In Episode 8, we’re getting down in the dirt with Brad Beene, Territory Product Specialist with AMAZONE.

Brad talks tillage, spreaders, precision application, field demos, and what it takes for equipment to hold up in the Southern Plains. We get into Catros, Ceus, wind control, new technology, and a few stories from demos that didn’t exactly go according to plan.

It’s a straight-up conversation about dirt, iron, technology, and what farmers are actually seeing in the field — with a few questionable pronunciations mixed in.

Precision technology is moving faster than almost anything else in ag, and it's easy to get lost in what's actually useful versus what just sounds cool on a spec sheet. This week we sit down with Shawn Meyer, Parallel Ag's new Director of Precision Technology and a nine-year AGCO/PTx veteran, to talk about where the industry is headed and what it's really like running the tech side of a dealership that spans the Texas panhandle to northern Illinois.

We get into RTK vs satellite correction (and why "my lines moved" doesn't mean anything's broken), the trade-up programs running right now on Ag Leader, Raven, and Trimble equipment, why light bars are still alive and well in parts of the footprint, and the PTx tech that's actually changing how seed gets planted. Shawn also breaks down what separates the flashy features from the ones that move the needle on your operation, and why he thinks basically everybody should be running auto steer by now (he'll tell you himself he's the exception).

Plus, a rapid fire round that gets into RTK panic levels, coffee habits, and whether auto steer or cruise control gets more trust.

Agriculture isn't just what happens in the cab or out in the field. There's a whole other side built around leadership, operations and long term decision making that most people never see.

Today we continue our Women in Ag series with Catie Beauchamp of KB Custom Ag. Catie grew up on a hog and row crop farm in northern Colorado, went pre-vet, found her way into meat science instead, and came out with a PhD chasing E. coli and salmonella from the feedlot through the packing plant. After 15+ years leading food safety, quality and supply chain operations, she joined KB Custom Ag full time. The same custom harvesting business she and her husband started with their first two employees living on their couch, now 200+ full time employees running forage harvest across Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Missouri and New Mexico.

Catie talks about what separates a real partner from a vendor, why culture is how you respond and not what you say, where safety actually breaks down in a harvest operation, raising daughters in this industry, and the advice she'd give any young woman coming out of school. Including the line that became our soundbite: don't ever make the coffee.

The Parallel Path is a podcast from the marketing team at Parallel Ag, bringing real conversations from across the agricultural industry.