Q: What is your role in agriculture today?
I am involved with the operation of Gates Manufacturing, a family business which started making farm equipment in the 1980s in north-central North Dakota. We primarily make residue management tillage equipment and some specialty seeding units. The three main products are the Gates Coulter Disk, Gates Coulter Harrow and the Gates Magnum Harrow, which my dad, Mike Gates, invented in the late 1980s.
Q: When and why did you choose to come back to your family business of Gates Manufacturing?
I worked for other manufacturing companies for 20 years before returning to the family business in 2009. I came back as result of my parents nearing retirement age and also because my previous "private" company was bought by a very large "publicly traded" company. I had worked only for privately owned, family businesses for the last 20 years and really like the customer focus emphasis in those companies.
Q: How are you working for innovation in agriculture and for the future of ag?
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We continually talk to our customers and look at trends in agriculture to improve our customers productivity so they can achieve a lower cost per acre of production. We have some of the largest equipment in the market, so less trips down the field at fast operating speeds is something we continually strive to improve. We have recently integrated electronics into one of our pieces of equipment to adjust the hydraulics, which can improve efficiency and reduce operator expertise. Our goal with that piece of equipment is for it to adjust itself based on residue and other field conditions. We need to have a smart piece of tillage equipment you can pull behind an autonomous tractor, correct? We will be mapping the tillage variables and streaming this data real time to a cloud based application, so a producer can look from anywhere to see what tillage results are being achieved. We also look for leading edge technology on the consumable side of things, for example, blades of more exotic metallurgy which will last much longer (again, to reduce cost per acre).
Q: If you had the opportunity to get a message across to a large group of people, what would your message be?
The main thing is that production agriculture is really exciting and that the technology being implemented is very leading edge, and has a "wow" factor that would amaze most people.
Q: If you could choose anyone, who would you pick as your mentor?
Ben Franklin because of his wisdom, inventiveness, civic mindedness.
Andy Gates is the president of Gates Manufacturing, which his parents, Mike and Pat, started to create needed equipment for their farm. The company manufactures a full line of light tillage and attachment products. Visit their website at www.gatesmfg.net.
