Here at Decoder we spend a lot of time talking about electric cars and the future of automobiles, usually passenger cars or perhaps goods trucks. But there is also another large sector that could benefit from electric transportation: agriculture.
This week I hosted the Code Conference where I had the opportunity to speak on stage with Pravin Penmitsa, CEO of Monarch Tractor. Honestly, this was one of my favorite conversations of the entire event.
We as a species are completely dependent on agriculture and agriculture is completely dependent on tractors. If we didn't have tractors we wouldn't have food. But electrifying farms is difficult, and Praveen explained how he and Monarch are trying to solve the problem.
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Praveen and I managed to cover most of the scenario in a relatively short time. Agriculture is a very old business and it is difficult to make big changes. Praveen will tell you that the average farmer only gets 40 bulbs when he repeats the process: 40 growing seasons. Pravin believes there are many opportunities for farms to transition to off-grid electric equipment without disrupting the 40-year growing cycle. Of course, your company has many opportunities to benefit from this transformation.
"Kings have three ways of making money," he told us. Of course there is tractor technology. Real cars for sale. There is a subscription fee and Monarch charges recurring fees for its software platforms, which are smart tractors as a service. Then there's the license: Monarch has an agreement with Case New Holland to use its platforms. The plan is to openly compete with private platforms like John Deere, and Praveen said his goal for the Monarch platform is to turn it into an agricultural robot.
Well, I'm Pravin Benmetsa, CEO of Monarch Tractor. As the
This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Hey, tell us a little about Monarch and what 's going on with this tractor .
That's why our mission at Monarch Tractor is to look at how we can make agriculture sustainable and farmers profitable. It may surprise most of us that less than half of the country's farmers actually make money, less than 42%. Much of our agriculture is unsustainable in terms of chemicals, but also in terms of how we use our resources, from water to fertilizers.
We decided to build a small tractor designed for farmers who grow fruits and vegetables. This is where most of our food comes from. It is electric, autonomous and intelligent. This allows farmers, for the first time, to get a tractor that will generate new income, using all the data collected during on-farm operations. So it's a popular form factor.
So when I look at this tractor, I say, "Okay, we can sell this to a lot of people and I still have the steering wheel. It has a battery." But this is full of sensors, go look outside. Covered in cameras and sensors. It has built-in machine learning. Towards self-government. It has a software platform that can control multiple tractors at the same time.
There is a long way to go between farmers who grow fruits and vegetables and someone who has been managing everything since the 1980s through an offline platform. How are you now? It's been a little over a year. Where are we on the journey?
So in December we put our tractor into commercial operation. We are now the only autonomous electric car you can buy. I am very proud of this fact.
You can do whatever you want on the farm. This is a problem in the future.
Exactly. And the fact that we've reached commercial scale... that Foxconn, our electronics manufacturer, is going to create a smart electric machine for farming outside of Ohio tomorrow, is huge. That's why we have more than 200 of these machines working on the farms.
These are clients, not test units. Did you sell 200?
They are clients. Last month we delivered over 75 tractors to customers, trained them, and hit the ground running. It is for this reason that autonomous electric cars are now used.
Do you collect data on these tractors as customers use them?
And this is the most important part because the tractor is in the center of each farm because we see all the operations from the first day that the agricultural activity begins until the post-harvest when everything stops. So, using our cameras, we get data on who, what, where, when and how, as well as what is happening on the farm. And, above all, how… how do they grow? All this is provided by our artificial vision systems: 3D cameras in addition to standard cameras. And then we bring in a lot of AI experts and data scientists to feed that data into a series of curated data lakes where we can get insights and reports on the entire ecosystem.
When I hear things like that, I think, “Well, you've created your own data system and the farmers are locked into it and will eventually enter into some kind of subscription contract with you and the tractor. Just the beginning of a long and winding relationship. That's all. I say that because that's how John Deere works , right? And a lot of farmers say, "Well, John Deere collects a lot of data." They will sell us the seeds." It's all happening. Is this your business model or will it be more open?
No, we are completely different from this world. That's why I created Monarch Tractor to change that. Currently, farmers cannot correct their data or even diagnose their tractors without obtaining approval from the original manufacturer. At Monarch, we license our technology to all tractor manufacturing companies. One of our key partners, Case New Holland [CNH Industrial], is the second largest tractor company in the world after John Deere. We gave them our technology and they are in our data stack.
Basically, we become Android Farming and the entire ecosystem can access our data lake through our APIs and provide reports. We're more than happy to share what comes out of our jars with everyone in the food ecosystem, not just farmers. It could be you and me. Today, you and I live in a world where we know more about the DoorDash person who delivered our food than we do about the person who actually grew it, and that's what has created this vicious cycle in our food ecosystem.
When you think about this approach, robotic farming, it's a great phrase. To continue the analogy, at a high level, the iPhone doesn't seem like much of a threat to Android, right? Will you be playing Open Always Wins here? Or are you saying there will be a huge market and we will live in a more closed market?
No, it would be a huge market. Today we sell only 3 million tractors a year and we have more than 2 billion hectares of agricultural land. I'm not talking about pastures and things like that or farmland. In comparison, 70 million cars are sold every year. This also represents the difference and capabilities of intelligent agricultural machinery.
In short, we will need more machines like this in the next 10 years if we stop using chemicals and do more things on the farm. So these 3 million will continue to grow. It's really grown in the last five or six years. This market will explode. New participants will appear in this market. We see it. We attract people from the food ecosystem, not just the hardware ecosystem. We're seeing resource companies, like fertilizer companies, now creating devices. So this whole market is going to explode, and our idea is to achieve this by providing them with the technology that will allow them to create intelligent and autonomous electric machines for agriculture.
Is it your income (platforms and technologies) or the sale of tractors?
Now we make money in three ways. We sell tractors, yes we make money from the machine. We also sell subscriptions to our Connect and Automate platforms, which are digital subscriptions paid to us by farmers. But the third source of income is licensing. Now Case New Holland is our number 1. They have already announced two tractors equipped with Monarch technology. And now they're using our word, which is an open ecosystem, to differentiate themselves and create a whole new playing field in the agricultural market compared to what John Deere is doing. In summary, there are three sources of income: hardware, digital subscriptions; and/or your license. We have already unlocked all three. So it's not hopes and dreams. All three are included in our balance sheet. So the market is ready.
I grew up in Racine, Wisconsin, and every day of my life I passed a KISS factory. You can see why I'm obsessed with tractors. Let's talk about the real-world physical challenges faced by an autonomous electric tractor, whether it's yours or someone else's using the platform. Same problem with cars, right? The CEO of Rivian was here yesterday. Someone asked him: what would happen if this thing caught fire? It's hard on the road. What if this happened in some areas? How to protect batteries? How to get batteries? How will it work?
So there are a few things. First of all, agricultural materials are very complex in terms of strength and durability. The shock loads that the tractor sees every day will set off the vehicle alarm, deploy the airbags, and immediately shut down the battery system for safety. We see it every day. Also the amount of movement we see: uphill or on our rooftop system, where our GPS sometimes moves about two and a half feet. So how do you achieve a few centimeters of precision when the tractor platform itself moves its feet?
First of all, there are a number of technical problems. Secondly, from a safety point of view, we can benefit from all the work we have done on both electric vehicles and autonomous platforms. In this way we can put ourselves on the shoulders of all the people who do this work in urban mobility, but looking at it in a different way. The problem we have in agriculture, not only from the point of view of power, is the margins. Farming is a low-margin business, which means we must offer value to the farmer from the beginning.
If you told farmers that the payback period would be four years, you and I would be surprised: they would walk away. Therefore, it will take several months for farmers to recoup the investment before they actually buy it. Therefore, we had to ensure that the tractor saved diesel consumption. It was a wonderful discovery of independence. Tractor drivers are very experienced operators; If they don't do the job right, it will affect your pay after six months. These are the problems we solve today, the product problems.
Is there consensus on the independence of farmers? Do they say, "Well, let the tractor drive itself"?
Now I enjoy information from automotive equipment manufacturers. But in reality, in our independence, the commitment level is 30%. I'll tell you what it means. This means that 3 in 10 of our customers pay an annual subscription of more than $8,000 for battery life.
And I said, hand me the tractor, go, good luck. How can you be sure it's safe? There are rules on the roads, there are laws, there is the Ministry of Transportation. What happens in the company if the tractor is dismantled?
This is where security modes come into play. Yes, everything is still geogeside. We have a complete implementation team that helps them from day one. This is similar to enterprise software implementation. Where we come in and say, "We'll train your entire team." Let's set it up. We can help you create a geographic map of what your neighborhood looks like. We will tell you what the first line looks like, the last line, the middle line, check the connection. Then you can start using processes. When in doubt everything stops. This autonomy is controlled. This is not a remote operation. This is controlled autonomy. So a manager can go in and monitor six or eight tractors at a time and say, "Oh, this thing is asking me for information."
Is this your administrator on your subscription or this farmer?
Under the control of farmers. When I say supervisor, we hire the current tractor driver. Something that surprised me 10 years ago was the popularity of Uber in countries like India. I went there and this boy from the village, who didn't speak the same language as me, managed to drive the car and take me to my destination. The whole deal went through and he was able to make money. If they can do that, can we offer an existing tractor operator the opportunity to operate a fleet of six or eight tractors with appropriate technology divestment? Yes, we can and we are working on it.
It is clear that farmers are very concerned about sustainability and recovery. This is what worries people about electric cars. How long does this battery last? How durable is this machine? How much do repairs cost?
This is a great question. Tractors are often used for long periods of time for two reasons. First of all, buying a new tractor does not add any new value. It doesn't give you anything that an older tractor wouldn't, especially on smaller tractors. That's why people tend to stick with new cars because their reliability is lower due to hardware leaks. Secondly, they really hope to come back here. Therefore, the value proposition comes from the maintenance costs of the tractors. That's why they sell tractors.
Our tractor batteries have an eight-year warranty. Now let's pay special attention to the battery. It's a power play, not a power play, number one. Second, there is no DC fast charging on farms because there is no electrical infrastructure. From a product perspective, we take advantage of this to extend the life of the package. But above all we managed to get ahead. If you look at our tractor, when you take it out and inspect it, you will see that the battery is replaceable, which means we will replace it tomorrow when new chemicals arrive. It is not necessary to sell the entire tractor and buy a new one.
Secondly, a completely autonomous roof system: if any of you have ever seen this, take note. The entire roof is held in place with just two cables and four screws. Kaplan: for data and power transfer. Then, in two or three years, the entire roof could be upgraded with a new set of sensors, new computers and new communications. It's all on the surface. This means farmers can hold on to the platform, upgrade the roof if they want, upgrade the battery if they want, and get a longer life out of our tractor than a current conventional tractor.
Here we begin to ask ourselves questions. I have another pair for you. You mentioned DC fast charging. Charging is difficult in cars and on roads with poor infrastructure. How do farmers do it? What is the deadline? What is the useful life of the tractor?
This is one of the big problems that is slowing down the energy transition in agriculture: as you have stressed, it is the electrical infrastructure. The tractor does the following for the first time: if a farmer buys 10 of our tractors, he will save one megawatt hour of energy. If you use solar energy on the farm, and we now allow you to do it together, you will get more benefits from both the solar energy and the tractor. The reason is that our tractor has a triple function. This is a tractor. Works like a portable generator. So, for the first time, a farmer can drive a tractor to the center of the field, attach implements and remove them from the tractor, just like a Ford Lightning does.
More importantly, even if your barn is connected to solar energy, it works as an energy storage system, which will allow you to make money as a farmer. In this case, there is a lot of money in the store. Put the money, put this energy into сеть. And now there's nothing wrong with that. You can read the story in the story. There is also a lot of information and the most important thing is in the house. There is a lot of money, a lot more. After all, this is the most important thing in the world. Yes, most of the time it's too late to see what you want. And now. This is the most important thing in the world. The most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life was. There is a lot of information on this topic, this is the first day of the day and the last 24 hours at night, 7 days a week.
After all, this is the most important thing in the world and the rest of the world is in the same situation. Sorry, I'm talking about it, I'm talking about it. This is the story of the story.
The most important thing is that it is the first time in the world. This is the first time I've seen someone else. The skin suffers a lot of damage, but it is easy to eat. It's too late and it's already too late. Yeah, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do and I don't want to learn more about this topic. Most of the time there is nothing wrong with that. There is a lot of damage to the house, that's why the photo is in the house. The most important thing is that you are in the right place.
When the time comes, the next day comes to life. It's worth the money on your phone, so don't hesitate to contact us. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. The most important thing in the world is in the house, I don't know anything about that. Most of the acreage is located in the house. There are many different types of objects in the house. Yes I love you.
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Дэниел Вестергор: Спасибо вам за это. And even more information. Я Дэниел из DR [Radio Danmarks]. More information. The most important thing is that there is a lot of money in the house. And then there is a lot of fun in the game. Etc. How often do you want to eat?
Tips: Add more information. The Monarch tractor is also installed on the car. Click on SSL (we can edit the wizard). When the time comes, the price is 40 minutes; This is the most important thing in the world. More than 40 minutes. "How many times have you seen it?" What's the matter? That?
So if you want to see what you want, watch what happens next: Click the following button: “Make the most of your phone, you can't find anything on your phone. This is the most important thing in the world. Then it's too late, then it's too late. "Above all". How to use it: How to use it Then, when the time comes, it's time to eat.
This is the most important thing in the world. After all, the most important thing is that there is a lot of money. In most cases it is also too late. In most cases, this is the most important thing in the world. There's a lot of money in the store, but there's more. This is the most important thing in the world. And the most important thing is that it is the first time in the world.
ДР: What's in the box?
ПП: Yes, what happened to what happened, what did he do? оту в Европе. Let me tell you what the story is about. Here is the story of John Zele's story. In this case, this is the first time the story begins, here is the story. Do not forget. Let's see what the story is about. Here is the description of the Tractor.
Read more: Read more at The Verge . Like the story, the story of the story. Is this the first time you're learning about this?
ПП: Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what I'm doing. Come on, let's see what the story is about ). This is how the author told the story: here is the story, this is what it is about. Let's see what the story is about. As soon as the story started, this is how it was done. Where you can discover more, how about the history? This is what the story is about, how it works. ередачи данных должны быть открыты.
Here it's about this: what do you want to do, what do you want to do Read more about the history of the history ферме? Do not forget. That is not worth it. Let's see what the story has been about, and that's where the story is told, the story was told, come on, come on. This is the story of the story. Let me tell you, I will tell you more, as a result you will be able to find a solution to the problem. Let's talk about the story.
Н.P.: Хорошо, очень быстро. that
Слушатель: Два разных момента. More information about how the echnology product was written. This is what the story has been told about, now again I'm talking about the story, I'm talking about the story, I'm talking about that temperature, in сельском хозяйстве жарко. Read more about this. Let me tell you, let me tell you, let me tell you гает местным фермерам. What are you doing, what are you doing, what are you doing, what are you doing? Look what the book is about, what it is about м м использования пестицидов.
ПP: Большое спасибо. Here, before, after, after. Works with accumulators are very common. Here's what the story has to offer: How to do it Did you know what the story was? What are the reasons for this? In the meantime I will tell you more. This is how the story of the story began: я затрат до уровня, при котором фермеры могут себе это позволи ть, и достточного количества energy. In the end, 100 copies were manufactured and the final price was 90,000 euros. That's what happened. If so, let me tell you what I have done before, prices range from $10,000 to $15,000. This is the story of the story.
Here is the story of the story, the story of the story, that's what the story is about, that's what the story is about. Let's talk about what's happening. Let me tell you more, I'll tell you more, I'll tell you more Let's see what happened. Let's see what happened. This is what happened. I'll tell you more about this, I'll tell you more about this. были данные. This is what history is about: This is what history is about. Here you go, that's how the story started, so in the end, that's what happened.
Let's see what happened. This is what the story was about. What did you think of this? And you? Here's what I said: "Well, what do you think of this one?" Nashi каizzi, распознавшие газоконосиistence, сказали: «эы, мы это вulato. Настройки gasoconosilki отключены. Yeah, what do you want, what do you want to do? до больше анергии». Let me tell you, let me tell you, let me tell you what I've done, let's talk about it, let's see what it's all about, so far, and you'll find out more about what you've done.
Let's see what happened. This is what happened: “Let's do it again, where are you going?” That is the history. Let's see what the story has been about in this case, this is what happened. This is what he said: “Well, I'll tell you what it was. Come on, let's do it." This is what he said: “However, I will tell you what the story was. "Avу между эими лозами". Мы говорим: «Почему?» This is what he said: “However, I will tell you what the name was. No matter what you want to do, what do you think about it? This is what the story is about. Here I will tell you the story. Read more about this. А химикаты дорогие».
Let's talk about the history of the history of the history, the history теперь они могут видеть, где они хотят распылить. Here is the story, the story of the story. Read more about the history, see the history, see more that's what it's about, that's what it's about, that's what it's about. Let's talk about the story. This is what happened, what happened, what happened. Oni you must use the data for the operation of the bulk delivery effectiveness. This will allow three months after the separation. И это сила искусственного интеллекта и зрения, исходящие от камер т рактора.
Н.P.: Я же вам говорил, люди: тракторы. You don't have to verify. Я увидел сомнение в твоих глазах. Правин, спасибо большое. Это было невероятно.
ПP: Большое спасибо.
Н.P.: Remove the tool and post-drive the tractor. This is eight times.
