BENTON HARBOR, MICH. — Great Lakes Tek Flex kicked off with a day of in-field ag tech demos from more than 20 exhibitors. Equipment on display and in use ranged from sprayers, drones, and planters to robotic mowers, harvest platforms and weeders
Attendees were encouraged to not only watch equipment demos but also to engage in constructive discussions and provide feedback to the company representatives on hand.
“[There was] lots of interaction, lots of discussion,” says Matthew Kleinhenz, Extension specialist with Ohio State University and a member of the Great Lakes Tek Flex organizing committee. “Of course, that gives people an opportunity to form their own impressions of what they’re hearing and what they’re seeing and also hear directly from the source in real time.”
This interaction, Kleinhenz says, helped attendees better understand how these technologies would fit into their operations — or not.
“I’ve heard several exhibitors talk about how they appreciated the scale of the opportunity in terms of ‘The field was large enough for my equipment to get up to speed and to run properly, to work properly,’” Kleinhenz says. “People watching could get a more genuine, more accurate, more complete feel for how it actually runs.”
Testing Machinery in Real-World Field Conditions
Mark Ledebuhr, principal with Application Insight and a part of the Great Lakes Tek Flex organizing committee, likened the first day of the event to shopping for clothing.
“This is a great opportunity to try on a lot of tech both for vegetable growers and for perennial crop growers,” he says. “Fun things in particular that are here that could apply to everybody — robot mowers. Everybody employs somebody to just ride a mower all summer. And that’s something that’s low-hanging fruit. That’s mature technology. There’s three different companies here showing autonomy that could easily be applied to mowing. The sky is the limit from there.”
Ledebuhr says agricultural technology is often designed for other markets, such as California, Europe, or China.
“We need to get it on the ground here in our conditions and we need to get it and we need to get growers interfacing with it, too,” he says. “When we get out in the dirt here, this is a long-form opportunity to really interface with the machines and start to visualize how they could potentially be part of your farm.”
Kleinhenz notes that the diversity of specialty crops remains a major barrier to innovation. Factors such as crop cycles (annuals vs. perennials), scale, scope, location, and varied market conditions force equipment manufacturers to account for numerous variables. However, the conversations started during the event can help drive future advancements.
“We have people trying to design equipment for users, and we have users,” he says. “Sometimes users can provide feedback that will help drive improvements in the design.”
Greg Bird, executive director of the Michigan Vegetable Council, says implementing the technology on display “takes time to make that marriage work between new equipment and the vegetable growers.”
Ledebuhr says the primary goal of the first day was to introduce local producers to machinery they may not have encountered before, helping them understand “the idea of what could be.”
Regional Collaboration Solving Shared Challenges
Mike Reinke, Extension viticulture specialist with Michigan State University and member of the Great Lakes Tek Flex organizing committee, emphasizes that while the center is located in Michigan, the event serves the entire region. The 350-acre facility features a wide range of fruit and vegetable crops.
“We have unique challenges in the Great Lakes region where some of this equipment might be too big for their smaller farms,” he says. “These growers are going to get a chance to tell the companies this and then the companies will know what to go back to and work on for development and then the growers get excited about having connected with the companies and hopefully improve this adoption.”
Ledebuhr points out that Great Lakes Tek Flex was intentionally designed to bring producers from across the region together, noting that “there’s an eight-state region where we’re all fighting the same fights and so we need to start fighting them together and that’s a big focus of the Tech Flex.”
Growers across the region face identical hurdles: limited labor availability, escalating input prices, and the resulting squeeze on farm profitability.
“Michigan growers, Pennsylvania growers, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin growers, and Ontario growers, we all face the same problems,” Ledebuhr says. “We’ve got the same soils. We’ve got similar market issues. We’ve got similar machinery availability and support structures here.”
Bird says assembling the large selection of technology available for specialty crops was critical for growers in the region.
“This event is so important because we’re in the Great Lakes region, which has over a million acres of fruit and vegetables and other specialty crops, but we’re unique from the Southeast and the western U.S. or even Europe,” Bird says.
Future of Ag Tech From Innovation to Real World ROI
Randy Stratton, director of Great Lakes Tek Flex, notes that the region is primed for expansion by the ag tech companies on display after proving the solutions in Latin America, Europe, and the U.S. West Coast. Stratton says robotics in agriculture has continued to advance rapidly with AI, faster processing chips and the speed of cameras. These innovations have fueled a rapid acceleration of technology development.
“I think 2027 is going to be a significant year in new technology adoption in the ag sector,” he says. “It’s just a matter of making sure the economics works.”
Stratton adds that as technology becomes more prevalent on farms, it will help position agriculture as an attractive career path for the next generation
“We need to find ways to attract younger people into the industry of agriculture both on the software development side and also on the agronomy, farming side,” he says. “What’s going to happen is that because of the technology, that gets them very excited about what farming looks like using new technology.”
Great Lakes Tek Flex intentionally builds from a day of demos into a day of discussion, which Kleinhenz hopes will prompt even greater discussions and follow-up questions from growers.
“They can come back with other insightful and important questions,” he says. “They can make specific recommendations, perhaps, or share important observations.”
The conversation shifts from the tools available to how the technology works for growers and what gaps remain for real-world implementation, Ledebuhr says, noting banks and support industries will be in attendance.
“You walk around on day one, and you find a case that looks like it might provide you with an ROI,” he says. “How do you actually get to a point where you’re making it work for you and increasing your success and your sustainability in the field?”
