Thank you.
That’s the theme of our latest podcast. We hit a big one – 100 episodes, and this is one milestone that deserves to be celebrated. And that’s just what we did – by saying thanks.
Thank you to our guests. Without you, this podcast wouldn’t have quality information to share with our listeners.
Thank you to the team members who help produce and create the episodes each month.
But most of all, thank you to our listeners. What started as a dream to share information has grown into a real connection with growers, learners, and ag lovers all over the world.
So, thanks for tuning in – we can’t wait to keep sharing with you.
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Read the full transcript of Ep. 100:
Tony Kramer: Hey, this is Tony Kramer, product specialist with RDO Equipment Company and you are listening to the Agriculture Technology Podcast. Every day there are phenomenal advancements being made in the field of agriculture technology. RDO Equipment Company is a leader in agriculture equipment and precision agriculture technology and is here with the industry experts to bring you the latest news and information from RDO and John Deere. Thanks for joining us on the Agriculture Technology Podcast.
Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. This is episode number 100. Today we have a special show for you. Before we dive into the show, please take a moment to subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already. You can subscribe to the show on the many different podcasting apps, we're streaming this to such as Apple's podcast app, it's on Stitcher, Overcast, SoundCloud, as well as many others. While you're out there, drop us a review. We would love to hear what you think about the show. Lastly, make sure to follow RDO Equipment Company on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and catch all of our latest videos on YouTube. You can also follow me on twitter @RDOTonyK.
Now with that, let's get back into the show. Like I said, we do have a special episode for you today. I don't have a guest with me here. It's just myself, Tony Kramer, the host. We hit a pretty big milestone for us with this podcast, and that is Episode 100. We've been at this for a couple of years now sharing information and bringing industry experts in to talk about what's going on in the ag industry, and we think hitting Episode Number 100 is a pretty big milestone so we wanted to do something a little different. What I want to do today with this show is just talk a little bit about what the podcast has evolved into, what we kind of started with, what it's gotten into now, as well as what is to look forward to in the future and what we hope to bring to you listeners and everybody out there.
The first thing I want to do is just introduce myself. I am Tony Kramer, I've been the host of the podcast since July of 2016. I grew up in Hector, Minnesota, which is a smaller town in South Central Minnesota. I come from a farming family. My dad still farms with four of his brothers back home. I moved up to the Fargo-Moorhead area for college and just stayed up here. I got a job with RDO Equipment and found my way in ag business. I guess you could say, holding a couple of different positions. I did sales for a while, and then most recently being on our product specialist team in the Red River Valley.
It's really been a unique opportunity to be a part of this podcast, something I never thought I would ever do being in the ag industry. It's a really, really awesome adventure and just learning as things go and hopefully sharing relevant information with you listeners and everybody out there. The next thing I want to do on my list is just start with a very big thank you to the listeners. If it wasn't for all of you guys subscribing, listening, sharing comments, we wouldn't have a reason to do this show, we wouldn't have anybody to share it with. I want to start out by saying thank you very much to all of the subscribers, all of the listeners, please continue to share this podcast, talk about it. We really enjoy hearing feedback about it and getting that feedback from you listeners.
Starting from the beginning, so the show started back in February of 2016. It's really grown into so much more than what we expected it to be. The original idea behind this show was to get information out to our dealership employees, as well as some of our local RDO customers. It grew into so much more than that. Across the world, we have people listening to us, many different countries all over the place. Just a few different metrics from the day we started the show on February 3rd of 2016 until today, we've got over 129,000 listens. Like I said, they're coming from all over the world.
Our top three countries, of course, United States, Australia, and Canada are the three countries that topped the charts, but we have stuff coming in from New Zealand and Africa and just all over the place, and we never expected that. For those of you out there from those other countries, it's awesome that we're able to share messages through the podcast and talk about precision agriculture and different practices that are happening out there.
Another thing that I want to share with everybody is some of the top episodes that we've had out there. Something that you could maybe go back to and listen again or share it or whatever it may be. The top episode, not a surprise to me, but back in, I believe it was February of this year, February of 2019, I got the opportunity to sit down with Zach Johnson or who most of you would know as the Minnesota Millennial Farmer, huge YouTube personality. His channel is awesome to watch. I would suggest going out there and listening to that podcast episode if you haven't already.
We talked about the value of a YouTube channel or the value of social media when it comes to agriculture. Shout out to Zach Johnson, the Minnesota Millennial Farmer, go listen to that episode. It was a really fun one to do. Some of the other episodes that topped the charts recently were we talked with Bruce Erickson of Purdue University discussing precision ag adoption. That one was episode number 94. The Minnesota Millennial Farmer episode, that was 86. Another big one for us was with Jason Ward of North Carolina State University talking cotton, precision Ag and cotton and where the opportunities are in that industry.
Those are just a couple of the episodes we have out there that really were big episodes for us and big hits. I also want to take a moment to thank a lot of people that have really been a big help to this show, whether it be being a guest on the show or out there promoting the show and being advocates of the Agriculture Technology Podcast. One of the things is talking Bruce Erickson of Purdue, Jason Ward of NC State. I also want to give a big shout out to Terry Griffin down at K-State.
All of those education professionals they've been a big help with this podcast to share some of the unbiased information and research just to get that information out there. It's a really unique perspective to hear from them because they spend hours and hours and even years doing all of this research and this studying, and for us to get the opportunity to share it on the podcast is a great thing, so thank you to all of the education professionals that we've had on the podcast. I also want to thank the numerous RDO and John Deere employees.
We've had a number of internal RDO employees on the show, as well as a number of John Deere employees talking specific products and different things that have come up and come through, maybe it's new technologies or new features. Huge thanks to them. There's so many other people that I can't even begin to list off because this would go way past our 15 to 20-minute episode mark. All of the other industry experts and industry professionals that we've interviewed on this podcast, whether it be from equipment manufacturers to software companies or other technologies that are being utilized in the ag industry, I just want to extend a very big thank you to all of you that have made this podcast possible and bringing it to where it is today.
One of the other things that I told you guys we would talk about here just a little bit is what do we have to offer in the future. One of the things that we thought is so unique about our podcast is our ability to record remotely. In the past, you've maybe seen or listened to some of the, what we call the In The Cab episodes and it's a really unique perspective as far as RDO goes to be in the cab of a combine or a planter tractor or whatever it may be, hearing the sounds of the display, the roaring or lugging of the engine, that's really unique. That's one thing that we want to do in the future is bringing more In The Cab episodes to you listeners to get a really unique perspective about what's going on out in the field as we're going up and down the field.
Another thing is any new technology that's on the horizon, of course, this is the RDO Agriculture Technology Podcast, so we try to talk to people and talk to industry experts that have cutting-edge technologies, something that's really going to change the industry of agriculture. Then, of course, any idea that you listeners have. If you have an idea, if there's a company you work for or a product idea that you think would be a great opportunity to share, please share it with me. Reach out to any of the audio social media channels as well as myself on Twitter. We would really love to hear more from you about different ideas and topics that you want to listen to.
One last thing I would like to do is extend a very big thank you to two people that within RDO that are a huge help in making this podcast possible. One of them being Jessi Zenker, she is amazing, she is part of our communications team. Jessi does an awesome job behind the scenes making sure that these episodes get posted and we're doing all of that type of stuff on the backside. Along with that, I want to extend a big thank you to Jim Erickson our audiovisual producer. He's the one that as I sit here and stutter on my words and sneeze or cough that everything that you guys don't hear, Jim is the amazing mind behind all of the editing and everything going on to make this a very high-quality production sound.
Thank you to Jessi and Jim and everybody else that has ever been a part of this podcast. I really look forward to it doing more with this podcast. It's been fun. We really think it's a unique opportunity or a unique form of media to share information with growers and customers and people in the industry, outside the industry. Whatever it may be, it's really a unique platform to do that on. Again, thank you to all the listeners, all of the subscribers. We really look forward to sharing more information with you in the years to come.
