A high-tech harvest: Innovative lending library brings bots to Washington farms
A first-of-its-kind program to put cutting-edge agriculture technology into the hands of farmers is blossoming among hay, corn and berry operations north of Seattle.
Snohomish County has launched a free technology lending library for small- and medium-sized farms, allowing growers to borrow autonomous robots that can carry, mow and tow; devices for monitoring soil moisture to optimize irrigation; and survey technology that analyzes soil properties across a field to guide fertilization.
'We are doing this at no cost to the farms,' Linda Neunzig, the agriculture coordinator for the county who came up with the library idea. 'They're not putting anything at risk, and there are so many benefits.'
Farming has slim margins and is facing challenging labor shortages, leading Neunzig to search for ways to help farms stay viable and in business. Technology was a clear answer, but it can be expensive, new applications are unfamiliar, and many of the tools available are targeting large-scale commodity agriculture.
Linda Neunzig, Snohomish County's agriculture coordinator and lead for its ag tech lending library. (Snohomish County Photo_
Snohomish County Ag Tech has been investigating technologies that could be useful for its farmers and recently started making them available through the library. The program, which includes the farm analytics startup Innov8.ag as a contractor, on Friday filmed tech demos that will be posted on YouTube and a county TV station to promote the effort.
The Western Washington county blends urban hubs such as Everett and Lynnwood with pastoral rural areas. Farming here includes livestock feed production of corn, hay and grass; plots growing goods for farmers markets and CSA programs; and agritourism serving pumpkin patches visitors and U-pick experiences, plus food production.
Steve Mantle, CEO and founder of Innov8.ag, said young farmers in particular are eager to make operations more efficient and less laborious — potentially convincing them to take over multi-generational, family-run farms.
The chance to use the devices with support from Innov8.ag makes the technology 'tangible and actionable and approachable,' said Mantle, who was at Microsoft for more than a decade. His company offers data mining and can interpret impacts from using the devices and help guide farmers in decision making.
The county program also benefits ag tech startups, allowing farmers to test the technology in the literal field and provide companies with feedback — while also potentially generating sales.
'What I said to the farmers is 'be creative,'' Neunzig said, and they've followed the prompt.
A Christmas tree farmer was the first to check out a robot from a company called Burro. The farm loaded up the autonomous device with fertilizer, and it rolled between rows of trees alongside workers who dispersed the fertilizer by hand. It saved the workers from pushing heavy wheelbarrows and the time needed to go back and forth for refills.
Simon Fuentes (right), an Innov8.ag field technician, explains how farmers can use soil sensors to monitor moisture and temperatures for more efficient water use. The sensors are available free-of-charge through Snohomish County's Ag Tech program. (Innov8.ag Photo)
A dairy farm last week used a Burro robot to independently haul a trailer that carries milk for feeding calves, creating a smooth delivery system that eliminated starts and stops and allowed workers to quickly swap out bottles.
'I never would have thought of that,' Neunzig said.
An earlier demo of water monitoring technology allowed a farm to cut its water use by 75%, she said, which in addition to the cost savings for the farmer also provides benefits to salmon, food security and soil health.
The county's ag tech program is supported by Washington State Department of Ecology's Floodplains by Design grants. It has received two, three-year grants that together total $1.6 million. Some of the dollars go toward purchasing the devices for the library.
Going forward, Neunzig is particularly interested in finding machines deploying tech such as lasers and sprays to aid with weeding, which is extremely labor intensive. Washington companies tackling this problem include Carbon Robotics, Aigen and Lisi Global.
While the lending library is new, expanding and still launching promotions, Neunzig is hearing from other government agencies and tribal organizations interested in the model.
'They've already started,' she said. 'I get contacted all of the time.'
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Fast Company
35 minutes ago
- Fast Company
From ‘AI washing' to ‘sloppers,' 5 AI slang terms you need to know
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Artificial intelligence is, of course, a much larger and more transformative force than Google Glass—and it's unlikely to disappear despite the increasing slurs directed at it. However, this emerging slang does indicate—as YouGov's polling also shows—that the public is increasingly wary of the technology, and isn't afraid to voice it.
New York Times
36 minutes ago
- New York Times
This World-Renowned Negotiator Says Trump's Secret Weapon Is Empathy
Whether it's in the realm of tariffs, domestic politics or global conflicts, President Trump likes to boast about his deal-making mastery. But while his supporters may agree with him — buoyed by his aggressiveness in pursuing trade agreements — his detractors see something else. For them, he has earned the acronym TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out. Whatever your politics, the way Trump conducts his negotiations so publicly on social media has made it almost mandatory to have a take on how he goes about his business. But what does an actual negotiation expert see in the 'dealmaker in chief'? I turned to Chris Voss for an answer. Voss was at the F.B.I. for nearly 25 years, where he was its lead international kidnapping negotiator and worked on over 150 hostage negotiations. Since leaving the bureau, he has become a highly influential public speaker and private coach and is the founder and chief executive of the Black Swan Group, a company that teaches negotiation around the world. Voss's book on negotiation strategies, 'Never Split the Difference,' written with Tahl Raz, has sold millions of copies since being published in 2016. Voss's work is rooted in what he calls 'tactical empathy,' which is all about understanding your counterpart — not necessarily agreeing with them. To help unlock that understanding, he recommends a variety of techniques like conversational mirroring, strategic self-criticism and a mindful change of vocal tone to defuse tension. I spoke with Voss about Trump's negotiation skills, his formative experiences in hostage negotiation and the benefit of approaching life as a deal waiting to be made. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio App How did you wind up becoming a hostage negotiator? I was originally a SWAT guy. I was on the SWAT team in Pittsburgh and transferred to New York, trying out for the F.B.I.'s hostage-rescue team — the FBI's equivalent of the Navy Seals. I reinjured an old knee injury and realized that I wanted to stay in crisis response, but I was going to continue to get injured as a SWAT-er. So we had hostage negotiators. How hard could it be? I talk to people every day. I volunteered for the negotiation team, was rejected and asked what I could do to get on. The woman that was in charge said, 'Go volunteer on the suicide hotline.' I did, and discovered the magic of emotional intelligence. I was hooked. That got me on the hostage-negotiation team, and I never looked back. Is there a story that stands out from early in your career of a situation that really taught you something? I negotiated the Chase Manhattan bank robbery. Bank robberies with hostages are rare events. The lead bank robber at the Chase bank said: 'The guys I'm with are so dangerous, I'm scared of them. If they catch me on the phone with you guys. … ' He was doing his best to diminish his influence. He was putting up a smoke screen. This bad guy in the bank actually displayed the characteristics of a great C.E.O. negotiator. A great C.E.O. at the negotiation table is going to say: 'Look, man, I got all these people I'm accountable to. If I make the wrong decision here, my board's going to fire me. I'm scared to death of my board.' You've got to watch out for the guy who's diminishing his authority at the table. That's an influential dude, and that was exactly what this guy was doing. Your approach is rooted in 'tactical empathy.' Can you explain what that is and why it's effective in negotiation? The real roots are in Carl Rogers, an American psychologist from the '50s, '60s, '70s. He wrote that when someone feels thoroughly understood, you release potent forces for change within them. Not agreed with, but understood. When you feel thoroughly heard, you're less adversarial. And the demonstration of understanding, the articulation of the other side's point of view — purely that, no agreement at all — that's the application of empathy. How did the word 'tactical' get put in front of it? Because you want to appeal to men? That's exactly it. Empathy is thought of as: 'Oh, I feel bad for you. I'm on your side.' This soft, spongy thing. Back when Hillary Clinton ran for president, she said, I'm going to use empathy in international negotiations, and she gets barbecued for it as if it's weakness. It's not. So we threw the word 'tactical' in front of it. The same way you can't teach a Navy SEAL 'yoga breathing'; you've got to tell them it's 'tactical breathing.' How much does it matter if the person across the negotiating table has empathy for you? What if they're disrespectful or dismissive? Is that insurmountable? No, it's not. Let's talk about empathy as a skill, not an emotional characteristic. If you start there, then it frees you up to use it as a skill with anybody on earth. Because the act of trying to articulate how the other side is feeling calms you down. It kicks in a certain amount of reason in you. It broadens your perspective. Now, what's the percentage of people that will never go there? Hostage negotiators are successful roughly 93 percent of the time. You've got to accept the fact that 7 percent of the time, you're never going to make a deal with the other person. Earlier this year, Elon Musk said that empathy is 'the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.' He called it a 'bug' that can be manipulated. Do you give any credence to that kind of thinking? The first thing is: What's your definition of empathy? If it's being able to articulate the other side's point of view without agreeing with it or disagreeing with it, it's not a weakness. It's a highly evolved application of emotional-intelligence analysis. Now, is it manipulation? Similar to a knife, in one person's hand it's a murder weapon, and in another person's hand it's a scalpel and saves the life. So it's an incredibly powerful tool that relies upon the user. In 'Never Split the Difference,' you write about how life revolves around negotiation. In the last 10 years or so, the idea that negotiation is pervasive has been amplified because of one person: President Trump. He's constantly publicly engaging in negotiation, using this giant megaphone of social media. From my vantage point, his strategies look like they're all about threats and asserting leverage and trying to limit the other side's choices. But when you see Trump negotiating, what's your assessment? It's hard to get a solid gauge on him. Social media posts are limited and lack context, and everybody in the media either loves him or hates him, which means the interpretation is going to be skewed. What I'm struck by is the reaction of people that talk to him in person and the outcomes. [Former] prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau — he and Trump have thrown rocks at each other for years. Trudeau goes down to Mar-a-Lago, they meet in person; suddenly, they've got a deal. Zelensky, leader of Ukraine: that rock fight in the Oval Office, and then they're talking to each other at the pope's funeral. They've got a deal. So he appears publicly to be a blunt object, and then in person he seems to make deals. What's going on when he meets in person? I think there are emotional-intelligence skills that don't translate through the media, which he appears to have a gut instinct and knack for. It's probably an oversimplification to say that Trudeau and Trump sat down and made 'a deal.' But what effect does perception about the other person have in negotiation? The example that comes to mind is this term, 'TACO': Trump Always Chickens Out. If someone Trump is negotiating with has an awareness that he's bothered by that term, and if Trump also knows there's a perception that he chickens out, will it have an effect on the negotiation? First of all, why are people using that term? Because they know it's getting under his skin. So they're not on his side. He seems to be very aware of those sorts of things. If you hit somebody two or three times or something gets under your skin, eventually they're going to go: 'Ah, you're trying that on me again. It used to work. Sorry, not anymore. You taught me a lesson. I learned it.' Do you think Trump is a good negotiator? You know him a little, right? In passing. The crisis hotline I volunteered on was part of his family's church. I became very good friends with the minister, Arthur Caliandro, and Arthur was friends with President Trump. I asked Arthur to ask President Trump if we could use his apartment at Trump Tower for a fund-raiser for the crisis hotline, and they graciously let us use the apartment, and he graciously showed up and was an amazing host. He didn't have to give us an apartment, and he didn't have to show up. That was my awareness of him. So your original question was: Is he good as a negotiator? Yeah. I am blown away at the magic he's working in the Middle East, taking chances that no other American president would have ever stepped into. Starting with the Abraham Accords that were done under his guidance in his first term. Then he turns around, recognizes the president of Syria, calls for sanctions to be removed. He's operating extremely effectively in the Middle East in a way that no other president has. Does the Trump administration demonstrate empathy? I think he has a highly evolved understanding of how other people see things. What makes you say that? The thing with Iran recently, when we decided to add to the ordnance being dropped on the nuclear sites. The reporting was that Israel was thinking about trying to take out the Iranian leader and that Trump was against that. Now, my view is that's smart for a number of reasons. First of all, if you agree to take out the head of a country, you're declaring there's open season and fair is fair, which means they're free to come after you. To me, there's a sense of empathy there. Not necessarily agreeing, not being on their side, but if empathy is understanding how somebody sees it, I think he has a highly evolved sense of it. Do you think he has a highly evolved sense of empathy when it comes to understanding how other people 'see it' on immigration? Yeah, and then I think he's making a calculation based on what he needs to move forward. I don't think he is oblivious to how people see things, and to lack empathy is to be oblivious. Now, what decisions that causes you to make is a whole separate issue. I need to stick with empathy and Trump and immigration. Help me understand how the way ICE functions is the result of a remotely empathetic understanding of other people. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not on the ground with those guys. I don't know what kind of orders are being given. Do you want a system where the guy who's in charge tells you to do one thing and you say, 'No, I am not doing it'? Then the system breaks down. If you think the thing is wrong, you probably should say, 'I'm not doing it.' Right? There are really tough questions about that as an individual. I'm seeing it from a distance. I'm not in a position to be able to offer an informed opinion on it, and yeah, I'm dodging your question. Fair enough. I'm sure you must work with people all the time who come to you because they're afraid of negotiation. My hunch is that a lot of the fear of negotiation is related to a fear of conflict. Yeah, in general terms, two out of three people are afraid of conflict. One of them loves it. I hate those people. They're tough, right? They beat you up, call you names and then say, 'Let's go have a drink.' And you're like: 'What? You just called me names! You want to have a drink with me? You've got to be kidding.' Most people don't like conflict. Some people are afraid of it. Some people just see it as inefficient, it's a waste of time. As soon as they begin to see that we can engage in negotiations and it's not a conflict, and we can make it collaborative — I'm going to brag, but there's a point to it. The book globally sold five million copies and sells well in every country that it's in. What that tells me is there's a global appetite to collaborate. People don't want to fight. They would prefer to collaborate. They're just not sure how to get there. One of my best friends, an entrepreneur who runs his own company, said that he can tell when he's in a negotiation with someone who has also read 'Never Split the Difference.' What advice do you have for someone who has entered into a negotiation and understands that both sides are playing the same game? So first of all, it's not if it's going to happen, it's when. The book sold millions of copies. OK, OK. How many books did I sell again? Could you remind me? [Laughs.] My gut instinct right away is: What's it being used for? Are you trying to collaborate with me? Or are you trying to cheat me? I'm going to be able to smell your intent early on. Are you using the skills to demonstrate understanding to get to an outcome? I've got no problem with that. Everybody on my team uses this stuff on me. I encourage them to do so. So far we've talked about your ideas and about your work, but I don't feel like I have a firm handle on Chris Voss. Hold on. Are you going to make me cry? I hope so. Do you want to cry? I'm a very emotional guy. I probably don't look that way, but deep down inside it's soft and gooey. My sense of people who are focused on how to effectively manage interpersonal communication or who develop systems for getting along with other people is that those interests don't develop in a vacuum. Maybe they have to do with a desire for control? I'm not sure control. I like solutions. I suppose I would have been attracted to the idea of control in my younger days. The first time I came across the phrase in a negotiation — 'the secret to gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is giving the other side the illusion of control' — I went, Oh, all right. So that resonates with me. And me being an assertive — I think assertives like to have control. They want to steer things. So that may be a vulnerability of mine, wanting control. Possibly. What's a negotiation that you lost in your life — not your work — that stands out? Getting divorced. I told my son just a couple of years ago: There is no question I could have been a better man. Simultaneously, that doesn't mean it would have changed things. As we look back over our lives, that's a critical issue: Could I have done it better, and would it have changed the outcome? Those aren't the same thing. I suppose the negotiation overall for my marriage — I was unaware of the impact of being direct and honest and harsh and could have been a far better human being, a far better man. Would that have changed things? I don't know. Earlier, you brought up that hostage negotiators are successful roughly 93 percent of the time and unsuccessful roughly 7 percent. When were you part of the 7 percent? The first time things went really bad was working in the Philippines, the Martin Burnham-Guillermo Sobero case. Sobero was murdered by Abu Sayyaf early on. A lot of Filipinos died. Two out of three of the Americans that were taken were ultimately killed. That was a big wake-up call to get better and that sometimes it's not going to work out. Then there was a string of kidnappings Al Qaeda did in the 2004 time frame. They were killing everybody they would get their hands on. They wanted to make it look like they were negotiating when they weren't. It was kidnapping for murder. So when you're working on a negotiation and a hostage gets killed, how do you move on from that? It seems to me there would be a pretty strong impulse to walk away from the work. There is, and that's the critical issue between the people that want to hang in there and get better and those that are defeated by failure. A lot of people are defeated by failure. Understandably. Understandably. I never blamed anybody that was involved to want to bow out and go do something else. When Martin Burnham was killed — that was the first hostage I ever lost — I thought that was the worst moment of my life. Until: I remember sitting in the audience for another hostage negotiator's presentation, probably about four years later. He talked about the trauma of this infant getting killed, and he said, 'I don't know why I keep talking about this, giving a presentation.' He says, 'Because it's something bad that happened to me on a winter's day.' I remember thinking: Happened to you? That wasn't your child. That wasn't your brother. That wasn't your son. I remember thinking: This is exactly as self-centered as I've been. Yeah, it was bad for you. It was worse for others. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. I want to take things in a different direction. In 'Never Split the Difference,' you're somewhat critical of the idea of compromise. What's wrong with compromise? Well, compromise is guaranteed lose-lose. There's no way around that. That's not just a matter of perspective? Why couldn't a lose-lose compromise just as easily be understood as a win-win? [Pause.] Wow, OK. Why couldn't it just as easily be understood as a win-win? Yeah, why is it necessarily lose-lose? Well, compromise is: I believe I have an outcome in mind, and you believe you have an outcome in mind. We're not sure which is right, so I'm going to water down mine, you're going to water down yours. It's a guarantee of mediocrity. It's being consigned to being a C student for the rest of your life. Now, I suppose that's superior to being an F student, but we were not built to be C students for the rest of our lives. Do you see what we're engaged in as a negotiation? Probably, yeah. I think we each are seeking to uncover some kind of truth that we can share through this conversation. We're trying to uncover something that's worth people listening to and maybe taking away and using it to make their lives better. So yeah, it's a negotiation. That's the outcome I think we're both after. And did you achieve it? I don't know. I think there's a pretty good chance we've said something together that's going to matter to somebody. Even if we only impacted one life, it was a worthy outcome. This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations. Listen to and follow 'The Interview' on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music or the New York Times Audio app. Director of photography (video): Aaron Katter
New York Times
36 minutes ago
- New York Times
Congressman's Stock Trades Draw More Scrutiny After Key Votes
Over the first several months of his freshman term in Washington, Representative Rob Bresnahan Jr., Republican of Pennsylvania, became one of the most active stock traders in Congress, despite having campaigned for his seat on a promise to end stock trading by lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Now Mr. Bresnahan's trading is attracting more scrutiny after he made several transactions that appeared to benefit from the consequences of his own votes on the House floor. Democrats are working to weaponize Mr. Bresnahan's trades against him as they plot a campaign to oust him in next year's midterm elections, and some Republicans privately concede that the issue could hurt him in his highly competitive district as they attempt to hold onto their slim House majority. It is not just the striking number of trades that is dogging Mr. Bresnahan, a wealthy former chief executive of an electrical contracting company who was a top G.O.P. recruit. As of Thursday, he had made 626 stock trades since taking office, according to Capitol Trades, a site that monitors the stock market activity of lawmakers. That number made him the second-most-active trader this Congress. It is also the possibility — or at least the appearance of one — that he could be benefiting financially from votes he made in Congress in favor of elements of President Trump's domestic policy agenda that could end up harming his constituents. On March 27, for instance, Mr. Bresnahan sold off between $100,001 and $250,000 worth of bonds issued by the Allegheny County Hospital Development Authority for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The sale came after a report identified 10 rural hospitals in Pennsylvania that faced immediate risk of closure, and a month after Mr. Bresnahan voted for the House budget resolution that paved the way for large Medicaid cuts. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
