Welcome everyone, Thank you for joining us today for this month's University of Wisconsin Division of Extensions, Badger Dairy Insight, a monthly webinar series offered on the third Tuesday of each month. Badger Dairy Insight provides the latest dairy based research information to improve animal welfare, breeding and genetic selection, automation and modernization, and nutritional decisions for producers, dairy workers, managers, and agriculture professionals.The Badger Dairy Insight Session. This Badger Dairy Insight session is on asking the right questions when investing in farm automation. We're excited to have you here as we explore the transformative impact of automation and agriculture and how you can better prepare yourself for it. Today we'll hear from several Extension professionals who will share their insights and experiences throughout this entire webinar.We have placed this QR code on the upper right hand corner of each slide. This QR code will take you to the website listed with all of the materials that we will speak about today. We hope to provide this opportunity for an informal discussion on the topic, so please add any questions or comments in the Q& A button at the bottom of your screen.So we will address these questions as we go along. And let me start by introducing myself. So I am Steph Plaster, Farm Business Development Outreach Specialist with the Farm Management Program at the UW Madison Division of Extension. I help farms figure out ways to earn more money, grow their business, and plan for the future.Adopting new technology and agriculture is a significant strategic investment in the future of the farm that can be highly profitable if done well, or costly if not. So today, our Extension Project team will talk about the shift towards automated technology and what folks can do to better prepare themselves.Throughout this webinar, we'll also hear short stories from farmers on their own experiences. So let's begin by hearing from Kyle and Brittany Fitzsimmons from Mineral Point on why they're choosing to move towards automation. My husband and I run a small dairy operation, and when you look at the age of the farm and the updates that are needed, it just makes sense to look at the bigger picture in the future of our farm when you think about building a new facility and the big investment that it will be.We've been working with UW Extension to make sure that we have all of our ducks in a row, making sure that we look at the bigger finance picture, talking to the right farmers that we need to see what kind of changes they would make on their farm to make sure that we're choosing the right fit for the farm that would be built for our newer operation and the future of our farm.So with that in mind, let's delve a little bit deeper into the reasons behind the push for farm automation. We'll hear now from John Shutske, Professor and Agricultural Safety and Health Specialist, who will introduce the big picture of farm automation and why it's becoming increasingly important.So John, could you elaborate on the main drivers for automation and farming? Sure, Stephanie, let me first of all begin by welcoming you all. Welcoming you all and saying good morning or whatever time it is and the location you're at right now, I'm in Madison and just outside of Madison, I'm a Agricultural Safety and Health Specialist and I'm also in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering, formerly known as Agricultural Engineering.So, yeah, I want to frame the conversation a little bit today, maybe getting you to think about this whole topic of automation and technology, kind of set the stage a little bit and and also maybe define why we're thinking about these issues so commonly right now. First of all, I'm going to use the terms automation technology, robotics, autonomy, I'm going to use them sort of interchangeably.And what we're really talking about is a whole cluster of different types of equipment and machines that sort of have this underpinning digital technology associated with them, sensors and control systems and other things like that. It's a growing field, obviously. I think you're all probably quite aware of the technology that we're seeing in the dairy industry, feeding equipment, milking equipment.Increasingly in the future, we're going to see more and more field equipment, in particular those things that can be relatively easily automated like planting, tillage, harvest, hauling product and eventually movement on public highways. Technology is advancing quickly, and I want to just give you a little bit of a perspective on that because I know that there are probably some skeptics who are watching this.You might think of technology as a fad. I know in my case, well, growing up on a farm, my dad would look at different people adopting new forms of technology. And in some cases, he viewed those people entirely as innovators or early adopters or in some cases, people that have wacky ideas about the future.But I want to just tell you that if you think about the historical perspective of agricultural automation, we have always moved in this direction. I want to just go through these six pictures. It was really hard for me to choose these particular 6. But if you go back 75 years, going back to the time when my father was growing up and certainly his father, we were farming with animals, right? And it was in the early part of the last century where we began that really kind of slow and cumbersome transition from horses or in some parts of the country,mules and oxen to we actually didn't go straight to tractors, right? We went to steam engines. And eventually, when we developed rubber tires and the internal combustion engine tractors, those early tractors began to slowly, slowly replace horse and animal power. I look at the middle picture in the top of this old McCormick combine.And back in the late 50s and early 60s, this was a modern piece of equipment and really, really revolutionized the industry. Think about now ripping into 80 acres or 100 acres on a machine like this the first week of October. Now we're trying to harvest, you know, several 100 acres, the tractor in the upper right.We began to really quickly move toward more compact machinery. A lot of this was about technology, new developments like power take offs, hydraulic systems. And the other thing that we saw with technology is it increased focused on safety, wanting to protect workers, trying to improve the comfort of people who were operating equipment.I think about what was a comfortable tractor when I was a little kid growing up on a farm. It was a Farmall 460 with a heat houser and an AM radio. And you just think of how far we have advanced since that time. Lower left hand corner, we began to see more electronic and electrical technology. So many people thought when we first had the advent of the first planter monitors that we had really arrived, right? And yet that's the kind of device that today most of us could go out into the shed with a little bit of wiring and maybe a few transistors and other kindsof switches and devices. We could build this in half a day. And now we're moving even more quickly. I'm skipping a lot of different technology, but in the 80s and 90s we saw the advent of global positioning systems leading to new equipment like precision agriculture, the ability to monitor things in real time, the Lely Vector that you see here as a piece of automated feeding equipment.And then again in the very near future, we'll be moving toward much more highly automated or even autonomous self driving equipment for field operations. So I want to go to the next slide if I could and just say like we have, we have been there and we have advanced quickly, but the trend is toward even more rapid acceleration of agricultural technology.The driving forces as Stephanie has asked me to talk about are many. The big one is obviously this whole notion of one person or a small team of people being able to control a lot of resources and produce a product with relatively little human input and human labor. Obviously we're talking about eliminating some of the need for back breaking labor.One of the driving forces of that is simply the fact that we no longer have some of that labor available that perhaps we had years ago. There's also a big driving force of people wanting to improve their lifestyle or improve their comfort and well-being. This type of technology for some people does allow them for to be able to.For example, if you've got children and you've got kids that are in sports, you want to get involved in church activities to be able to work a normal 8 hour day or 9 hour day and have machines and computers and machine learning and artificial intelligence and some of those kinds of things kind of help us out to take off some of that burden.And as I say here, leveraging our time. You think about that word leveraging. It has to do with the word lever, which was one of the very early machines. And the whole idea of all of this is to be able to use those levers, use them in a smart way, hopefully in a way that has a, a significant or at least a positive return on investment.I also wanted to just mention when we talked about improving the well-being of people, we have to acknowledge that agriculture is considered to be, it's still considered to be the nation's most dangerous occupation, literally by a factor of 7. 7 times more fatalities in terms of the fatality rate that we see in all other industries.The other thing, those of you who are involved in the dairy industry, which is almost everybody on this webinar, we all know of people. In fact, some of you may be experiencing things like the need for knee replacements, hips, joints, shoulders, those kinds of things. And again, the more that we can replace people with machines and with using those levers of technology, the better off we're going to be and the more attractive this industry is going to be, which then leads me to talk about the next generation.So technology is not necessarily for everybody. I sometimes am cautious about falling into the trap of all of our youth wanting to play video games. But for those young people who are interested in technology, they are interested in working more with machines and digital technology and robotics and automation.It does possibly provide us with one of those keys toward being able to think about farm succession, making the industry more attractive so that as we transition to that next generation, it's something that's attractive and that people really want to get into. And related to that is elevating the experience.As I have traveled around Wisconsin, I've traveled to other parts of the country, including places like California and the southern part of the US and the places in between. I've spent a lot of time talking to farm workers, people who are hired from off of the farm. In some cases, those people say, like, yeah, I've worked with this dairy farmer for the last 10 years or 20 years, and I'll probably spend the rest of my career doing that.But a lot of those workers say, but I don't want my kids involved in the industry. And I think that that is something that is going to create some some conflict for us in the future. We're going to have to really wrestle with it and think about it. And again, I think automation and technology provides part of that answer.Before I turn it back over to Stephanie, I want to say like we've seen a lot of change, but it is going to continue to accelerate quickly, unprecedented growth in things like artificial intelligence and machine learning. And so we've only seen the beginning. So now's really the time to learn about it.The dollars and cents part of it is absolutely crucial. That's why we're here today, return on investment, asking the right questions, thinking about not only what's it going to cost me to purchase this equipment, but what's it going to cost me to get into it from an infrastructure perspective.What about those annual costs, the maintenance, upkeep, the supplies, those are all crucial for the financial aspect. So welcome to the session. And Stephanie, I'll turn it back over to you. Thanks, John. Before we move on, can you talk a little bit about your experience and research interests at UW Madison and kind of what your work has shown and maybe a one or two predictions for where this is going to move us in the in the short term and maybe in the long term? Yeah, and thanks for asking the question.And I know that there's a lot of people here interested in dairy technology again, particularly feeding equipment and also milking equipment. I do think you got to take a look at the big companies, the green companies and the red companies and all the other big original equipment manufacturers that are selling equipment and a multinational basis.There's a huge amount of development that's going into this, maybe not fully autonomous equipment, but a lot of interest in field equipment, which I think in some cases is going to double to be able to use be used in autonomous fashion on farmsteads. And again, I think a big thing that they recognize is that our future workforce, unfortunately, we, often times hear the words that farm work can be viewed as dull, dirty and dangerous.So they are really keenly interested in moving forward from that perspective. But Stephanie, the other thing I want to also say is we've, we've got to maybe improve the safety of agriculture, but we also need to recognize that some of these new technologies maybe present some unique new challenges from a safety perspective.So that's kind of the focus of my research is balancing again the benefits with some of those risks and other and that includes the financial risk by the way, but safety risks as as well as the safety benefits from equipment. Thanks, John. I think those are some really key components that kind of led to this webinar and led to the work that we're kind of talking about and showcasing here today.The UW Madison Division of Extensions Farm Management Program and the Dairy Program work together on this project, which investigated the experiences of producers using automated milking systems, or AMS, to understand its impacts. So installing AMS is a significant investment that requires that major shift in management, and it can really improve productivity, efficiency, consistency like some cow comfort, and overall welfare.But it also presents many challenges that farmers must carefully evaluate. So the goal of this particular project was to create educational tools to help farmers make informed, strategic, and economically sound decisions about adopting this new technology as we see more and more come in front of us. So to meet these project goals, we followed a few key steps.We started first by reviewing existing research to guide the creation of a case study questionnaire. Next, we conducted interviews to gather insights from dairy farms using AMS, which really helped us understand their successes, challenges, and lessons learned. And then based on this information, we created a worksheet with important questions to help farmers evaluate their readiness for adopting new technology.So the goal was to encourage folks to think critically about key factors. And then finally, we developed a visual tool called the Technology Readiness Wheel, which helps farmers assess, identify their strengths and pinpoint areas that need improvement before implementing AMS. So we'll talk about that in a bit here, but it looks like John, we actually had a question come in, if you are available to answer that.I don't know if you can see the question, but I can read it for you. So how much will tech service requirements hinder people from adapting new tech? So for example, only being allowed to have John Deere service your equipment instead of fixing it yourself. That's a, that's a really good question.And I do think that that's a really, I, I don't want to speak to anyone particular manufacturer, but it is a, it is a big issue that comes up in my travels as I talk to different groups. And I think Stephanie, you and I have worked together in the past talking about the importance if you are going to make an investment that consideration of what does service look like? Do you have service people in your area? Do you have somebody you can be on the phone with and have them out, you know, within a matter of hours?You can't afford to wait weeks with some of these operations or you can't even afford to wait days. So understanding what does that service piece look like? Again, I know that the manufacturers are thinking hard about this. I also hear manufacturers say, well, we're going to provide a lot of online service and we'll be able to access things remotely and provide repairs and suggestions and recommendations.But that's a problem if you live in an area that doesn't have adequate broadband. So that's yet another consideration. So it's an excellent question. I know that I come across often as a little bit of a technology evangelist. I want to kind of get away from that. I'm a realist and I really want people to understand there are these potential benefits, but we've got a long way to go and there just are so many considerations.If I'm putting in an automated feeding system, does my building, will it accommodate it? What about my electrical service? What about working with my electrical service provider? They're just so many things we need to think about. And Stephanie, that's kind of been the purpose of this project, I think is.Yeah. And I think too, we've actually found that a lot of farms are identifying a person that really starts to learn these systems and to like hang out with the tech service providers and really start understanding when they're getting the notifications, when they're getting the calls. What is actually behind, what's setting these off and how, how can folks dedicate someone or really learn from the tech service providers so that they can do some of this on their own.And maybe address it so they're not having a lot of downtime. And I think that actually is we did incorporate some of that when we talk about this, this self-assessment tool that is a component of it. OK, thank you for that. Great question. Our next farm story is from Rachel Kenneke of Liberty Land Farms in Newton, WI on why their farm decided to transition to robots.When my now husband and I talked about returning to my family's farm after a college graduation, we knew that our current milking facilities at that time we need significant updates. As our tie stall barn was old and worn out, we looked at doing those updates, we looked at adding a parlor, and we looked at adding robots.Ultimately, we decided to add Lely robots as we felt we were able to expand our herd without adding all of the additional labor hours that would have come along with a traditional parlor. We also felt that robots were a good fit for potential unknown labor in the future, as well as giving us a little bit more flexibility with attending family and future kid events.So our local dairy educators, Jackie McCarville and Angie Ulness, are going to share a little bit about these farm stories that they've actually been gathering and discuss how they develop the questions that guided their research, what they've learned from farms because they visited farms to gather these insights to create these compelling narratives based on their findings.So, Jackie, could you tell us a bit about how this project got started and the challenges farmers faced when adopting automation? Yep. So kind of to reiterate what you had said earlier, we did research on what questions were already being asked across the industry. We also work with the ag and applied economic students at UW Madison who had interviewed some farmers on automation.And then we thought about what we felt people would want to know before they started implementing automation on their farms. So with that, we created a list of questions grouped into sections based on a topic area and took them out to a couple of farmers and asked them those questions, which led us to the farmers, the farmers stories which you see pictured here on the slide.So Angie, tell us a little bit about how these farm stories were created and what was learned from them. Yeah, we created these stories after understanding people that implemented automation. Many farmers were left just with feelings of I wish I had known this or I wish I would have known that. And for producers thinking about automation because of the aging facilities or less labor and a way to transition the next generation into the family business, we wanted them to be equipped with the right questions to ask beforehand so they didn't have that regret.We identified producers in our areas that were open to tell all, so to speak, that were already using automation that would be open and honest with us. And we created a format in these farm stories for readers to quickly identify areas of concern or areas that needed to be thought about beforehand. And these interviews led to the group come up with a series of articles that we'll share later in the presentation.So what were the biggest takeaways from each of the farms that participated in these in depth interviews? For my farm, so to speak, it was employee satisfaction. They had an employee there for 20 years doing a lot of the same things. Some things changed along the way, but although labor needs didn't increase decrease significantly, the job changed for that employee.And the farm team became more engaged with cow health and felt a sense of empowerment to keep learning and striving for excellence in their new job. And with my farm being one of the first farms in Wisconsin to have installed robots, there was a huge learning curve on how everything worked and how to fix the issues when they occurred.Now they can fix almost anything that they need on their own without the help of an implement dealer. And when they do have to call a dealer out, they'll quiz them about little things like, did you know how to do this or did you know how to do that? Yeah, that really comes back to the question that was submitted and and what we talked about a little bit earlier.So Jackie, what was the biggest lesson learned from your farm that they wish they would have known or done before they did this transition or switched over? Yeah. So for my farm with Jason, so they've actually had two sets of robots now. And so his biggest thing was he wished he would not have waited before installing the newest set of robots, just because the price of everything goes up and waiting could cost you some extra money.Also, while they may not be physically milking cows anymore, they're still doing lots of other things on the farm. So you're still working, it's just a different type of work. So we actually have a little video from one of our case farms, Jen-Lar Holsteins and Brown Swiss, on what were some of their challenges that they faced and they wished they would have known.And so this is their message for folks that are that are looking to make this change. This is Larry Meyer with Jen-Lar Holsteins and Brown Swiss. I wish I would have known before starting with the robots what the true maintenance costs and cost of operation is per robot per year. Those costs were significantly higher than what I was anticipating.We've been in the robots for eight years now and year to year those costs are higher than what we've expected. One other thing that I wish I would have known would be initially we were milking our cows a little too dry and I wish I would have known more about the take off settings and some of those things as I learned that information.As we went on with time, we started milking our cows a little wetter and that's improved our overall udder health. So those are some great insights from Larry, and you can kind of hear more about their experiences on those farm stories fact sheets on the website that Jackie and Angie mentioned. So again, thanks to Jackie and Angie for gathering those stories and sharing them with us.From the research interviews and farm stories, the project team was starting to get like a really clear picture of what some of those pinch points of these transitions are and what you don't know, you don't know until going through it. So the next step was really figuring out what to do with what we've learned and how to turn it into something useful for farms.So let's hear now from Kevin Bernhardt, who's a Professor at UW Platteville and a Farm Management Specialist with Extension who's going to discuss the creation of those that readiness that financial aspects of farm automation. Well, thank you, Steph. Yes, thank you, Steph. And, and thank you, by the way, Steph, for being our fearless leader of this group.We've got a a neat assortment of people that have been coming together over the course of the last months. And and I think it was probably like herding cats at times to try to keep us all going, Steph. So we certainly appreciate that. Well, I think our last video with Larry kind of really spelled it out nicely in some of the information that Angie and Jackie got back from their interviews of how often we all do this.We're all guilty of saying I wished I would have. But in this case, you know, you're talking about a very high investment, very costly investment. Mistakes can be very costly. Surprises are things you don't want to have and so you want to try to avoid as much as possible that phrase. I wished I would have known about some aspect of that operation.So one of the things that let's take a step back here and get some context. We have a tool here we're going to introduce to you in a second, but the context for that is the adoption model or the adoption process. And you see the screen there that shows the steps in adoption that most people go through for small things as well as major investments.And the first one on the far left there of the visual is awareness. If we're not aware about some question or about some kind of impact that could happen, then we're not going to be asking the right questions and we're going to end up with those potential surprises. So a big challenge with any kind of investment, with any kind of new project in the beginning is becoming aware of it.When you have that big investment, there's going to be, in the case of of automation, it's a systematic investment as well. So there's a lot of moving parts, there's a lot of integration. What you know, there's a change in labor, there's a change potentially in how the cow flow takes place.When you have a, a robot system, for example, there's a change in how the feeding and the breeding might take place. There's just a lot of changes taking place because it is a kind of a systematic change. So we want to be able to ask those kind of questions to avoid the surprises, try to understand where the risks might be and then of course how we can mitigate those risk.So you know, what are some of those awareness questions that we might have? You know, what are the new changing costs in revenues? That's an obvious 1. John alluded to that as well. You know, what are those changes, how large, are those changes potentially going to be? What's the spread, the range of what those changes could be? We'll talk about that more in just a bit.What are the changes in infrastructure needs? Are you ready for those infrastructure changes, both physical facilities as well as how your cows flow, you know, all that kind of thing, as well as the management infrastructure. We mentioned it here earlier, cow health, breeding, feeding, things like that. How are those things going to change? What it was mentioned a couple times now and it's a big one because probably one of the biggest reasons people get involved or think about getting involved in doing automation is the labor part.Labor access to labor is getting more challenging. The cost of labor is getting more challenging. Keeping that labor is getting more challenging. So it drives a lot of people to want to say what can I do to replace that labor? And I think what we have found out in our investigation and, and the stories that we heard from the farms that Angie and Jackie went out to and so forth is that yes, there might be less labor.There might be less of certain kinds of Labor. You don't have milkers anymore, for example, but you might have to have a computer engineer around. And so the type of labor or the kind of skill sets that the labor needs changes. And I think what we heard from some of our farms was that was a piece that was a, a bigger hump.I think they knew it might be there, but it was a bigger hump to get over than what they what they might have realized at first. These systems are computerized, they're electronic and so connectivity issues, John mentioned it earlier, the broadband, other kinds of things that comes into play. It's not a physical mechanical type of piece of equipment anymore.It's an electronic computerized piece, equipment along with the mechanical parts support, lots of questions that we need to learn about and become aware of, be ready for with respect to support. So support in analyzing this investment, support in launching this investment, support in the troubleshooting that takes place afterwards so that all of those pieces, do you have that support there? I think the question that came into John was sort of alluding to that a little bit as well is what is the breadth of that support that you have?The next step in the adoption model is the research and the third step is the trial piece. Those two somewhat go together. So the research piece is what are the different brands that are out there? What are the different dealers that are out there? Who are the people that are involved? What are the different systems that you could choose to accomplish whatever it is that you're wanting to accomplish? That's part of that research piece, as well as how each of those are going to affect the feeding, the breeding, the management of your herd.The third one is trial. Well, we can't bring an automation, bring a robot out and trial it on our farm, but we can go to other farms. And I think, and I remember hearing one of the two interviewers that Jackie and Angie did talk about this as well. The more farms that they visited, the more comfortable they started to become.So, you know, one thing that's true about this too, is every farm is unique. So we can all get on Google right now and look up the impact of putting a robot on our farm. And we're going to get some numbers. But do those numbers apply to our farm? And I think the answer to that is maybe maybe not. And so all of us unique in our facilities, in our management, in our labor situation.So the more farms that we can get out to visit, the more we can kind of kick the tires by going out to those other farms, the more we're going to get that understanding of what the impacts could be on our farm. And of course, the last piece of the model Steph is the is the implementation piece. So we make that decision, whatever those decisions turn out to be, and then we have to put it into play and actually implement it.You know, now the question might come up, you know, is the goal 100% awareness? And that's just not possible. We're never going to be 100% aware. I think a sort of a management way of thinking about this, a management principle is called the Pareto rule. And the Pareto rule is a 80/20 or 70/30 rule.And what it means is when I have what I think to be 80% of the information, it's time to act. It's time to decide, it's time to implement because the cost of getting the final 20% of information is going to take 80% of my resources, 80% of my time. So we're never going to become completely aware of everything.At some point we have to pull that trigger if that's around that 70/80% of the information that we think that we have in hand. So with that context in mind of the adoption model, the group got together and and developed this worksheet piece called the Readiness Wheel. And the Readiness Wheel starts by asking a lot of different questions in different areas.So those questions are in areas of business goals, cost benefit analysis or different kinds of costs, different kinds of benefits that could be there. Do you know, Are you ready for the infrastructure changes that might take place, connectivity, labor and training support, etc. So the the way the model is set up, I think if we can go to the next slide.Yeah. So the way the model is, is set up is like a questionnaire and the one that you see in front of you is the is that section of the business goals. And there's what 8 other different sections I believe. So what it says is you look at each line item. Let's just take the very first one. I have written business and family goals.If you're not ready for that, if you're not even aware that you needed that, you would put a one in there, not at all. I'm not at all ready for that. On the other hand, if you have sat down and you have fully hashed out what your business and family goals are, so especially with respect to this adoption that you're about to look at, to look into, then you would circle a 5 or you would you would record a 5 for I'm completely ready for that.You do that for all the other items and then you'll get an average score for that business goal section. You do the same thing for the cost benefits section, for the support section, eccetera, and #1 you'll have a score for each individual item #2 you'll have an evaluate, a self-assessment, a self evaluation for that entire section as well.So if we go on to the next slide, this is the visual that comes along with us. So we call it the wheel. It's the Readiness Wheel. And there's nothing magical about the wheel. It's just it gives you a visual look. And a lot of us are visual learners. I certainly am. And so I look at this visual, what I want to be is outside that blue circle.If I'm outside that blue circle, that means I have some level of readiness that kind of gets me to that Pareto readiness. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm feeling confident, I'm feeling good about that area. But if I'm inside that circle, that means my own self-assessment tells me I need to spend some time tomorrow morning after breakfast looking into that area.So this particular person, stakeholder management, adaptability, labor and training and connectivity, those are the ones that are all kind of inside that blue circle places to spend some time to become more aware of the potential impacts that could happen in this case. So Steph, that's again, it doesn't give us 100% awareness of what we need to do, the questions we need to ask, but hopefully it will start to reduce the amount of times that we end up using that, that phrase I wished I would have known.Thanks, Kevin. But while you're here, you work in that financial analysis area. Do you have some quick thoughts on financial tools that could assist in evaluating automation adoption or even for use like as a compliment to the to this tool here? Yeah, yeah, thanks for asking that question. There is several different kinds of tools of course that are available to use and each one has a little bit of a different purpose.I recall back when John was talking, he had part of his slide too was the, the dollars and cents of it all. And it struck me that, you know, engineering wise, computer electronics wise, we can do a lot of things. The question is, does it make sense financially or doesn't make sense financially at this point in time or those kinds of questions.So that certainly is the follow up question that we want to ask me. Maybe it should be the leading question as to does it make financial sense and there are are several different tools that people can use to help them get a sense of that. One of those I'll just name a couple of them, one of them is called the partial budget.The partial budget is a a budget that ask questions about what are the potential increases in profits that would happen if I do this change. So that might be increased revenues or it could even be reduced or eliminated costs. Secondly, it asked what are the things that are going to decrease profits, which could come from, of course, increased costs or reduced revenues.I might lose some revenues by adopting some new technology. And you put those together and you get a a sense of whether this investment is going to pan out or not in terms of financials. It's quick. It's easy to do. There's a lot of spreadsheets out there and Extension and other places for doing partial budgets.It's just a quick way to get that first blush. I think a cash flow budget is also very important, Steph. We have to manage that cash. We have to pay our bills. We want to be able to communicate where we're going to be short with our lenders, how much we're going to be short, what our operating needs might be.And whenever we make a big change on the farm especially, I think that cash flow budget is vitally important. It kind of forces us as well to do that planning function of management that's so important. Capital budgeting could be something that some will want to use that takes into account the time value of money and looks at that investment over a period of time to be able to judge what that return on investments going to be.John mentioned it early upfront, what is that return on investment that we we can expect And of course there's others, there's enterprise budgets we could do and a very important one is break even analysis. So what are our cost of production, What's going to happen to our cost of production? What does it mean in terms of break even? And Steph, if you'll allow me the final point I would make is whatever budget tool you use, whatever kind of effort that you look at for looking at your financials.Be sure to do sensitivity analysis. Do we live in volatile times? I don't think there's anybody here that's going to disagree that we we don't live in volatile times. Prices, input cost, interest rates, government policies, etc. It's just a lot of volatility out there, a lot of things that could change that are completely outside of anything that you can do as an individual farmer to prevent that change.But the one thing you can do is do sensitivity of what those impacts might be on your farm and create contingency plans accordingly. So I strongly suggest that whatever financial tool that you use, always make sure you go back and do the sensitivity analysis that goes with that. Thanks Kevin for for bringing that up.And especially right now, I think that's a really helpful, useful tool for folks, no matter if they're deciding if on implementing a big piece of technology or they're just going about their farm business and kind of business as usual. I think that's a really key take away. So I think this is a great spot, too, to shift gears a little bit, talk about what other information and resources we have available.So Carolina Pinzon is our statewide dairy outreach specialist, and she's going to close out the session with a few key takeaways. So Carolina, to wrap up, could you share what's driving UW Extensions, new efforts to support farmers with automation and what's motivated this development of more educational materials in the area? Sure.Hi, Steph. Hello, everyone. Yes, so we've been listening closely to producers. For example, at our Robotic Milking Conference in February that we had in Wisconsin and Minnesota, we received a lot of positive feedback especially regarding the readiness wheel that Kevin just talked about. So I'm just going to read one of the comments feedback we have on post it notes.So I'm going to read the readiness will is comprehensive. I can see where it will be useful for a family or group to assess where each individual is at. It would be beneficial for communicating benefits and challenges to other making decisions. So we tried the the Readiness Wheel and again on post-it people were writing this worksheet was eye opening.It help me consider aspects I hadn't before. It could be useful for guiding discussions, highlight team strengths and weakness, and point to areas that would need more research. So some people appreciated the structure structured approach, some people complain that it was too long. But if you are going to make a big investment, you better take the time to to do this type of tasks, homeworks and so.So you ask what motivated us to do this, right. So another motivation we had was just talking to automatic nothing system users, right? And talking about the things they wish they know. We have used this word a lot today before transitioning from conventional milking to automatic milking systems. And so again, this was an informal conversation with one producer.I'm going to read her comment. It's I underestimated the learning curve when we switch to an automatic milking systems. Some things you can pick as you go, but others really need structural training. I wish I had an AMS for Dummies guide. It would have given me a clearer picture of daily tasks and help us prepare better for transition.So all these feedback, all these conversations have inspired several new initiatives at UW Extension. Yeah, we received some really great feedback this winter from dozens of farmers and and really that has helped us kind of build up our our resources. So what new initiatives has Extension launched in response to these? Yes.So we have launched a series called Embracing Technology in Farming in law, Embracing Technology in Farming. So these articles help farmers think through technology decisions, focus on areas like vision, people, cost and broader impacts. So that's one of the initiatives. The other one is we created a beginner's guide, so we won't call it AMS for Dummies Guide, but it's going to be called Understanding Automatic Milking Systems.And this is just a more technical series covering things related to AMS basics like milking prep, milk quality, feeding, facilities, hoof care, etc. So it and it's designed for people just starting to explore AMS systems. So when can folks expect to see these articles available? Yes. So the emerging technology, I'm sorry, the embracing technology in farming, it's already live on the Farm Management website.And the other one the understanding automatic milking system series. Probably by the end of the week, we're going to have our first three articles, the one introducing the series, the second we are going to talk about hoof care and foot baths. And the third one that it's actually one of my favorites.It's a glossary of common AMS terms, So it's just a great starting point for everyone new on these automatic milking system topics. Awesome. So that's really great for those starting out. But what about farmers that are already using robotics or automated systems? Yes. So we have something for everyone.And so let's listen to these. Let's watch this video 1st and we'll talk. Listen, we installed 2 A5 robots Lely robots about two years ago. The automation has made it possible for our family to manage our 120 cow dairy herd without any outside help. The robots have taken a lot of the physical labor out of the milking cows and given us more flexibility to spend more time with our family.We had daily somatic cell, milk production, fat and protein, which helps with managing decisions. So Farron is an user already of automatically systems. So for producers like him, we have an ongoing AMS user group. It started last year. We hold three meetings in different locations across Wisconsin. And so we believe producers that are already using automation, they like to surround themselves with like minded individuals and learning space as like farmer to farmer learning, right.So in these meetings, these user group meetings, we have a little presentation from UW researchers, then we have peer discussions, and then we have a farm tour. So it's a great way for farmers to share their experiences and learn from each other. So that's awesome. And as kind of a big wrap up, if you had to tell folks like they're eager to learn more, what are the next steps that they should take after this session? Yes, if you want to go back one slide.Thank you. So I would say one, if you're thinking about automation, use the Readiness Wheel to start conversation and start exploring AMS with the series understanding Automatic Milking systems. If you are already using AMS, I invited you to join the AMS user group, right? And just in general, just stay connected with the UW Extension.And on the screen you have the two web page for for the dairy program and the farm management program. And also just a good old Google. Just Google any of these terms. Embracing technology in farming, adopting new technologies. Start with the right questions or just Google it. You'll find it. Maybe put University of Wisconsin Extension after that so you'll find it easier, but everything will be easy to find.OK. So we saw a little preview of it, but tell us about what's coming up next winter. Yes, the last slide because this year meeting was so successful and we have people asking like, hey, are you going to repeat this? So we're planning for February 2026 to have another robotic conference for sure in collaboration with the University of Minnesota and University of Wisconsin.So just stay tuned for more information about this conference. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, especially you, Stephanie. Thank you for moderating our work that we have done so far to get the message out to everyone listening today. I hope you enjoyed today's webinar focusing on automation. This webinar was recorded and we'll send out all registered attendees a link to the recording within a week.I would like to announce that our next webinar will be on June 17th to hear about improving reproductive management of dairy replacement heifers. Doctor Paul Fricke and PhD student Whitney Brown will be our presenters. To register and learn more about next month webinar, please visit go.wisc. edu/badgerdairy and for any additional information or unbiased research based dairy resources, please visit Extension Dairy Program on the web or find us on Facebook Extension Agriculture.Thank you.