Brant Palmer, RDO Equipment (Yuma, Ariz.)

Brant Palmer is a foundational pillar of our precision technology department. For over 10 years, Brant has worked tirelessly to keep our growers in California and Arizona up and running. The crop types in our region are extremely diverse and our growers farm 12 months out of the year. Brant has never shied away from these challenges and has excelled at everything from combines, cotton pickers, windrowers, bailers, sprayers, on top of every variety of specialty fresh produce equipment imaginable. He has even begun leading our charge into drones and the various autonomous equipment that are trickling into the market. 

His round the clock dedication has kept our precision market share strong and given our growers the peace of mind knowing that they have the ultimate expert just a short phone call away. Brant is everything a precision farming department should be about. His dedication to customer service, driving results, and most importantly, finding the right solutions are unmatched. I can't think of an issue or customer request that wasn't ultimately meet with an answer from Brant. He is constantly finding ways to drive value for our customer through our 3-pronged approach: making or saving our customers money, improving their quality of life, and creating a more sustainable environment. Brant's career is chalk-full of examples of helping customers achieve one, and in most cases, all three of these objectives. 

Year after year, I receive feedback from customers on how Brant helped them transform their businesses through technology. He has been there from the very beginning, from JDLink to John Deere's Operations Center. He is front and center helping RDO Equipment Co. lead the charge; helping our growers turn their digital equipment, agronomic, and financial information into actionable intelligence. Decisions that growers used make based on 'gut-feel' are now made through hard data that Brant has helped them capture and interpret. 

Over the last decade, I'd bet we'd all be hard pressed to find a more dedicated and engaged precision farming expert across the United States. Brant is everything that precision farming stands for and we all hope to achieve. He has certainly earned the recognition and I look forward to seeing what he can accomplish in the years ahead!

—Jeremy Smith (Salinas, Calif.)

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