everyone. And, and, and what we did was we focused on certain markets. And believe it or not, the first market we focused on, and we, and we came upon it, um, and it turned out to be, um, a wonderful market for– a beachhead market for us to go after. It was sod production. There are farms, they are, they… First of all, they are run by farmers. They used to be row crop farmers. They, they plant, they fertilize, they apply herbicides, insecticides. They are a farmer. The only thing different about them is they’re, they’re harvesting a different crop. They harvest sod.

Justin Brady: Interesting

Craig Rupp: You know, all the golf courses, the, the, the, the lawns, people, uh, when people, you know, get lawns installed, it c- it comes from sod farms. So,

Justin Brady: Interesting

Craig Rupp: every two days. Every square inch is every two days. Sod farmers do. Yep. Is it? Absolutely. You know, and to put things in perspective, I have one customer, um, you know, and they’re about a 10, uh, a little over 10,000 acre farmer, sod farmer, spread across multiple locations. They mow every two days. They cover over a million acres a year.

Justin Brady: Goodness. Wow. So this is really, this, uh, this m- this makes

Craig Rupp: 100,008, uh, 100,000 hours

Justin Brady: So you have to, I mean, it’s a strain I would imagine, correct me if I’m wrong, Craig, but it, I would imagine it’s a strain to find people that are just constantly mowing all the time and wanna sit in a tractor and just go up and down rows all the time

Craig Rupp: Well, okay, first it’s easy for th- you know, for their, uh, employees because they get to sit in an air-conditioned cab, but it’s mindless work. And, and so we went into that market and, and we’re doing quite well in that market. Um, in, in, um, in ’25 we started focused more on the row crop, corn and soybeans, and wheat. So I have farmers, uh, you know, I’ll give you an example. Uh, let’s start with wheat. I have a farmer in Montana, uh, he, um, had a quad track run- pulling a 60-foot planter and went out to look at new equipment. Brand new was gonna be over 2 million for a new tractor and a plant- and a seeder. Uh, used, he chiseled it down to about one and a half million. And, and if he, he went with three smaller, um, you know, 120 horsepower tractors with 15-foot seeders, his CapEx was, uh, under half a million dollars. So on day one, he, he just freed up a million dollars worth of, uh, capital. And you know what he used for his m- you know what he did with that million dollars? Bought more land. Yeah.

Justin Brady: Yeah, bought more

Craig Rupp: You know why? No. Land doesn’t depreciate, equipment does

Justin Brady: Yeah, and he can s- and he can service that land ’cause he has autonomous solutions. Yeah. Yeah. That’s crazy. So what we’re basically seeing is, as you pointed out earlier, we’re seeing farmers be able to scale, um, but without the added cost that comes with scale. This is what AI is doing for us. Um, more scale, more, uh, revenue for- farmers- Yeah but the costs that are normally associated with that aren’t there anymore. That’s cr- okay, so

Craig Rupp: so the other, so yeah, and, and the other point I wanted to make, imagine if y- imagine if you had a system that could farm, that could, that could operate on only 10,000 acres, and you had the opportunity to buy another 1,000 acres, right?

Justin Brady: Mm-hmm.

Craig Rupp: Uh, you’re gonna, you’re gonna spend another $2 million for larger equipment. So, and it, and it just, it turns into the hamster wheel of hell. And y- you know, get more, bu- you know, get bigger equipment, pay more. Yeah. And then, and then I think what autonomy’s gonna do as well is, um, it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be linear, meaning that y- you know, you buy another 1,000 acres, you get a- another smaller system, and it’s not gonna break the bank. And then you have r- you, you have redundancy. One breaks down, you’re still at, uh, you know, this farmer that has three of them. Yeah. One breaks down, he still has 66% throughput

Justin Brady: So y- you said something interesting, which you said the, the agriculture or farming, the practices of farming, I don’t remember how you said it, Greg, but you said something, this whole tech- tech in agriculture is going to fundamentally change, so it’s gonna look totally different. So when you say that, I think of the old school PC. It used to be the size of a bedroom, and they would have to load these things on trucks. It could process almost nothing, and Nowadays, we have these things I’m just gonna… We have these things, little cell phones- Yep in our pocket that are far more sophisticated, way faster than those huge machines. Is that what’s coming in agriculture, that kind of transition?

Craig Rupp: I think so

Justin Brady: What does that look like?

Craig Rupp: Well, you know, when I started the company, I, I, I, I looked at a- at, at autonomy as, you know, it’s… Will it solve the labor problem? And, and if you read any article by, you know, Successful Farming or some of these other trade magazines, they all say the same thing. They’re all… It’s all about labor, labor, labor,

Justin Brady: Sure, yeah

Craig Rupp: And, uh, you know, and I’ve said this multiple times, and it, it’s an analogy that I always use. To- uh, Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, what else did he invent? The phonograph, right? And, a- a- and people, people look at him like, “Oh, he invented the phonograph.” No, no, that w- that wasn’t… That, that’s not what he invented. He invented the, the ability to play back audio. That was his breakthrough. It wasn’t the phonograph. The phonograph was an application of his technology. And Justin, you know this podcast wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for him figuring out how to pa- play back audio.

Justin Brady: Mhm. look at music genres, um, record companies, AM/FM radio, podcasts, books on tape.

Craig Rupp: You know, uh, it’s all because that fundamental idea, “I’m gonna l- I’m gonna figure out how to play back audio.” They knew how to record audio 30 years before Thomas, Thomas Edison figured out how to play it back. He was the first one. The phonograph was merely, was merely, uh, an application o- of his breakthrough idea. I think autonomy is gonna solve the labor problem, yeah, but it’s gonna be like a phonograph. It, it’s gonna be… Yeah, that’s gonna be neat, but I think it’s gonna fundamentally change agriculture. I can see, I can see, um, horsepower coming in the other direction, and I’m seeing it today. I got farmers that, you know, historically they, they were using 150 horsepower. They went down to 75 horsepower.

Justin Brady: Really?

Craig Rupp: cheaper.

Justin Brady: Sure. Less energy.

Craig Rupp: Less… Well, yeah. Well, it’s- it’s… They’re running smaller. Yeah. They’re running smaller equipment, but it’s, it’s, it’s cheaper, A. And then B, y- you know, you, you get away from the death as well.

Justin Brady: So I honestly could see, uh, a day where, uh, f- um, you know, and when I started out, I started out farming as a service, meaning that I, I viewed autonomy as there’s gonna be companies out there that, you know, you want your field planted, right?

Craig Rupp: Um, somebody shows up with, uh, with an autonomous system and he kicks it off.

Justin Brady: Oh, interesting.

Craig Rupp: I could see You could see that as well. absolutely see Interesting.

Justin Brady: So farmers almost subbing out certain of, certain tasks in their fields and not having to have the cost of equipment at all.

Craig Rupp: To have the You know, the example I give is, uh, does anyone paint their house anymore, or do they… I mean, there are people that show up- Sure … and you tell them, “I want, uh, you know, Sherwin-Williams, um, this, this paint chip.” Yeah Okay. And they’ll go out and get all the paint, and they have all the equipment, and they just show up and they paint your house. Have a nice day

Justin Brady: Yeah, so like, uh, fertilizing or weeding or… Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s correct. Like, theoretically, you could have these systems doing weeding over multiple, uh, customers in agriculture, covering massive regions from very small operations. Wow. Um-

Craig Rupp: we’re a startup and we, we partner with other startups. And, uh, what’s interesting is, uh, uh, you know, we’re, we’re like, uh, Verdant Robotics out of California, they’re one of our, uh, integration partners. So they’re making a, a, I guess an AI-controlled weeder which selectively sprays weeds, and we pull it. And we communicate with them and they communicate with us

Justin Brady: You’re talking a lot about using, I mean, kind of a, a lot of sustainable ideas, right? Reu- reduce, reuse, recycle, using old equipment, retrofit, don’t buy new. Have you created some enemies? Like, um, you know, telling people you can use your existing stuff. You don’t need to upgrade to this million-dollar machine. Are there companies that are like “Hey, Craig, we don’t like to see this stuff.” Um, you know, in ag, in autonomy in ag, who are the enemies of disruption?

Craig Rupp: Um, let’s, let’s just look at agriculture. You have your 800 pound gorilla.

Justin Brady: Mhm.

Craig Rupp: I’m not a gorilla So I, what, what I’m doing is I, I’m doing something totally different than anyone else is doing.

Justin Brady: Yeah

Craig Rupp: Yeah. And, um You know, I think people look at it skeptically. You know, I, I, I give this example. A year ago, had I said publicly that there’s gonna be a day when someone’s gonna plant their entire soybean and corn crop autonomously- Mm-hmm everyone would laugh. I mean, everyone would’ve

Justin Brady: So true, Yeah.

Craig Rupp: Yeah. And you know what? It happened this spring. Right.

Justin Brady: Wow

Craig Rupp: Kentucky Affinity Farms, right? Farmer, um, you know, basically was told, um, “You need to get rid of two of your John Deere 8Rs and your, uh, two of your 40-foot planters.” And he’s like, “Well, how am I gonna pl- plant my crop?” And they said, “Figure it out.” And so he stumbled across us and, um, you know, Quint Pottinger at Affinity Farms planted every last acre of his rye, soybeans, and corn autonomously.

Justin Brady: Everything.

Craig Rupp: Everything.

Justin Brady: Yeah. Not …Wow. And so this was, this is a first for your company then?

Craig Rupp: Yeah

Justin Brady: Wow. And this was this year, um, someone planted, a customer of yours planted the, those three c- crops

Craig Rupp: All autonomously In Iowa? Kentucky Kentucky one of–

Justin Brady: your customers- Right … all autonomously. First time it’s ever happened.

Craig Rupp: First time

Justin Brady: Wow. So I guess, is this one of those areas then that’s pretty m- pr- pretty blue ocean, or are there Have you received word from some companies that would prefer you don’t pursue this? Or, or is everyone pretty much supportive?

Craig Rupp: I think everyone’s pretty much supportive. I, I think competition is good. I think it keeps everyone on their toes, you know, and try to, uh, second guess the other guy. But, you know, we’re, we’re doing things differently, you know? And I, you know, I didn’t wanna go out and, uh, um Uh, you know, take a large 500 plus horsepower tractor and automate that. Uh, that’s not the future I see. I’m, I’m skating to the puck, to where the puck’s gonna be, not to the puck

Justin Brady: So the future’s not gonna be these scalable, massive, bigger and bigger machines in your opinion.

Craig Rupp: In my opinion.

Justin Brady: smaller, lighter machines?

Craig Rupp: The future doesn’t roar, it

Justin Brady: What does that look like?

Craig Rupp: whispers. Uh, I s- I see, um, I see m- multiple smaller systems. Um, number one, they’re a heck of a lot cheaper. Um, you know, they’re Um, they’re redundant, meaning if one breaks down, I still have, uh, throughput. Um, they’re, they’re easier to work on

Justin Brady: Oh, that’s a good point. Especially critical right now with all the right to repair controversies happening all

Craig Rupp: Absolutely. And you go into, uh, you know, if you, y-y-y-you know, some of this equipment is so large, you can’t, you can’t work. You don’t have the facilities. Second, well, speaking of that, it’s easier to, to shed or to store.

Justin Brady: True. Sure, smaller, yeah

Craig Rupp: you know, you go into Montana, they don’t– you know, the equipment’s so large there that they just don’t have the machine shed to hold it.

Justin Brady: Sure. What, what’s gonna be true in the next 10 years that isn’t true now? Like, one of the guesses I have is people have to sleep, and so maybe one thing that’s gonna be true in the next 10 years that isn’t now is farming operations happening at 2:00 to 3:00 AM in the morning. Um, that could be, or especially if people are using night vision, they wouldn’t even need to run lights. So

Craig Rupp: we’re already there already doing that. Yeah, I’m doing that, yeah So what’s gonna be true then in the We, we’ve-

Justin Brady: that isn’t true now in farming?

Craig Rupp: We’ve ran systems two and a half weeks nonstop. Um, you know, you cut a little, uh, you know, 10-foot, uh, roller, uh, in Montana on a 1,300 acre field, it’s gonna take a while. Um, so we’re, we’re doing that already.

Justin Brady: Night farming. Night farming.

Craig Rupp: Night farming … night farming. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Justin Brady: Goodness. And you said Nonstop These things just keep going nonstop? I mean, now you gotta refuel they’ll but Goodness

Craig Rupp: put, uh, saddle tanks on it, and they’ll get over 24 hours of use before it, uh, r- runs out of fuel.

Justin Brady: So you can,

Craig Rupp: And it doesn’t run out of fuel. We, we, we monitor the fuel level, and once it gets down to about, uh, less than 5%, we pause and then shut down in the middle of the night even. Oh.

Justin Brady: So that’s another thing is, excuse me, they’re, they’re actually sending these things out there, and then it’s out of sight, out of mind because the system will tell them when it needs more fuel.

Craig Rupp: Absolutely. Yeah, and it goes, it, it’ll just go to, go to sleep when, “Oh, well, you know, no one’s coming out for fuel, so I’ll just go to sleep.”

Justin Brady: Sure

Craig Rupp: So the systems, uh, you know, I have farmers, they, they, they tell me, you know, they kick it off at, like, 8:00 at night, and so you can remote start it and kick it off, and, and so what they do, and then this thing runs all night long and, you know, 3:00 in the morning it, it gets done, it shuts down, and they show up at, you know, 7:00 in the morning and voila, this field’s completely done, and there it’s sitting

Justin Brady: Outside of efficiency, are there… And, and this is maybe a, a, a question where you’re like, “No, but it’s just efficient.” That’s just fine. Outside of efficiency, are there any benefits to night farming?

Craig Rupp: Um

Justin Brady: There may not be, but I figured, I wonder if There’s some advantage to like the sun’s not out, plants are in a dormant state, or I don’t know. I’m, I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m not a farmer, but I was just kinda curious if you’ve gotten any feedback.

Craig Rupp: You know, there, there is, you know, there is a dew issue that at night that, that could be an issue. Um, but they routinely, yeah, they do routinely run them at night

Justin Brady: Wow. That’s cr- yeah, that’s crazy. Uh, final question. Anything else? um, that is going to be true in 10 years that isn’t true now?

Craig Rupp: Yeah, I think, uh, and the other thing I wanted to add too about why go smaller, it’s a resell market. There’s a secondary market for your tractor. Like you, you take… You know, it’s like you never wanna buy the most expensive house on the block.

Justin Brady: Sure. yeah

Craig Rupp: Okay, imagine if you had, imagine if you went out and bought a $1.2 million tractor. You, in two years, “I wanna get rid of it.” Who’s gonna buy that? Mm. It’s a very small number of people that would buy a used $1.2 million tractor that, that once cost 1.2 million.

Justin Brady: Mm-hmm

Craig Rupp: Um, I’ve got a farmer who has got three 5120M John Deere tractors. It’s 120-horsepower tractor. Um, he’s 10,000 acre. He could sell it to someone who’s a 2,000 acre farmer who needs one.

Justin Brady: Mm-hmm

Craig Rupp: He could sell it to the hobby farmer. He could sell it… I mean, that’s a very valuable tractor, and it’s got a secondary use and a secondary market for Yeah.

Justin Brady: no kidding

Craig Rupp: Whereas, you know, the population or the s- the, the number of people that would buy a, let’s say an, a $750,000 tractor, it’s… Eh, there’s not a lot of, there’s not a lot of people out there that would do that

Justin Brady: Yeah. I mean, the technology’s absolutely fascinating, and it, um, your approach really matches, uh, some of the, um, uh, really prolific CEOs out there that are saying, Guys AI and autonomy isn’t coming for jobs. It’s actually going to probably add jobs, but it’s gonna allow people to scale way faster without added crazy cost.” And that’s what you’re already seeing with your tractors that are in the fields right now, which I think is a hopeful story. Craig Rupp, the founder of Sabanto Ag. If people wanna reach out, farmers wanna reach out, ask questions, what’s the easiest way for them to do that?

Craig Rupp: You can go to our website, sabantoag.com, or hit us up on Facebook, Sabanto, um, or Twitter, Sabanto Ag

Justin Brady: Sabanto Ag, and this is Craig Rupp, the founder. Thank you so much for coming on the Iowa Business Podcast.

Craig Rupp: thank you for having me, Justin. I appreciate it