Ag Tech Talk Podcast: Topcon Positioning Systems’ Mike Gomes Leads a New Global Sustainability Team
12 December 2023 
For many years it seemed sustainability was little more than a nice buzzword. That’s no longer the case. Sustainability is not a buzzword or a fad. Companies have embraced the concept and are working to improve all aspects of their operations. Topcon Positioning Systems has long focused on precision agriculture and recently created a global team designed to take sustainability to the next level both internally and with its partners.
Podcast Transcript:
AgriBusiness Global: Today, we’re talking with Mike Gomes, Vice President of Sustainability and Global CSR with Topcon Positioning Systems, a division of Tokyo, Japan-based Topcon Corporation. Mike has spent more than a quarter of a century focused on precision agriculture, the last 19 of which have been as a Topcon employee. Mike has been tapped to lead a new global team that will focus on sustainability both internally and with its partners. The organization is also opening a 60-acre research and Validation Center in Livermore, California.
Thanks for being with us today. We’re going to be talking about the Topcon Positioning System. Why don’t you give us an overview of what that is and where it fits into the Topcon umbrella.
Michael Gomes: So hey, Dan, thanks very much for having me today. So, Topcon Positioning Systems – we’re a manufacturer of electronics, primarily, electronics and sensors and solutions used by the construction and agricultural businesses. And so, for many of your listeners. If they’re familiar with the Norac Boom Height Control systems, that’s a Topcon product. They may also be familiar with the Digi-Star weighing systems that are in mixers or loaders, or grain carts. Those are also Topcon products.
Those are part of our line of for example, Topcon autosteering systems or variable rate application or variable rate application on the go, yield monitors any of those kinds of things. And so, all of that collection of sensors and products rolls up into a portfolio of precision ag products. If that makes sense.
We also serve the construction industry with two- and three-dimensional positioning controls for bulldozers, motor graders, excavators, concrete asphalt pavers. All of that. We work with big off-highway equipment coming from the core technology of survey instruments.
What you see is this Topcon tools. We’re a 92-year-old company that makes sensors that are sensors of measurement. In the sustainability world, increasingly, people want to do a better job measuring, so that then they can manage better. We fit into that picture.
ABG: Very good. Sustainability. That’s the focus. Topcon Positioning Systems created a new global team to focus on sustainability. And that’s what you’re leading here. Can you talk a little bit about what this global team is going to be doing?
MG: Sure thing. I’m Vice President of Sustainability and Global CSR and we frame that as – it’s really a strength and commitment. Topcon has always had strong corporate support for the idea of doing the right thing in sustainability. And so, by standing up our sustainability team, what we’re doing is we’re really strengthening that existing commitment, right? When we begin to talk about this, one of the first things people do is, they ask me: “Hey, Mike, what is sustainability?” And so, to me the easiest way to frame that up is the idea that in order to have a sustainable company, the first and most important thing is that you have some amount of profit, right?
And you have to be able to listen to your customers. And so those are the first two things. Sustainability is the balance from profit only to a how-are-you-treating-the-people (approach). And what does that mean for the planet? To me, sustainability is a bit of a reframe of a not profit only, but really a balance between profit, people, and planet.
And so, we see that in our products every day, and we have for a long time. That’s why I say that it’s a strengthened commitment. It’s much more of a focus toward just being able to realize those things. What a lot of people don’t realize is when we put in, for example, the precision ag products, we create not just economic value for the end users, but also value for the operators. And the fact that it provides better job skills. And they’re safer. And they have less fatigue. In addition to the fact that there are a huge number of environmental benefits of precision agriculture – doing more with less — less fertilizers, growing better food, linking ourselves to things like renewable fuels. And it’s not just about food, but also about feed and about biofuels. And so. increasingly you begin to see how sustainability or how aspects of sustainability begin to frame into that context.
Topcon standing up a small global team around sustainability is in response to, in many cases the investment community and where the institutional investment is going.
Companies increasingly are having to respond to: “Are you a good corporate citizen? Are you making profit?”
Also, business must balance creating better workspace and ensure they are sourcing products ethically? Are you manufacturing those products in an ethical manner. And what environmental benefits are you creating along the way with those products? Lot of those kinds of things.
ABG: It sounds like, then this is a both internal and external kind of project – internal — looking at what Topcon is doing the types of things you’re providing and – external – helping ultimately, those end users and everybody else, maybe along the way how to improve their sustainable outlook.
MG: Sure, that’s exactly right. And so, if you’re going to go out into the public eye and say, Hey, we’re a sustainable company. The first thing you have to do is you have to be able to look at yourself, right? What’s your global footprint with respect to what’s your greenhouse gas emissions in the products that you produce, in order to get those products produced. Those are called your Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. That’s your direct emissions from the manufacturer of that product. Or it may also be the electricity or different power consumed, that it takes you to get to that product.
The third is what they call Scope 3, which is the upstream/downstream benefits, right? And so that that first thing that we do in an internal effort like this is there’s an internal effort of: “Okay, hey? We’re going to move the company along because in many cases people aren’t necessarily used to what the sustainability group might do. It’s a new word for a lot of people. It’s a whole new vocabulary. There’s an alphabet soup of acronyms and things.
If you’re going to tell the public: “Hey, we’re a sustainable company.” You have to be able to explain where you are in that journey. And we’re all working to get better.
In our first year the team is spending more focus internally than externally. For me, the biggest thing is that I mentioned, Topcon has had a strong commitment to sustainability over many years. It’s been in our corporate vision here at the Positioning Group since 2016. It’s just now coming to the forefront right. That’s why I say that it’s a bit of a strengthened commitment.
I have two proof points around that. One is the opening of our most recent 60-acre Research and Validation center in Livermore, California. And then the second is that we’re in the process of taking our Livermore campus onto solar to reduce our Scope 2. And so, in my thinking, those are two examples of proof points of how Topcon is not just saying the right thing, but working to have actions behind what their messaging might be.
ABG: So, we’ve talked a little bit about some of the general goals. Do you have specific targets in mind. “We want to reduce our carbon footprint, or we want to decrease the amount of electricity used by X percent? Or is that still too early for that?
MG: That’s exactly right. The first thing you have to do is you have to be able to understand where you are. You have to measure so that then you could do a better job to manage. And so, we’re in the process of understanding that measurement, first.
Our corporate parent has been doing this for the past couple of years, and so they have a very good idea from Japan what it takes. But here, at the Topcon Positioning Group, we have manufacturing in five different countries. That’s five different sets of rules and hose kinds of things. And so, we’re in the process of just beginning to understand where we are on the map before we head for goals.
Purchase power is typically your scope to emissions when the opportunity presents itself. We’ve got programs so that then we can begin to adopt solar, right? So we might not know exactly what our Scope 2 emissions are, but we know that we want to work towards zero, right? That’s why we’re putting in a large solar project on our Livermore work campus. We don’t necessarily have to know exactly where we are to know that we have to improve, right? We’re a bit of a moving car if you will.
ABG: Okay, that makes sense. Whenever we do, well, just about any story, the term supply chain comes up. Every company is touched on both sides of their supply chain – bringing in material and then sending out material. Obviously, you want to work with all of these partners and help them reduce their Scope 2 emissions and whatever else it is. Is this ultimately going to be something that you will also make available to every company (and share) some of the things you learned. How is that going to play out?
MG: At Topcon, we’ve always had a very open door policy about where we are on things, because we’re a strong believer in a in a stronger industry. For example, how how did we start on this journey? We serve a number of the largest OEMs, the John Deere’s, the Caterpillars, global construction, and those types of companies, because we’re a vendor to them.
They brought us into this journey as one of their vendors two or three years ago, and so, today, we’re beginning to understand where our own Scope 2 and Scope 3, the upstream downstream pieces, are going. And then in turn, we will begin to lean on our contract manufacturers, so then we can understand where they are. And so one of the probably biggest things you see is the interdependence. We are all interdependent on one another in the supply chain. But we’re also all in different places in the journey at different steps along the path.
ABG: You mentioned the Livermore facility that’s being created and gave us a general overview of what’s there? Can you talk a little bit more about what specifically will be happening on that site?
MG: We’ve always had a research and validation center at Livermore. Our previous one was only about nine acres, and it was located in a gravel pit in between two cities. It came to the point where that property was no longer available to us, So, when we had the opportunity, we acquired a larger piece of property – 60 acres. And that’s the site for the Research and Validation center.
In many cases, when we’re working with the various technologies, construction and agriculture, before you take it to an OEM, or before you take it to somebody else, you’ve got to be able to prove to yourself that it does what you think it does. Our research and validation center enables just that for survey and construction. It’s a place that we can put our technology into equipment and begin to think through elements of the integration into that equation – elements of are the sensors sensing in the right way, what we’re doing when it comes to the surface, when it comes to planting, when it comes to understanding the crop height, or it comes to understand measuring the weight all of those kinds of things. So, then we can do a better job understanding how it works. And does it work over time? Can we put it into all the different aspects that a customer will? You’ve got to be able to prove it to yourself. Part of driving innovation, you have to be able to have a place that you can test and fail at testing. If you can’t do that for yourself before you take it to the ultimate customers. You’re not as strong as you might be in the industry.
ABG: You mentioned soil health. We’ve talked about energy usage. Precision ag certainly has an impact on the amount of crop inputs going in. So these initiatives sort of touch a bunch of areas. Are there some other aspects of agriculture that you haven’t mentioned yet that this will be touching?
MG: Sustainability – what’s happening is happening around the world is that global investors are beginning to drive the scrutiny of companies, or the examination of companies (asking) where are you in this journey? What benefits do your products really provide right other than profit to yourselves? And so, in precision ag, this isn’t necessarily new news, this is what we’ve been doing for a long time. The Association of Equipment Manufacturers validated the environmental benefits of precision ag. This is something that the global ag technologies team and Meister Media have been familiar with for a long time. When they were looking at the steps to adoption. To us, it’s just a framing of this information and bit of how we’re creating those benefits, whether it’s around food and reducing world hunger. It’s around clean energy. It’s around feed for animals. And it’s around doing more with less, and doing the most with the resources we have available to us. It’s a lot of more of the same in many cases. We’ve done a pretty good job around the bases on a lot of these things. and we certainly see that Meister Media and the Global Ag Tech Initiative effort that you have. There has been a strong support of this. And so that’s where we see a very high degree of alignment between those two.
ABG: Thanks for the shout-out. We appreciate it. Sustainability for a long time was kind of a buzz word. It makes you feel good. But putting it into action wasn’t happening a lot, and in the last few years it really seems to have gained traction. People define it differently. But everybody has a pretty good understanding of exactly what the concept of sustainability is. My sense is that this is not just a passing fad. This is really kind of a movement that is, going to continue and move on.
MG: I think you’re exactly right. How is sustainability part of the new normal? You see that in life here in the United States where the Biden administration put quite a bit of funding around climate smart technologies. This next year, specifically with the new Farm Bill, we may very well see the adoption of precision agriculture as one of those things that gets a renewed commitment. And so, in many cases, in the global spectrum, Europe has had elements in these Green Deal programs pushing these things forward for a long time. For example, in Europe, whether they’re mandating that between 2025 and 2030 growers need to use less input they need additional scrutiny. In an information-based society, where consumers are becoming more and more aware, and particularly post covid, where people have a much higher sensitivity to what inputs are going into their food.
What are the sustainable practices behind some of those things? It’s not just about inexpensive food. It’s also about the good we’ve been doing as an industry for a long time. This whole sustainability thing is an opportunity for us to show that we’ve been doing the right thing as an industry for a long time.
A lot of times, people in agriculture are a little standoffish about the word sustainability. That change is certainly something that’s an opportunity we can create. We’ve been doing more with less. We’ve been only putting out what we need. Why? Because it’s the best long-term thing for our business, and that’s sustainable in its own right.
That’s why the opportunity to become the VP of Sustainability here at our company was an opportunity for this to kind of come full circle in my career. It’s strengthening our commitment or being able to see and explain and show people how we are doing the right things, and how we are doing more with less, and how we are building a better world, and how we’re creating societal benefits for people that will never know our name. And that’s okay. And that’s part of the benefit that our industry represents for sure.
ABG: Okay, here’s the danger of doing live interviews. I had another question about the Livermore facility, and we kind of got off target there. So, I’ll ask right now. You also have research and validation centers in Italy and Australia, I believe. Can you talk about how these three sites work together? How will this upgraded one in Livermore fit with those?
MG: We started off first with a small facility 20 plus years ago here in Livermore. We added one at one of our development centers in Adelaide, Australia. And then we added one in Northern Italy, outside of Bologna, in a place called Concordia, Italy. What you see with those three facilities is that they’re about 8 hours apart time zone-wise.
We also make the grade and slope technologies that we might use for off highway vehicles. So, in this case we can construct the same course on an area that we own and control.
When we’re working with equipment manufacturers or when we’re developing a product, it means that our engineer and product management teams can put the same tractors or combine on the same course in the same repeatable position and be testing it starting in Australia, and then moving to Europe, and then coming to Livermore. So that then that enables elements of, when we really marshal our resources, round the clock, testing, when you are an organization like ours that has a global footprint. Now don’t get me wrong. There are lots of challenges with that. This is an example of where we’re trying to leverage that and one of the opportunities of how we do a better job to serve both the OEMs as well as farmers and farm contractors through making better cutting edge and leading technologies.
ABG: Last question is always the same. What else do we need to know? What didn’t I ask you about?
MG: I think we have rounded the bases pretty well on this subject. We’re certainly open to any questions. If anybody has any ideas, if any of your listeners have any follow-up questions for us. An easy way to find us? Is that TopconPositioning.com, and we’re certainly always happy to answer questions.
We’ve always been a strong proponent of trying to build a stronger industry. We appreciate the opportunity to share our information with you and your listeners today. Thanks.
ABG: Thank you, Mike, we appreciate your being here sharing all this information about the new Topcon Positioning Systems’ sustainability-focused global team that you’re going to be leading and the research and validation center. And we look forward to what you guys are to come up with.
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