(upbeat music) - Welcome to "A Shot of Ag".

I'm your host, Rob Sharkey.

I am a farmer and I deal with a lot of companies that help my farm make money, that help sell products, and all this stuff, but who you're working with as a farmer is something that we take very sacredly, if that's a word.

Today's guest knows all about that.

Paul Schell from Aerosmith?

- Yep.

- Aerosmith?

- Yep.

Little town.

- Like the band?

- Like the band.

- Is it spelled like the band?

- It's spelled like the band.

- With an E?

- Yes.

- Okay.

I've never heard of it.

- No, it's a W.

- No, Aerosmith the band is A-E, right?

- Correct.

The town's A-R.

A-R-R, just like Arrow and then Smith.

- Honestly, nobody cares about this.

- Probably not.

- So, we're gonna move on.

Yeah, but I've never heard it.

Where is it?

- Six miles from nowhere.

Six miles from Leroy, six miles from Saybrook, six miles from Farmer City, six miles from, like I said, it's middle of nowhere.

- How long did it take you to drive to WTVP in Peoria?

- From where?

- Arrowsmith.

- Oh, from Arrowsmith.

It would be an hour and 15 minutes.

- Okay.

That's all you had to say.

- Okay.

- Which direction?

- East.

- Southeast.

- East Southeast.

- Southeast, East, Southeast.

- Straight east of Bloomington.

- It's going great.

(both chuckling) We haven't even got past your hometown.

You are the owner of Progressive Ag Services?

Co-owner?

- Yep.

- Yeah.

So, what is that?

- We are a ag retail business, so we work with a lot of various farmers giving recommendations as far as chemistry, fertility, we do a lot of soil sampling.

We have a custom strip till business where we're applying fertilizer and anhydrous ammonia.

We just do several things, like precision planting, sales and service.

- So, do you actually take a farmer's planter and put all the stuff on there?

- Yep, we'll bring 'em into the shop and deck 'em all out, refurbish 'em, get 'em going again.

- Okay.

So, with the custom work anhydrous, right?

Because I think a lot of people that have, 'cause you've got the bigger tractors, right?

- Yep, we got a couple big Deer two tracks, and a big four-wheel drive Deer.

They're pulling 16-row, 30-inch strip till bars.

- Okay.

So, the strip till, that's not so big in my area and I don't live that far from you.

I was surprised, because I mean, that's gonna cover a lot of acres and for you to have multiple of them, you must be finding lots of people that want to do it.

- Yep.

We started that in 2019 and started out with one rig and it grew quickly.

The demand is out there.

I mean, we're able to do some fertilizer reduction, because it's banded versus broadcast, which helps offset some costs.

- Because I'm thinking here, maybe not everybody knows what strip till is.

Explain it first.

- So basically, what we're doing, instead of broadcasting fertilizer all the way across the field, like a spinner spreader, - [Rob] Which what I do.

- Which is what a lot of guys do, is what we are doing is taking that fertilizer and we are banding it right on top or right below where that that row of corn's gonna be planted next year.

And so, instead of having it all the way across the surface and maybe incorporated with some tillage, we're basically, building a flower pot of high-level nutrition right underneath the plant.

And so, we'll put dry fertilizer under for our P&K and sulfur.

And then a lot of times we'll put anhydrous ammonia along with it for a nitrogen source.

- So, you go out in the fall, right?

And you do this and then, I mean, because a lot of people don't understand.

Then the farmer in the spring can come with his planter tractor and really punch a button.

And that tractor knows how to follow exactly where you've made those strips.

- With our RTK sub-inch accuracy guidance, we're able to stay right on top of each other.

We will export out our lines and give 'em to the customer.

And then he just basically, tracks where we were everywhere the fall before.

- [Rob] What's the downfall of it?

- It's expensive to get into and it takes a lot of horsepower.

- Yeah.

- I mean, it's a 40-foot bar, 16-row bar.

And I mean, we're needing 600 plus horse just to pull that.

- And yeah, you're talking a nine series at least.

Yeah.

So, you're talking a big tractor.

- Big tractor.

- And yeah, sometimes, I don't know, does the weather always cooperate in the fall?

- No.

No.

(Rob laughing) We get about three good solid weeks and then we're always fighting weather one way or another.

Too cold, too wet.

- [Rob] Do you strip till in the spring?

- Yep.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Kind of our Southwest trade territory area is more sandy, lighter area, lighter soils.

And we just don't wanna put stuff out in the fall, because it'll leach down through the soil.

And so, those areas we tend to do or wait till the spring to do.

- So, that's trip till, like you said, it's a lot of money to get into it, but if a farmer wanted to try it, I would think something like what you got where you could go in there, do a field, he could try it and see if he wants to keep going.

Do they tend like they want to keep going after trying it?

- Yes.

Virtually everybody we've ever stripped till for has come back and continued to do custom strip till with us.

- It's a good thing that fertilizer doesn't cost a lot right now.

- It's pretty cheap.

- Is there a significant reduction in how much you gotta put in?

- It varies.

Just like any other farm operation or farm input, it's gonna vary depending on the operator, what his goals are, what his needs are, what his budgets are.

- Yeah.

- There's a lot of different theories about, you know, what we can do as far as reduction, as far as different rates go.

Started out doing a lot of, you know, 20, 25% reduction from broadcast with the economics.

Right now we're down.

- It's a lot of money.

- It's a lot of money.

- Yeah.

- Right now we're down.

Some guys are going as low as 30% of what they normally put out.

- Hmm.

- But again, the efficiency, because it's right under the plant, is a lot higher.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Were you a farm kid?

- I was not, grew up in town.

- Oh, how'd you get into ag?

- I had grandparents.

My mom's parents were dairy farmers all the way through.

And so, we were up there every weekend for Sunday dinner and I was running around with the cousins on the dairy farm and spent some time with grandpa on the fender of 4020 bailing hay in the summer and spent some summers haying.

- [Rob] I don't think we can say that anymore.

- Probably not.

It's probably an OSHA thing.

- It is a big time OSHA thing, but that's, I think most people our age, that's how we grew up on the farm, was on an open cab just sitting on a fender, so if you fell off.

- And all you had is that one grip on the side of the fender to hold onto, otherwise there wasn't much there.

- No, it was not.

And thinking back about it, it probably, yeah, I don't know.

- It didn't take much to go back the other way and you'd be right off.

- No, but it was fun.

- It was great.

It was the best seat in the house.

- So, then you went off to college, right?

- Yep.

- Where at?

- Southwest Wisconsin Technical College.

It's our local community college in Southwest Wisconsin.

- What did you wanna do?

- I wanted to be in ag.

- Okay.

- And I didn't wanna spend a ton of time in school.

- Yeah.

- And so, a two-year associate degree in agribusiness science technology was up my alley and get in, get some basic education done and get out in the workforce.

- So, you went into what?

Like working for a co-op or something after that?

- Yep.

Worked for a couple of local retailers up in Wisconsin.

Was up there until, oh, 2013 when I moved to Illinois.

- Okay.

- I went to work for a retailer down here heading up their precision farming department.

- So, like what were you doing there?

What do you mean, heading up their precision?

- They didn't have a precision farming department per se.

- Really?

In 2012?

- Yeah, Yeah.

- You were a little behind the eight ball, weren't you?

- That was Illinois.

That was in Wisconsin, by the way.

- That's what I'm saying.

Especially, you know, this year being, you know, around precision plan, around Tremont and all that.

- They were doing some, but they didn't have anybody leading it.

You know, really driving home the precision side of ag.

- Yeah.

- And so, I got to come in and work with the crop specialist to really specialize working on fertilizer wrecks, seeding wrecks.

We started precision planting dealership there too, and really kind of got the ball rolling.

- Okay.

So, how did you get into being a co-owner of Progressive Ag Services?

- Well, it was the two years down at the retailer here in Illinois that I met business partner Matt Boudeman.

He was one of the crop specialists I was working with at that retail.

And he saw where the precision ag thing could really go.

And we had a lot of fun for a year.

And then a year later, he realized it was a lot of fun and took off and started progressive ag.

So, I got a year out of him.

A year later, he called me up and was kind of saying, "Hey, you know, looking to really expand this and get it going, I think it'd be a good fit for you to come and work with me and help me out on some of the things that maybe I'm not quite as strong on."

And somehow he talked me into leaving a pretty good job to jump off the deep end and going into business.

- Yeah.

I've met him.

You seem smarter than he is.

He doesn't even know how to spell his name.

- It's a different spelling.

- It's a very different spelling, but, okay.

So, here you have a job, you're getting a paycheck, steady, I imagine you're getting some other stuff, benefits.

- Decent benefits.

- Yeah.

- Company vehicle.

- Life is good.

- Life is good.

- And now, not only you gotta quit that, but you probably gotta fork some money up.

- Gotta fork some money up and you don't exactly know when that next paycheck's coming.

That was quite the conversation with the better half about how this whole thing was gonna look.

- What did she think?

- She was supportive.

She was very supportive.

She knew that Matt and I worked well together.

But there's always that fear factor of, what if?

I mean, what if this doesn't work out?

- Yeah.

- I mean, there's a lot too.

- I mean, can always go back to retail.

What if Matt, you know, I don't know, went off a deep end, right?

- Oh, it could've.

- Yeah.

So, did you wanna do it?

When you look back at that, when you're trying to decide, is this like something I wanna do and I'm trying to maybe think of reasons that I shouldn't or was it a whole, did he have to sell you into it?

- He didn't have to sell me.

- Yeah.

You wanted it.

- With that year of experience of him and I, what we call team selling with his customer base at the retail, I knew the chemistry him and I had and how we'd feed off each other.

I really wasn't worried much at all to go and do it.

- Well, that's good.

- And I thought it was gonna be a blast, and it has been so far.

- And it's been successful.

- It has been.

- Yeah.

- We've managed to have some success.

I mean, we have been very fortunate to partner up with some very good growers, some very good farmers, who have bought into our vision, bought into our theories on soil fertility and precision technology and have been very supportive of us.

- Yeah.

- And very loyal.

- But a company like yours, you're going, I mean, you're going to Nutrien, FS, you're going up against the big boys that have a ton of cash behind them.

And the companies that are selling, you know, like the Bears and the Cortevas, I mean, they're all catering to them.

How do you guys, how do you compete with that?

- You gotta find different, unique ways to present yourself.

You know, we really strive for a very personalized touch and relationship with customers.

It doesn't always come down to we're the cheapest, we're the fastest, the quickest, whatever.

It's we truly want to be a partner in their operation and see them succeed.

And I think that's kind of what helps set us apart a little bit.

- Plus, I mean, sometimes those big companies are their own worst enemy.

Yeah.

And you know, I deal with them too, but yeah, sometimes it's like, it'd be so nice to deal with a company like yours with people that understand my operation, literally every single acre of it and could help me more.

You know, not necessarily just worried about how much they can sell, but how they can make their farmers more money.

- Yeah.

And we do almost everything in house.

I mean, we pull our own soil samples.

I mean, I've been across almost every acre of ground that we work with in one capacity or another.

So, when they see us, they know we're taking care of everything.

We're not farming stuff out, anything like that.

- So, you do all of it?

- We do all of it in house.

- I thought most people farmed out, like at least the soil testing.

- No, we do all soil sampling in house.

- Do you have a prober?

- We got two rangers set up with Wintex hydraulic probes.

We customize them, put the probes inside the cabs.

So, we've got heat and AC, so the operator's nice and, you know, comfortable.

I mean, you sit out there and pull soil samples for 12, 14 hours a day on a four-wheeler, it gets to be a long day.

- Oh yeah.

We used to advertise with a company up in Canada that was big into doing that.

And they had it in the pickup trucks, right?

And it was 40 below, 40 below.

And they're like, "We're gonna do some soils."

And I thought they were joking, but no, they drove their truck out there and like this really, I mean, it's freezing out here.

Then they're like, "No."

And they put it down, the truck is lifting up and then it all sinks down and then snap.

I felt vindicated, because the whole time we're like, "Of course, we can do it.

It doesn't matter."

No, at 40 below.

- 40 below the ground's pretty hard.

- Yes.

Common sense would say yes.

- Pretty hard.

You would think you wouldn't do that.

- But yeah, we did.

And then we were stuck out there trying.

- Trying to fix it.

- I don't want to revisit.

- At 40 below.

- It was probably the most cold I've ever.

- It seems like a traumatic situation for you.

- I was freezing.

I thought my feet were gonna fall off, but hey, whatever the advertisers want, right?

What's this?

- That is a bottle of bourbon whiskey that we had done for our 10-year anniversary last year.

- Okay.

So, 10 years.

- Right about to the date was 10 years ago last year that we did that, we had a big open house, gave 'em all out to everybody who showed up.

- Really, they got a bottle?

- They got a bottle.

- Wow.

- Everybody who showed up that wanted a bottle got a bottle.

- Was it a deal, like where you sent in your own corn to get?

- This particular distillery you can take your own corn into and they will make custom batches.

We didn't take any corn in, so they just, you know, probably pull it outta some grain bin.

- Just put your bottle or your sticker around the bottle.

- Yeah, just do the label.

- That's cool though.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

How many you got left?

- Got about a case left.

- How many is in a case?

- I think 10.

- 10?

Yeah.

- So, we're slowly getting rid of 'em.

- You're probably not one to open 'em.

- I mean, we can.

- Oh, I'll be damned.

- When in Rome.

- Yeah.

That's not bad.

- It's not bad.

- Yeah.

- It's really not.

Yeah.

It's been a pretty good hit for us.

- I don't know what this is.

Apparently, there was something on the back there that they don't want us to see anymore.

So, we've taped.

Who tapes glasses?

- TV people.

- TV people.

All right.

How many you want?

A finger or a foot?

- Couple fingers.

- Oh, a couple.

All right.

- What?

It's later in the day so it's legit.

- I've got more interviews, so I'm just gonna stick with a, yeah, a finger and a nail.

Okay.

There you go.

All right.

Put him over here.

All right.

Well, cheers.

- Cheers.

(Rob sniffing) Oh, you gotta sniff it first.

You born in a barn, man?

You gotta enjoy this.

- From Wisconsin.

- Oh, I stand corrected.

Okay.

- Pretty smooth.

- You know, I was kind of expecting something to be, I was a like.

- Like your breath on fire type of stuff.

- Like crap basically.

Yeah.

But that's just what you want.

- Yeah.

- Right?

- Yellow whiskey that good.

- It's not the highest end, but, yeah, that's good.

Okay.

10 bottles left or nine now.

- Nine now.

Nine and three quarters.

(Rob chuckling) - Yeah, we had a distillery on here one time and you know, we're promoting them and he opens it up and I pour a full, 'cause I'm being a smart guy, like, right?

And the look on his face was not happy.

And then he took the bottle with him.

- Oh, that's not very nice.

- That's what I thought.

- I mean, that's gotta be like a courtesy bottle.

- You should have seen the, because these, these, they all like the free stuff.

A lady brought in a cake earlier, that's gone.

You get vegetables or whatever, they're eating everything they can.

They openly wept when they took the bottle.

I would've too.

- Yeah.

- That's almost rude.

- You guys want a drink?

- Trying to entice 'em, aren't you?

- I can't drink anymore?

The good old days are over.

(glass thudding) (Rob sighing) Okay.

What were we talking about?

- I don't know, but I think it's gonna get more fun now.

Yeah.

You're from Wisconsin?

- Originally, yes.

- What part?

- Southwest.

- And that was your mom's family dairy up there?

Okay.

- Yep.

- Do you ever, I mean, is there any goal in life to go back to agriculture or get into it yourself?

- Into production ag?

Yeah, if an opportunity came up, I'd love to be in production ag.

It's not a have to.

- Yeah.

- If it would occur, great, if not, okay.

- Tell me about working with farmers, like myself.

Because I would never wanna work like with someone myself.

I would not wanna do it, because I just, I want the world and I want it for free.

And I don't think I'm alone.

- Probably not.

- Yeah.

- I like it, it's challenging.

It's looking at all different scenarios, different options, trying to walk through, you know, the pluses, the minuses, and just trying to help them get to the right decision for them for that particular season, year, whatever it happens to be.

You know, always doing research.

Always, you know, putting test plots in every year, trying something new.

Talking to everybody else in ag.

I mean, somebody from South Dakota, or Southern Illinois, or Ohio.

What are you guys seeing out there?

What are you doing there?

Where can we incorporate some of that back home to, you know, move the needle, whether it's on yield, or profitability, or whatever it's on.

It's just every season presents its own set of challenges, and so, it's refreshing every single year.

- You are from Wisconsin, which is not Canada, correct?

- Not Canada.

Close.

- So, why are you playing hockey?

- It's fun.

- Where do you play it?

- At Bloomington Ice Center.

- Do they have a rink in Bloomington?

- Yep.

- Okay.

Is it like a league or?

- Yeah.

We've actually got two sheets of ice in Bloomington.

We got the big arena,- - Yeah.

- and then the ice center that's attached to it.

- What position?

- I play defense mainly.

- Oh, okay.

- Mainly 'cause I don't know.

I can't shoot, I can't puck handle, so I just sit back and watch.

- What do you do as a goalie.

They don't have to skate or do anything.

- I have no desire to get a frozen, plastic puck shot at me at 15 miles and hour.

- Don't they have like a mask on that?

- Yeah, but it's still not enough.

You know, it hurts.

- Goalies are a different breed.

They're just different individuals - Really?

- They got a screw loose.

- Okay.

Like how often do you play?

- Three to five days a week, mornings.

So, we do Bloomington Morning Hockey Club plays four mornings a week at 6:00 am, 06:00 to 07:00.

- Year round?

- Year round.

- You're kidding me.

- Nope.

Year round.

- Okay.

- Rink closes for like a month or six weeks in the summer for refurbishing, but other than that, we're on the rest the time.

And then Sunday night is Bloomington Rec League.

And so, they'll divide us up into teams into three different tiers and we play team hockey.

- Is it fun?

- It's a blast.

- Like is it more fun than competitive?

- I didn't play competitive hockey growing up.

I mean, my hockey experience growing up was pond hockey.

So, we played a month outta the year with no equipment, nothing.

- Did that hurt?

- Oh, that, I mean, Sears catalogs for shin pads.

(both chuckling) - And where'd you meet your wife?

- We were working for the same retailer and she was in marketing and I was on the sales side.

- Oh, marketing girl.

Ooh.

- She's a marketing gal.

- Yeah.

Okay.

You're not supposed to have romance at work.

- It's a good thing we're at two separate retails under the same umbrella.

- Still.

Yeah.

- Maybe.

- How long have you been married?

- 10 years.

- 10 years.

So, about the same time as.

- Coming up on 11 actually.

- Yeah.

So like, when you were making this decision, were you married?

- We had just gotten married, it was our first year.

- God, I'm surprised she stayed with you.

- She's a brave woman.

- Yeah.

Now, what does she work with you guys now?

- She does a little bit of marketing for us.

She works with our office manager to do some marketing and helps out on that.

Otherwise, she runs a marketing department for a business in Bloomington.

- So, if somebody comes up to you and says, "Hey, I've been working for the local co-op, I really think I should go out on my own."

What advice do you give 'em?

- Have a plan, but be ready for those plans to change and adapt to new opportunities.

But other than that, go for it.

I mean, you can always go back into retail, into whatever you were doing, but take the chance.

I mean, you've got nothing to lose.

- Okay.

I don't wanna disagree with you, because you know what you're talking about, but I don't know.

I mean, I was at your shop, I saw the investment that was put into that, I mean the, you know, the equipment alone.

I don't know how much would cost.

I mean, there's a ton of money.

You have employees.

Yeah.

It seems simple to just say, "Hey, I can go back into it, if it doesn't work out," but man, that's gotta be intimidating.

- It was, but you know, after again, we had a plan going in.

We had a kind of a set number of customers that we kind of figured were gonna be coming and working with us.

So again, that plan was in place.

Now, where we started out year one compared to where we are now, completely different view.

I mean, some of our core philosophies and the services are still in place, the soil sampling, stuff like that, but I mean, we've adapted to have a chemical retail business onboard now through our Titan Pro partnership.

The custom strip till came on.

So, it's been evolving and growing as we've added more Years.

- You get the drones?

Everybody's got the drones now.

- Yep.

Yep.

Getting into the drone stuff a little bit.

Trying to figure that out.

We were an early adopter of having a helicopter aerial application in the area.

That was been a big thing for us.

- It's amazing how that changed.

All of a sudden, like the airplanes are kind of like the lower tier.

It's like that used to be the top thing.

You'd get the airplane, but now.

- It's all helicopter.

Everybody wants the helicopter.

- Well, I don't know.

After the BeckS trials, the drones all of a sudden.

- Yep.

- It's crazy.

You can't keep up.

I don't know how you're going to.

- It's tough.

- Yeah.

- It's tough.

- What's in the future?

- I think the drone technology will continue to evolve and be more and more of a mainstream.

I think our strip till will keep on growing as more people adapt to it.

I don't know, we'll see.

That's the nice thing again with being us is, we're small enough, we're nimble enough, we can make quick changes to market developments.

We're a huge ship that takes forever to make a decision and to turn around.

- Okay.

Do you ever think you'll get into like the seed stuff, the seed sales?

- That gets brought up between Matt and I every year?

You know, is that something we need to look at?

We come up with the same answer every year.

No.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- We have some really good seed partners that we work with, and because we're not a seed distributor, we're a companion with them and not a threat.

So, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

- Well, with the seed, everything's so established already and the customers are shrinking.

I mean, we're losing farmers at a kind of a scary rate.

- Way too scary.

- Yeah.

Does that scare you?

It does.

It's a concern, and trying to figure out, you know, how do you navigate?

That's probably one of the biggest challenges navigating the future is what is just the farm look like going forward.

- Yeah.

I wish I knew.

- Wish a lot of people knew.

- I mean, it seriously, we're coming up on a time where I think it could, I don't want to compare it to the eighties, 'cause I don't think we're there and I don't think we've earned the right to compare ourselves to the eighties, but it might be our version of the eighties, which is still pretty scary.

Yeah.

If people wanna find more about Progressive Ag Services, where do they go?

- ProgressiveAgServices.com, also find us on Facebook.

- Do you post?

- I do not.

- I know.

- I am not a good social media person.

- No, you're not good at taking compliments.

You're not good at talking yourself up.

And I'm assuming it goes along with social media too?

- Probably, yeah.

- Yeah.

Okay.

- I don't get into the posting, and should, but I just don't, it's just not part of my DNA.

- Yeah.

But I know why farmers go with you.

I honestly, I would work with you guys.

I mean, you seem like you are, you know, you care about my bottom line.

You're the kind of guy that I'd like to go have a beer with, or stronger.

- Stronger.

- Yeah.

- Should we take the tape off?

- Didn't really take 'em off.

Yeah.

Are you sure?

- Enticing one more time.

- It's really good.

I don't know what that symbol is.

(both chuckling) Paul Schell, thank you very much.

Really, really appreciate it.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next time.

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