Big Equipment Training

Let’s say you have a farm and you have children and you want, as an ultimate goal, to turn your farm over to your children. But first, they need to learn how to farm and on modern farms, there is big equipment. Combines, tractors, planters and so on. These future farmers need to learn how to operate this fancy big equipment, right? Well, Eric Wilcox of Growmark might have an answer knowing that kids gravitate towards all kinds of video games naturally. “The construction world has dabbled in this many years ago and they found value in pre-training operators before they actually get on the real equipment.”

And there are now systems available to prepare operators to learn how to handle big ag equipment much like similar training for heavy equipment in the construction industry. ”The hard part in the ag environment is if you want to train operators or applicators you need land and if you damage something it costs money. Time is money damage is money everything. So simulation does bring us back into the office if you will or meeting room and we can bring a whole group in even if it's snowing outside. We'll be spraying in the field in here.”

Wilcox points to his companies ag equipment simulator as an example of taking advantage of future operators and their experience with video games and simulation. “A lot of it is ease of training. And how do we capture that new mindset. Everybody is into gaming now.”