More Power, Cheaper Buildings, Smarter Farms—The New Reality

Power bills, car payments, and grocery expenses don’t happen in isolation—they’re connected to choices about energy, vehicles, buildings, and the technology we use to operate them. We connect these threads to show how reliability, cost, and carbon influence everyday decisions, from the kilowatts that keep cities powered to the monthly payments parked in your driveway.

We start with the honest truth about the grid: reliable power remains crucial when demand rises and wind or sun are scarce. Recent federal funding decisions will support upgrades to aging coal plants for improved efficiency, water reuse, and, importantly, switching fuels to natural gas. It’s not a revival for coal but a transitional step as utilities work to add cleaner, more stable capacity. However, the financial challenges are significant. Plants designed to last 30–40 years are aging, and extending their lifespan by a few years can cost tens of millions—expenses regulators didn’t anticipate. Natural gas continues to be cheaper and cleaner than coal, while nuclear power leads in capacity factor, illustrating how hard it is to balance cost, reliability, and decarbonization.

Next, we look at the sticker shock of vehicle costs. With average new-car prices around $50,000, a higher percentage of buyers are exceeding the $1,000-per-month payment, often financing negative equity and extending loans to 70 months or more. Trucks and SUVs account for the bulk of these large payments, putting pressure on household budgets when insurance, fuel, or repairs rise. A practical alternative still exists: family sedans from Asian brands that continue to offer high quality at much lower prices, giving a sensible way to avoid payment fatigue if buyers value stability over other options.

Housing and climate intersect in an unexpected place: wood. Mass timber—such as cross-laminated and engineered wood—offers 12-story buildings that meet building codes, resist fire, and lower embodied carbon while cutting costs and speeding up construction. Lighter components mean smaller cranes, shorter schedules, and simpler logistics. Since buildings contribute to more than a third of global emissions, shifting from cement- and steel-heavy structures to wood where appropriate is a meaningful step without waiting for future technology.

Finally, we visit farms where technology is already solving real problems. AI-powered collars monitor cow health in real time, alerting farmers days before illness reduces milk production. Paired with precision agriculture—GPS mapping, auto-steer, drones, and sensors—these tools cut waste, labor demands, and input costs. When seventy percent of large farms use precision systems, it’s clear that data has become a vital part of modern farming.

If conversations like this help you understand the bigger picture behind the bills you pay, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review so more listeners can find us. Got a question or a take? Call or text 872-222-9793 or email talk@techmobility.show.

Chapters

• 1:11 Grid Realities: Coal vs Natural Gas
• 14:01 The $1,000/month Car Loan: The New Reality for American Motorists
• 22:23 Mass Timber As Affordable Housing Strategy
• 33:22 High-Tech Collars Transform Dairy Farming

Transcript

Speaker: 0:07

Welcome to the Tech Mobility Podcast. Brought to you by Playbook Investors Network. Your strategic partner for unstoppable growth.

Speaker 1: 0:15

Visit pincommunity.org to get started. I'm Ken Chester. On the Docket. The shocking facts about car loans? Why wood is the answer? And high-tech caller, no cowbells. To add your voice to the conversation, be it to ask a question, share an opinion, or even suggest a topic for future discussion, call or text the Tech Mobility Hotline, that number, 872-222-9793. Or you can email the show directly. Talk at Techmobility.show. For those of you who enjoy Substack, you can find me at Ken C Iowa. That's K-E-N, the letter C I O W A. I am a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Check us out. From the Tech Mobility News Desk, we talk a lot about the future of energy on this show. We've talked about the demands in the electric grid. We've talked about alternative fuels, alternative energy generation to operate the grid. I've got something here from Energy Tech Magazine. And we talked about how the federal government really is picking winners and losers, which makes them no better than the previous administration, but they are choosing now nuclear power. They're also choosing, if you can believe this, coal. Coal. Let me explain. The current administration, their Department of Energy, is allocating $100 million to upgrade existing plants. Now, to be clear, it sounds like a lot of money, but in these plants, it really isn't. One plant could take $20 to $30 million to update and retrofit. So consider it seed money. Because really not that much, and honestly, not nearly anywhere close to what they're spending in nuclear energy. We reported on that last week. But it is important to note that this could be, at the very least, a an extension of coal production, an extension of coal-fired plants. The article talks about how America has not built a new coal-fired power plant in over 10 years, with existing plants facing mechanical issues and retirements. Let me explain that for a minute. Like any capital-intensive business, when the plans were laid to build these plants 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago, they built it with a life expectancy in mind, typically about 30 to 40 years. They engineered it that way, all the materials they bought, they planned it that way, all the maintenance that was budgeted, the capital expenditures that were designed and baked into the plan was for that period of time. And you're looking at takes a while to build a plan. It's not something you're going to build in six months. It could take two, three years or more, depending on getting all the studies done, getting all the materials in, getting the thing built, putting it online. Here's the issue. For the last 20 years, actually a little more than that, there has been a move with a nudge from the federal government towards using natural gas. We talked about that. Natural gas being one cheaper because one of the advantages of the fracking and the shale oil development that has gone on in the last 25 years in the United States has yielded a bountiful crop of natural gas, making natural gas cheaper than coal, period. Full stop. Combined with the fact that it has less carbon in it. It's not carbon-free, but definitely less side effects and lower emissions, dirty emissions than coal, without all the nasty things that happen to the land, the piles of spent dirt and heavy metals that are a resultant of coal mining and coal processing that would leach into the water and make the water around the mines not good, particularly if they seeped into the aquifer. Then you got major problems. Natural gas sidesteps, all that problem. And yeah, I'm not talking about the fracking. That's a whole nother set of problems. But those set of problems were more localized than perhaps coal mining was. And that's just getting it to the plant. We haven't even talked about burning it. Both yield greenhouse gases. That's still an issue, whether you're burning natural gas or coal. But I continue. Federal funding initiatives to our aim to retrofit coal plants for better efficiency, water recovery, and get this now, fuel switching capabilities. And what they mean by that, the ability to burn coal or natural gas. Bear that in mind. Said a few minutes ago that it takes a while. What happens when you get to year 27, 28, or 29 of a coal plant with a 30-year life? You've done your maintenance up to that time, but this thing is tired. And it's looking at major upgrades if you're going to keep it open. And you're planning to take it offline. Since 2012, some 90 gigawatts of U.S. coal-fired capacity has been retired with at least another 50 gigawatts previously marked for closure by the end of the decade. That's right now. 130 gigawatts of electricity of generation power fired by coal has been taken offline or will be by 2030. From 2012 to 2030, those 18 years. The problem is very simple. Most utilities are regulated at the state level. What that means is there is a rate of return that they bake in, there's rate increases that they apply for to cover the cost of operation, and all has to be approved by a statewide utility board. And that's how they determine rates. If they choose to extend the life of a coal-fired plant that they had not planned to do, then you've got a whole bunch of issues. Because it's not two or three million dollars to upgrade this plant, it's 20, 30, or more million, assuming the plant can be extended, and that's only going to buy you maybe five years. So if you are a for-profit electric utility where you've got a demand out there that is demanding now, and you see the numbers going up, and you know that your renewables part of your business is not going to be ramped up enough and consistent enough to support baseload under heavy demand, then you've got a quandary. Where's that $20 to $30 million coming from? And is this plant worth doing it if your local utility won't give you the means to raise rates to keep the money, to raise the money necessary to fund the plant? Because remember, they had this all baked in over a 20 to 30 year period. What they've applied for, what they got approved for, all their budgets, all of that was for that period. They did not anticipate when the plant was built that they would be asked, required, or need to extend the life of the plant. This is where the feds come in. Coal-fired power is the most carbon-intensive, yet also maintains a high capacity factor comparable to natural gas fired generation, with nuclear being the highest capacity factor. It's dependable. In other words, they've got that in um hot standby, it means you can bring a coal-fired plant to generate electricity on real quick if you need that load, like now. Renewable energy, not so much. This $100 million is supposed to help and go with the additional $625 million that the administration had announced their intent to invest to expand and strengthen America's coal industry. I don't know if that's going to help Appalachia as much as one place in the United States where most of the coal comes from right now. Look up the Powder River Basin in the western part of the United States between Montana and Wyoming. Most of the coal that gets burned, most of the coal that gets consumed is transferred by rail from there. The 11 or 12 mines in the Powder River Basin produce most of the coal in this country. Appalachia still does, but not at the level that Powder River does. And if you are next to a major line like the Burlington, Northern Santa Fe or the Union Pacific, you'd know that. Monthly payments are up, down payments are down. State of auto loans is next. You are listening to the Tech Mobility Show.

Speaker 3: 10:20

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Speaker: 10:51

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Speaker 1: 11:24

To learn more about the Tech Mobility Show, start by visiting our website. I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. The website is a treasure trove of information about me and the show, as well as where to find it on the radio across the country. Keep up with the happenings at the Tech Mobility Show by visiting TechMobility.show. You can also drop us a line at talk at TechMobility.show.

Speaker 3: 11:57

That's where Playbook Investors Network comes in. We're your strategic partner for accelerating growth, navigating challenges, and capturing market opportunities before your competition does. Your business is more than an idea. Let's make it an impact. Playbook Investors Network. Your future starts here. Learn more at pincommunity.org.

Speaker 2: 12:24

New luxury economy car, the 610 two-door hardtop. It's loaded. Fully reclining bucket seats, up to 25 miles per gallon, high performance overhead cam engine, power assisted front disc brakes, electric rear window defroster, fully independent suspension, vinyl upholstery, unibody construction, tinted glass, rubber bumper guards, dozens of luxury features, and the most important luxury of all, an economy price.

Speaker 1: 12:46

Beautiful, isn't it? That was 1973. That was the Dotson 610, a compact that went for less than $2,000 brand new. And it was the tip of the spear that turned many American minds, hearts, and wallets towards Japanese makes when they found out that these little cars from Japan were reliable, got good gas mileage, and didn't fall apart. Something that Detroit would fight for the next 20 years to get their act together to build a small car that was actually worthy of the ones that they were competing against. Some of the vehicles that Detroit foisted on us back in the 70s and 80s and early 90s, oh my God, they weren't worth the sheet metal they were stamped from. But I digress. It was a time that Dotson, which was what Nissan was known by in America until the night 1982, 1983, when they adopted the Nissan name like they did in the rest of the world. That's what they were known as. And they created themselves, like Honda, like Toyota, a beachhead that would prove hard to beat by Detroit for years. With the average price of a new vehicle hovering around $50,000, it was only a matter of time until the industry saw the impact that, in fact, the impact of that fact of other areas of the car buying experience. In this case, it's the increase of the percentage of buyers paying more than $1,000 a month while others are offering less in the way of a down payment. What's going on? This is topic A. We have reported in the past the growing number of consumers that are staring down a $1,000 a month, $12,000 a year car note. That's in addition to any maintenance, gasoline, insurance, licenses, and fees, $1,000 a month. I'm going to let that settle for a minute. Even at $1,000 a month, without interest, it would still take more than four years to pay for the average transaction price, which is around $50,000. It would still take you a little over four years to do it. And that's at no interest. That's at zero interest if you were paying a thousand dollars a month. According to GM Authority, which is a magazine, and I also looked at Automotive News, the irony that is happening here is two things. One, if a person's paying $1,000 a month, most likely, 53% of those with that kind of payment went from like two and a half to five percent of everybody borrowing money for car loans to 17%. Almost one out of every five people buying a vehicle, a new vehicle right now, has a $1,000 payment, or God forbid, or more. A lot of those folks are upside down in their vehicle, meaning the vehicle they traded was worth less than they owed, and they gladly rolled that negative equity into the next vehicle. This has always been going on for years. But it's getting worse now. The average down payment, according to the experts, is about $6,250. And it's down. Typically they're looking for 10 to 20%. This is less than 20%, again, using the average price of a new vehicle. They're financing $48,000 over a period, and the average car loan length has crept up to a little, not quite six years, but 70.1 months. The problem is used cars ain't much better. The down payments are smaller, and the length of term, the average length of term for a used car, you're borrowing $29,000 and you're financing it for almost 70 months, still almost six years for a used car. Almost as long as buying a new one. Those payments, however, aren't a thousand dollars a month, but they're climbing. What we are seeing is a perfect storm of more and more expensive vehicles, America's continued love affair with SUVs and full-size pickups, which tend to cost more. Back in the days when cars were king, all this was lower and it was easier to do business. It's also the hidden reason why a number of Asian makes still make cars. You can buy a mid-size, you can buy a Nissan Ultima for mid-30s. And in fact, across the breadth, whether you're buying a Hyundai, a Kia, a Toyota, a Honda, you can get a very good car for less than 40 grand. And if you really sharpen your pencil, barely over 30. And if your pencil's really sharp and you can do without some things, you might be able to get it just below 30. And that's before the trade end. Problem is, Americans love their trucks. They do. Here is a here is something that just blew my mind. I'm gonna read all of this to you and I'm gonna save the best for last. These buyers are purchasing mostly pickups and SUVs. More than 53% of new car buyers are committed to a thousand dollar plus loan payment from January to July of this year, this year of our Lord, 2025, bought an SUV, according to Experian. 37% bought pickups. Now, let me blow your mind. They bought a brand new Ford F-150 and five percent of all these folks paying a thousand dollars or more a month. I've road tested F-150s, I've seen them 60, 70, 80 grand. What happens in this kind of economy where more and more buyers are coming in with less equity, taking a higher payment, and taking longer to pay it in order to get the number down? What kind of flexibility in your household budget does that leave? And if you are more than a single vehicle family like me, what do you do? These average payments are creeping up, they're not too far behind. You're looking at six to seven hundred dollars a month normally, which is high. Could this provide an opportunity that the Asian manufacturers have been waiting for by continuing to make cars? Cars don't cost this much, and you can buy them new. And it may be the way out. All I know is it ain't getting better, it's getting worse. And if the economy goes sideways, it's gonna get really bad. Automakers are having trouble now in specific models because of pricing. They're not moving like they should. And that's a whole nother problem if you've got a glut that you can't move and customers that can't afford your product. Switch them into used cars. Maybe. When it comes to affordable housing and slashing emissions, wood just might be the answer. This is the Tech Mobility Show.

Speaker 3: 21:20

You've got the drive, you've got the vision. Now you need the right partner to make it happen. At Playbook Investors Network, we power ambitious leaders with the tools, insight, and investment connections to move faster, grow stronger, and lead markets. We're more than advisors, we're your co-pilots in success. Because in business, standing still is not an option. Playbook Investors Network, fueling ambition and delivering results. Visit pincommunity.org.

Speaker 1: 21:52

Did you know that Tech Mobility has a YouTube channel? Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. Each week, I upload a few short videos of some of the hot topics that I cover during my weekly radio program. I've designed these videos to be informative and entertaining. It's another way to keep up on current mobility and technology news and information. Be sure to watch, like, and subscribe to my channel. That's the Tech Mobility Show on YouTube. Check it out. It's called mass timber, a laminated wood with properties that are stronger than steel and more cost effective. Couple that with the fact that wood is a renewable resource, while steel, often used in building framing, is made through an energy and emissions intensive process. It seems that wood's moment has made it across the pond to the United States. This is topic B. Like many things on this program, we have talked about this before, particularly in the Scandinavian countries, where they have used laminated wood and otherwise restructured wood by binding it together in different ways that make it stronger than steel, and in fact have built apartment buildings of wood. And I'm not talking one or two stories. Wood high-rises, imagine that. Replacing cement easier to work with. Cement, as I mentioned in the opening, cost in terms of it is energy intense. It takes a lot of energy to manufacture cement. Emissions. It is one of the most emission-resistant industries next to making steel. Cement and steel, two of the most decarbonization-resistant industries on the planet. Although they're trying to make some inroads with green concrete and green steel, but those are just a droplet in the ocean of the demand. And then you've got to there's an issue of getting it cost effective. It's great to be able to manufacture it, but you've got to be able to manufacture it at scale where it makes economic sense for folks to adopt it. I'm looking at the Boston Globe, of all things. And it's talking about, in this example, a new way to build affordable housing. And they're talking about one of Boston's in close-in um suburbs, Cambridge. And they talked about this design. The design is cutting edge. It would be built entirely from laminated wood, a new concept called mass timber, which is both more cost-effective and energy efficient. And what they're planning to do, particularly in the Boston area, because getting a owning a home, renting an apartment is prohibitively expensive. All three seventy three apartments planned there will be set aside for low and middle income residents. In order for them to do that, when they put pen to paper, it's got to make economic sense. If they can't basically make it work financially, it doesn't get done. This is a 12-story wooden structure. And in case you're wondering about laminated wood, it's actually fire resistant, if you can believe that, because of the way that it is made. Think about that for a minute. An opportunity to be more flexible from a renewable resource which is resistant to what you might expect typical wood would be, which would be bugs, rot, termites, fire, resistant to all of that. And has a cost advantage. It actually costs less, and another thing, it's lighter. Transportation cost, being able to manipulate it and put it into place and working with it, all of that has advantages because it's also lighter than comparable concrete or steel. Yes, steel has advantages of being able to be molded, stamped in almost any shape and weight-bearing and all that great stuff. But it's heavy and at cost. And the manufacturer of it has other costs to the environment in general and to the businesses that want to use it in particular. Another advantage about mass timber buildings is they can be constructed more quickly. Well, can you imagine? If you don't need the heaviest equipment in order to put up structures and you can use medium-duty equipment, your costs are going to be lower and availability is going to be better. You've seen the cranes. Those cranes are committed for months and years at a time, and it takes money, time, and talent to set that stuff up, and it costs so much an hour for those to operate. If you can build a building 10, 12, 15 stories high using this laminated mass timber, it's lighter, means I don't need the heavy equipment. I can build the building in less time, meaning it will save me money, and I can use less material, and it's at least 20 to 30 percent more cost effective. What's not to love? This has been happening already in Europe. So this is not, oh, it's new and it's untested. No, it's tested. We talked about it here a while back. And for certain, it would have to still meet code, fire code, and all the types of city codes required for any building going up. And Cambridge did not shortcut that. It still has to meet those those requirements, and it does, and it will. So, what do you think? Is wood the new concrete? A number of architects are rethinking their building materials for the future. They want to do their part to reduce carbon emissions at every step of the construction process. And I just said earlier, and I'm a broken record, but cement, concrete, steel are very hard to produce without carbon. Hence, decarbonization efforts are hard. This comes from, let's see, um, the un the Sustainable Engineering Laboratories at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. They explored sixty-two different structural systems with varying criteria of cost and efficiency. So they looked at all of this. Architects there are among a handful of designers in the United States who are honing in on a green building strategy known as embodied or upfront carbon reduction, which is recovering the amount of greenhouse gas emissions involved in every step of the construction process from manufacturing to transporting burying materials to the replacing and disposing of them once they are not any longer useful. We call it cradle to grave. The whole life cycle. Here's something you may not have known. Buildings account for more than one third of the world's carbon emissions each year. One third. One third. The goal is to lower building emissions long before the last thermostat is installed and the lights first switch on. So they're thinking about this even before the building gets used. In these examples that they did, the designers managed to eliminate more than half the initial estimates of embodied carbon by swapping out cement, one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions, for a more environmentally friendly concrete mix which uses recycled glass. Another opportunity in addition to wood. They're rethinking this, folks. Because it's real. It's something that needs to happen. Another type of wood they're using is something called cross-laminator timber. A reinforced wood product popular in Europe since the early 2000s that has more recently gained traction in the United States. And it requires much less energy than manufacturing concrete or steel. Forget cowbells. Cows wear high-tech collars now. We are the Tech Mobility Show.

Speaker: 31:18

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Speaker 1: 31:51

To learn more about the Tech Mobility Show, start by visiting our website. Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. The website is a treasure trove of information about me and the show, as well as where to find it on the radio across the country. Keep up with the happenings at the Tech Mobility Show by visiting Techmobility.show. That's Techmobility.show. You can also drop us a line at talk at Techmobility.show.

Speaker 3: 32:21

In business, opportunity doesn't wait, and neither should you. At Playbook Investors Network, we connect visionary entrepreneurs with the strategies, resources, and capital they need to win. Whether you're launching, scaling, or reimagining your business, our network turns ambition into measurable success. Your vision deserves more than a plan, it deserves a playbook that works. Playbook Investors Network, where bold ideas meet bold results. Visit pincommunity.org today.

Speaker 1: 32:53

Did you know that Tech Mobility has a YouTube channel? Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. Each week, I upload a few short videos of some of the hot topics that I cover during my weekly radio program. I've designed these videos to be informative and entertaining. It's another way to keep up on current mobility and technology news and information. Be sure to watch, like, and subscribe to my channel. That's the Tech Mobility Show on YouTube. Check it out. More and more, technology is finding its way down on the farm. For dairy farmers, it's the introduction of high-tech collars for their cows. The wearables help the farmer gather more data so that the animals are happy, and imagine, produce more milk. It's always about the money. This is Topic C. Let me tell you a story. And I'm getting this from the New York Times, if you can believe it. The cow at the edge of Tony Louder's dairy farm in Merced, California, held eleven gallons of milk and had a secret. In the next 48 hours, she would become sick. On many farms, the health signs would have gone undetected, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost milk. But thanks to a high-tech collar that each of Mr. Lauder's 700 cows were around its neck, fitted with movement sensors and Wi-Fi. He learned about the cow's diagnosis at 5 30 a.m. when his computer pinged with an alert about its biometric data. By 6 a.m., Mr. Lauders had given the cow a remedy of probiotics and warm water that solved the problem before it even began. Imagine that. Here's a bombshell for you. That sounds pretty revolutionary, right? Who do you think is the company behind this? And you'll never imagine who. Would you believe it's Merck, the healthcare company? Merck, they make these collars. And since these collars debuted in 2013, they've added new kinds of sensors and software to can you imagine this, cows with wearables, but they're calling them wearables. And artificial intelligence to help process the data. Each one of these cows wears this fancy collar that costs $3 a month per cow. But yet it yields so much information. And a lot of people think, particularly people who are not country folk and folks that may not be familiar with life on the farm, but over the last 20 years, technology has not only come to the farm, they've embraced it. They've had to. A bunch of things have come to fore which have inspired farmers who tend to want to stay in the business to embrace this technology. Start with the obvious. Fewer family members that want to come and take the take the farm over as the farmer gets older. Used to be a farm got handed down from generation to generation. Here in Iowa, we have hundreds of what we call century farms, farms that have been in the same family for over a hundred years. And we even have a smaller number of something called heritage farms. Those farms have been in the family for over 150 years. Same family. Those days are changing. They've seen what mom and dad has gone through to run the farm, and increasing numbers, they don't want to. Something else you may not realize. The current environment which provided so much labor to these farmers of immigrant employees, workers. With a reduction in that, farmers don't have the folk they need to run the farms they need to run. Have all come together. And these callers are just one example. To give you an idea, go back almost 10 years here in Iowa. The year is 2016. It is the farm, the annual farm progress show. They alternate between Boone, Iowa, and Decatur, Illinois every other year. In 2016, Case IH, a major farm tractor manufacturer, in 2016, 10 years ago, introduced two autonomous tractors. Did not require the driver to operate at all. One had a cab, one didn't. The kicker is that they just weren't prototypes. They showed video of the autonomous tractor working a farm in Kentucky. In real time. And the farmers operating all this stuff from his from his office at the house or in the barn. This is the future. This is the future. I can't think of the movie that starred Matthew McConaughey, but in that future, combines were completely running themselves. Farm combines. And in today's world, that's not far behind. Today's combines run, I mean, there's a plethora of information at the fingertips of the combine driver in terms of what his yield is in real time, the level of moisture, the crop that he's picking, whether it's corn or soybeans, all this stuff. And then there's auto steering, both for tractors and combines, where they aim this thing and they only got to turn the thing at the end of the row. All of this is happening. And in case you're wondering whether this is just, oh, just average, 70% of the large farms today in the United States of America use this technology. They call it precision farming. It includes the auto steering tractors, GPS maps, that track crop yields. 70%. And that's up from 10% in the early 2000s. This is a thing that has to happen, folks. For you to enjoy what you enjoy, whether it is regardless of the crop, regardless of the livestock. If there's a farmer involved, he is currently, or she is currently embracing all or part of what they call precision farming. Is it a thing? Last year, going back to the callers, the livestock monitoring industry in 2024 was valued at more than five billion with a B dollars. And that's according to Grandview Research, a market research firm. Farmers have long used technology to collect and analyze data, with the origin of precision farming dated back to the 1990s. By the early 2000s, 20 years ago, satellite satellite imagery changed the way farmers determined crop schedules, as did drones and eventually sensors in the fields. If you go back 60 years ago, the plan was to rotate between corn and soybeans. They'd plant maybe oats or alfalfa, something, and they would not harvest anything. They might cut the alfalfa and a chance to get the soil a chance to rebuild. But with all the nutrients they plant between ammonia and nitrogen and all this stuff and the herbicides they use per pound, corn, soybeans, corn, soybeans, corn, soybeans. They needed to get a handle because the flip side of that was a degradation of surface water quality, as all that stuff would drain into the creeks and the rivers and things. Plus, the increasing cost of their inputs demanded they get a handle on this stuff. They can't afford it. Cost of tractors, cost of fertilizer, cost of insecticide, cost of seeds. That and the falling availability of employment. They've got to mechanize. And they are. Merck, by the way, monitors over two million cows, or 20% of the U.S. herd. Case you were wondering. It's not just a single farmer thing. This is a real deal. 20% of the herd.

Speaker: 41:50

This is the Tech Mobility Podcast.

Speaker 3: 41:56

Every great business starts with a spark, but taking it to the next level takes strategy, connections, and capital. That's where Playbook Investors Network comes in. We're your strategic partner for accelerating growth, navigating challenges, and capturing market opportunities before your competition does. Your business is more than an idea. Let's make it an impact. Playbook Investors Network. Your future starts here. Learn more at pincommunity.org.

Speaker 1: 42:27

To learn more about the Tech Mobility Show, start by visiting our website. I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. The website is a treasure trove of information about me and the show, as well as where to find it on the radio across the country. Keep up with the happenings at the Tech Mobility Show by visiting Techmobility.show. You can also drop us a line at talk at Techmobility.show Are you tired of juggling multiple apps and platforms for meetings, webinars, and staying connected?

Speaker: 42:57

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Speaker 3: 43:26

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