Power Onward: S1E8 - Helping farmers grow with innovation

Show ID [00:00:03]:
This is Power Onwards, the podcast that.

Show ID [00:00:06]:
Unveils how power technology shapes your everyday life.

Show ID [00:00:19]:
Power Onward.

Show ID [00:00:22]:
This is Power Onward, the podcast that unveils how power technology shapes your everyday life.

Kim [00:00:31]:
On a cherry farm in Michigan, a fourth generation farmer is faced with a tough decision. The world around him is changing. Economic pressures, new regulations, and a growing need to stay competitive in a challenging market. His family's farm has always relied on traditional equipment, but that equipment no longer keeps up with the times. He has a choice to make. Invest in brand new machinery or find a way to make what he already has work. I'm Kim.

Haley [00:00:59]:
I'm Haley.

Kim [00:01:01]:
Haley, let's take a step back for a minute. You told me this beautiful story about this cherry farmer. How are you connected with this farmer?

Haley [00:01:08]:
Yeah, great question. And I think I actually might want to give a little bit more context as to what even led me to this farmer to begin with. I think a lot of us who have lived in Indiana for most of our lives, in some way we are connected to farming. Farming is kind of the lifeblood of Indiana, really big agricultural. Whether you literally know a farmer or you're historically connected to somebody in the farming community within your family. And that's kind of my case. Great grandparents were farmers, but then really my grandfather, my mom's dad was a farmer and ran a thousand acre operation in northern Indiana in Goodland, Indiana. So good land, shout out to them.

Haley [00:01:49]:
Growing everything from corn and soybeans to raising hogs and cattle through that connection. Just had a really strong appreciation of farming growing up and kind of that understanding and you know, visiting grandpa all the time on the farm, picking and shucking corn on the side of the road, it's just kind of how we grew up.

Kim [00:02:08]:
Yeah, I love how you're connected to farms. And my connection with farms is so different because you were in it, your family was in it. Meanwhile, I only have connections with driving through like farming areas to go visit family or, or my, my uncle lived. Lives in Avon. His backyard is an entire corn or soybean farm. So that's my only connection is like we, we play football outside or volleyball outside and we lose a ball into a corn field. And that's my connection. But I'm really curious to hear more about yours.

Kim [00:02:35]:
Cause it sounds far more fascinating than mine.

Haley [00:02:37]:
No, I mean I, I think you're spot on. I think that's how a lot of people are connected to, to farming. We see it, we know it, we sometimes drive past it, but we're not fully ingrained in it. I can't say that I'm fully ingrained in it. Obviously, my grandfather was. Was farming, and my mom grew up in that space, but I myself have not farmed. I think what's really interesting is as my mom was growing up and her kids, you know, I think my grandfather really had a deep appreciation for what he. He did and a really strong sense of pride in, you know, growing food for the masses.

Haley [00:03:10]:
But I also think you really understood that from farming is not easy. He also wanted to be really cognizant that maybe his kids wanted to pursue other passions and farming in the sense, you know, it's really unpredictable. Too much rain, too little rain, drought, storms. I mean, anything can really impact your cultivation and harvest that year. And so I think he wanted to, you know, not necessarily steer my mom and her siblings away from farming, but just wanted to give them the opportunity to broaden that. Knowing how hard farming is as an occupation in life, that's really beautiful.

Kim [00:03:44]:
There's a lot of hard work that goes into there and there's strategy and.

Haley [00:03:48]:
There'S, you know, there's.

Kim [00:03:49]:
It's quite tactical and to your point when. When it's very capricious when it comes to Midwest weather specifically.

Haley [00:03:54]:
Oh, yeah.

Kim [00:03:55]:
Very difficult to navigate, but really lovely that he was open to other options. Sometimes we put in so much work into a thing, it's really hard to watch your family step away from that thing.

Haley [00:04:05]:
Yeah, just farming, for sure. And you're spot on too. I think it's just. It is a really difficult occupation and one that farmers spend months planning. I mean, you finished harvest, and then you start planning for the next. And so how does that really relate? And bring me to this cherry farmer that we're talking about today. I was studying English writing in college. Shout out to DePauw Tigers.

Haley [00:04:26]:
I think it's pretty common as college students, as seniors, we have to write a theses at the end of our senior year. Capstoning something, giving out some sort of wisdom, tying in our learnings. And as an English writing major, I didn't really know how I was going to tie. I knew I wanted to do storytelling. I knew I wanted it to feel emotional. But so many of those pieces in the past had been really research heavy. And I am not a researcher. I am right.

Haley [00:04:53]:
Like, you dive into the details, and that's totally me. But I think I wanted it to be more than just a research paper. And coincidentally, I was up in Michigan that summer of my. Right before my senior year visiting family. My uncle has lived there for practically his whole life up in Northern Michigan, really had a strong sense of community, knew a lot of people engaged in the community himself. And, you know, one afternoon, he's like, we need to go up to the farm. And I'm like, what farm? Where are we going? He's like, you know, this guy, he's invited me up. Like, we should go see it.

Haley [00:05:27]:
It's beautiful. And, you know, I've coached his daughter in basketball. Like, we have to go visit it. So we go up, we're driving, you know, we kind of pass trucks on the way. Like, hey, how you doing? Thanks so much for letting us come.

Kim [00:05:37]:
Check out your Midwest hospitality at the finest.

Haley [00:05:41]:
Yes, he had all the kids in his truck. They had just finished a day of work. And, you know, we pass along, and my uncle has a giant truck, so I can't see anything. I'm five, four. Like, we can't see anything beyond the horizon, except along the sides we've got, you know, cherry trees. And, you know, that in and of itself is really beautiful. I think if you've ever been in an orchard, you know, it's just really peaceful driving through. And we get to the peak, we step out, and all of a sudden, like, you just walk around the truck, and you're overlooking all of Lake Lee Leavenoagh, which is pretty insane to have that view of just the entire lake.

Haley [00:06:15]:
I think at that moment, I was like, wow, this is crazy. Somebody has been able to, you know, cultivate this land for generations, and it's pristinely kept, like, just flawlessly, you know, kind of picturesque in that sense.

Kim [00:06:31]:
You're such a wonderful storyteller that I can tell that you're. Your breath is taken away because you're visualizing this, which is then taking my breath away because I'm imagining what this could look like, how vast this actually feels.

Haley [00:06:44]:
Yeah. And I think as storytellers, like, it's easy to be like, wow, like, this is so cool. But then you kind of zero it back in, and you're like, oh, this is somebody's life. And I think that's what intrigued me. I was like, all right, we're going to dive into, like, what are the modern challenges that family farmers, specifically family farmers are facing? But at the time, you know, it was not only unique in the sense that, wow, I had this connection to the farmer. Great, I can go talk to him and pick his brain for as long as I want. But I also think it was uniquely timed in that there were a lot of challenges specifically targeting farmers, some of them universal I think continue to persist today. But at the time, you know, there were immense economic challenges, not unlike today as well, specifically for the cherry industry.

Haley [00:07:28]:
There were some tariffs that were negatively impacting those farmers. Specifically, if you were a smaller farmer, that's pretty challenging to overcome. In the cherry industry of itself, there's a lot of competition. How do you make yourself stand out as a cherry farmer? I think the long lasting debate of environmental challenges and you know, we have a lot of debate around climate change, but also farmers practices. Right, and how they're able to really harvest and what they need to, to make that happen. And then of course, on top of this, which is what the farmer told.

Kim [00:07:59]:
Me, is this the cherry on top?

Haley [00:08:01]:
This is the cherry on top. You either love them or you hate them. Cherries are not like oranges. They are not such a valid point. They are not like, you know, the pomegranate juices of the world. They, they have many nutrients, many, you know, strong health factors. But when you go to try and sell that, you know that it doesn't sell the same way as like your orange juice and your cranberry juice does.

Kim [00:08:23]:
That's easy. Everyone sees one, they know one, it's very normal, it is average. But then you see cherry. And to your point, some people make a face when they get maraschino cherries on top and I'm like, oh, I'll take yours, please.

Haley [00:08:36]:
Yeah, exactly.

Kim [00:08:37]:
So you mentioned a lot of obstacles. How does this play into the story with the cherry farmer?

Haley [00:08:41]:
I think a lot of times when we, we broadly society think about farmers, they are, you know, that character that's resisting change and doesn't want to make something different, set in their own ways. Like this is how it's always been done. And I think that is absolutely not true for I would even argue the majority of farmers. What's really interesting in the context, and I can't necessarily speak to what farmers are facing specifically today, but I can for sure put it in the context of this farmer in particular and how he was just so inquisitive, I think is the best word, and resourceful about how he approached farming. So we talked about stiff competition. Okay, that's really challenging. And in his mind he was like, well, what can I do to stand out? I'm going to make a maraschino cherry. So maraschino cherry, it's on the top of your Sunday, it's in your cocktail.

Haley [00:09:38]:
That in and of itself is a really niche market and it's a beautiful way to stand out. The other really Nice piece about being in that market is, is that he actually could harvest his cherries sooner in the season. So why does that matter? In this particular case, harvesting sooner in the season really allowed him a couple different things. Perfect recipe for a maraschino cherry. So check. We got that. But then also really kind of allowed him to pick before a lot of the summer infestations. And then, you know, on the flip side of that, hopefully in most cases, he could use less pesticides and insecticides.

Haley [00:10:13]:
So great for his land, great for the consumer. The other thing that was really interesting with him is I'm like, oh, you're a farmer. Like, this is so cool. And he's like, I don't think I characterize myself as a farmer. I think I'm more of like, a mechanic. And I was like, you have to explain, in his spare time and in the off season, he would basically spend his whole time in his shed tweaking his equipment. I think it's pretty well known, has not changed. That equipment is incredibly expensive.

Haley [00:10:41]:
Comes with a lot of great innovations. I mean, if you look at some of them today, you know, the technology's crazy. They can, you know, pinpoint through technology that literally tells you where to spray. I think technology's getting better. With that, though, comes price tag, and that's really hard to overcome, especially if you're a small family farmer. And so he would spend those seasons really tweaking his machinery and for cherries in specific. If you ever look at a cherry shaker, I'm sure that's not the right term, so somebody correct me, but if you look at it, you know, it typically wraps around, grafts onto the base of the tree and shakes the cherries off. And then a lot of times there's a lot of overspill on that, and you lose a lot of your product.

Haley [00:11:19]:
And so he would tweak his machinery to fit around the tree way wiser and smarter more efficiently, which helped him because, I mean, again, it's him, his nephew, and the kids. That's who's working the farm. That was a really big win for him.

Kim [00:11:34]:
That's an incredible story, that visual of just tinkering and tweaking. And it actually takes me back to Klesi Cummins, who was constantly tinkering with all of the engines and trying to optimize them and learning from past models and how to make them better. So I love that that spirit of innovation is in this farmer as well.

Haley [00:11:51]:
Oh, yeah. And I think it's more so than I ever even realized. Of like. Because I even went in with the same concepts of like, oh, it's going to be the same old way. And he was like, no, we have to be like completely. He described it as being contrarians. Like that is how he described his family of like, let's go against the grain and find the best way to do it. It may not be, you know, the newest technology and the latest innovations, but that his own self innovation really made it possible to make the farm work in a way that made it successful in a time when there really were a lot of odds against him.

Kim [00:12:25]:
I think it's really cool that this cherry farmer and farmers in general tend to, you know, take a solution that may not be one size fits all to really fit their purpose and their farm and their specific crops. I think it's amazing. So with that said, what does Cummins make possible for these local heroes?

Haley [00:12:41]:
The way I view it, there are kind of two big ways. The first one, you can always without a doubt know for sure that Cummins is innovating for a better solution for something. I think that is just like the, the heart and soul of the company to constantly be searching for solutions that not only are more efficient, but genuinely have meaning and purpose and impact on the people who ultimately benefit from them.

Kim [00:13:08]:
What I've noticed is we don't just create something because someone has an idea. We create because we hear the community, we hear our customers telling us absolutely, this is the problem, how do we solve it? And we work to solve that together.

Haley [00:13:19]:
Correct. And there's a lot of testing involved in that. Failures, but then successes. And it's all part of like this exceptional process of creating products that really help these industries. The other piece, and I think it's probably the more undervalued and again from my view, for me it's like we create a product that is one less stressor in somebody's life. If I am out there battling a natural disaster, if I'm out there, you know, we have housing crisis, we have food demands, we have really, really big challenges that are facing not just our industry but the world. The last thing I want is for my truck to break down or my equipment to fail it to not be able to perform at the max performance that I am expecting of it at the altitudes that I'm at. And so I think what's really great about what Cummins does is making sure that that person does not have to worry about it.

Haley [00:14:15]:
They are probably facing somebody on the worst day of their life in the roughest of conditions and the last thing that they want to be able to help that person is something going wrong on their equipment. So I think Cummins takes that really seriously. And I think it's a point of pride for a lot of us that, like, 100%, I know you not out there watching for, like, what's the next natural disaster? I don't want there to be any. Right. But there's something so powerful in seeing that come and see roll up on the screen, on the news, when it's like, the worst day of somebody's life and we're there to help and make sure that there is one less thing that that emergency worker has to think about other than doing their mission. It's really important. Our mission is to make their mission possible.

Kim [00:14:57]:
Cummins. Reliability, dependability. It's that peace of mind that really, really hits home.

Haley [00:15:02]:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, you want to make sure that, like, if the power goes out, the generator kicks on at the hospital, you know, the ambulance gets there as fast as they can.

Kim [00:15:10]:
There are so many scenarios here, and a lot of what you do and what you focus on is storytelling. Why is storytelling so important for a company like Cummins?

Haley [00:15:18]:
That is a great question, and I think it's something that's across the board for companies, somewhat undervalued. I don't think I'm, you know, making any new statements by saying storytelling is important. And we absolutely, as marketers, should be using as a tactic. I don't think that's, you know, profound to anybody. But I think in particular for Cummins, it's really, really important. And I think in the first way that I see that as being really important is we are working with industries that, you know, they're really hard, tough jobs, they are dirty jobs. They are dirty in the sense of literally, like, you're physically in mud. And a lot of times we hear about those jobs, but we don't see see them.

Haley [00:15:58]:
And I don't mean, like, see them on your television and, like, you know, something's happening. Like, I really mean, like, dive into the people behind that industry and understand what life looks like for them. That is really important for a company like Cummins to tell that, because we're typically the product behind the product. Like, you don't normally see us. We are the engine under your truck's hood. We are the generator behind the building that, you know, keeps the lights on. And I think it's really important that we not only highlight those industries in personal and humanized ways, but also selfishly kind of bring our products to the forefront of how many touch points we have in your life that you may not even realize. For me, storytelling offers the opportunity to reach the people who are not connected to us in any way, may not even understand how, like, we impact their lives.

Haley [00:16:52]:
And I think that's something that tends to get overlooked, particularly in the industry that we're in, understandably, but it does.

Kim [00:16:59]:
And speaking of people and passion and uncovering the interesting minds behind the products, Haley has an incredible series that we're going to plug in the show notes. You have to check it out. Some of the best things I have ever read about Cummins. It's opened my eyes. It's inspired the concept for this podcast. You're going to have to check it out.

Haley [00:17:18]:
It's a really amazing project. Not simply because I worked on it, but because of the people that I got to work with on it. I think if you know Cummins, you know that people are the heart and soul of the company, hands down. Like, that is just a fact. And I really had an opportunity early on in my career at Cummins to actually go and visit our plants in North America. Not all of them. That's on the bucket list. I would love to see them all.

Haley [00:17:41]:
But I did get the opportunity to go visit a few, talk to manufacturing workers and co workers and leaders and just hear about, like, the amazing stuff that they're doing, from like product testing and innovation to, you know, more sustainability driven work. And that led to an earlier series of kind of a people focused storytelling method. But then I was challenged by an amazing boss and he was like, well, what would a step further look like? And that was where People X Passion was born from. I have long aspirations for where it will go, but initially this is really looking at our employees. I think a lot of times we tend to, if you're watching severance, maybe this is like your plug where work and life are separate. For Cummins colleagues and coworkers, I think I can say confidently that work and life merge together in a healthy way. It just complements really nicely and for so many people, the passions they develop at Cummins outside of it blend together in some way. And so this series was really a way of kind of bringing those individual passions to life and tying that to the work that they do and why it matters so much to them to make these exceptional, I mean, genuinely exceptional products for people.

Haley [00:18:57]:
And I think you'll find in the series, I mean, they have so many personal ties to it. Family that worked in the trucking industry, they were farmers themselves, you know, in some way, they're connected to Cummins on a deeper level. And I think that's why you find so many people at Cummins who work for decades.

Kim [00:19:14]:
There are so many stories worth telling, and thanks to you and so many others, the storytelling continues. The the highlighting of all of the different ways we impact everyone's life. I love being able to continue to read this. Thank you so much for joining us today and telling your story about storytelling.

Haley [00:19:30]:
Thank you.

Kim [00:19:32]:
All right, so what's the big idea for this episode? This story is more than just about a farmer and the tough decisions he faces. It's about the power of innovation, resourcefulness, and community. The future of power means giving people the tools they need to make the most of what they have, keeping traditions alive and creating a more sustainable future. And we're doing that one local story at a time.

Show ID [00:19:59]:
Power Onward. Thank you for listening to Power Onward. Your support means the world to us. If you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe, rate and review on your favorite podcast platform. If you want to dig deeper on what we covered today, check out the show notes for additional links or go to Cummins for until next time, Power Onward. We're from Cummins, the company that's been innovating toward the future for more than 100 years. We're no strangers to rapid change, global shifts, and economic uncertainty. We want to be your constant during the energy transition, whenever, wherever, forever.

Show ID [00:20:52]:
Power Onward.