My Opinion

Robert Mehrle

     It is often said that "the more things change, the more they stay the same." That hardly seems appropriate when thinking about farming in America today. Satellites roam the skies telling us (and everyone else) where we are (GPS), how crop conditions appear (remote sensing), and even steering our tractors straighter than any human ever could (auto steering). Gone are the days when we could "Gee" and "Haw" satisfied with believing that "crooked rows make more than straight rows do." Gone are the days when a good farmer could make a living with a mule and forty acres and expanding to eighty was pretty risky. Such thoughts are only about 60 - 70 years old - not only is change constant, it is also fast. In the 1940's a row crop farm with 800 acres was considered an above average sized farm. By the 1970's a good-sized farm would contain 1500 - 2000 acres. Twenty-first century row crop farms of 6000 acres or more are common. Gone are the days when dad would plant a 10 acre field of soybeans here, a 20 acre cotton field there - because the lay of the land, the natural drains, the slight of slope suggested the crop best suited for that particular patch. But it was difficult for eight row cultivators to turn around in such cramped quarters. The advent of bulldozers, draglines, and earth movers opened the gate as equipment size and productivity increased with field size.

     During this last 60 - 70 years, science and technology have both promoted the use of new tools designed to increase productivity and efficiency and responded to socio-economic forces necessitating change. Tractors and their multi-row implements introduced in the 1940's reduced the dependence on labor needed to grow mule fuel, feed daily, and support large families for crop production. Such "revolutionary" technology also responded to the migration of labor to urban centers seeking a better life and the intrusion of relatively labor-intensive small industries moving away from the factories of the north. The farmer could then determine the effectiveness of input applications and tillage operations on the end of the row instead of walking behind a hand labor crew while checking the progress of the field crop at the same time.

     Willard Cochrane [The Development of American Agriculture, 1979] summarized the impact of mechanization and technology changes as a shift in American agricultural from "extensive" to "intensive" production. That is, instead of expanding land acres in production to increase output and profits, American farmers in the 1960's and 1970's shifted to using more inputs on the same acres to accomplish the same purpose. As a result, however, the 1970's witnessed a tremendous increase in input prices. Simultaneously, crop prices responded to the increased supply and began falling. US exports increased sharply and the United States became highly depended on international markets and government price and income supports to sustain viable farming businesses.

     "Caught in this squeeze [rising input prices and falling crop prices], the weaker, less technically proficient and less commercially oriented farmers, dropped out of farming in large numbers. Some went broke, some quit before they went broke, and some, particularly older farmers, sold out to their aggressive neighbors when they could still make a good deal for themselves. . . The strong, on the other hand, who could make the new technologies, the new commercial practices, and the government programs work to their advantage survived, became more productive, expanded their operations, and in the long run became wealthy"[Cochrane, p. 350].

     Does this sound familiar? It was not written this year or even this decade. Cochrane wrote these words describing dramatic changes in the American agricultural economy in the 1950's.

     The 1980's introduced two new "revolutionary" technologies that eventually became available to agriculture giving rise to entirely new ag-oriented industries. The US Department of Defense developed the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS) and IBM produced desktop computers. Twenty-four satellites circle the earth providing radio signals to ground receivers producing time and location data within an error of about " 35 - 40 feet (termed "accuracy"). Therefore, with the government satellites a farmer can know his or her position on a map and return within eyesight to that spot. Better accuracy down to one foot and, more expensively, to one inch, can be achieved by adding another signal from a known location called "differential" or DGPS. The differential source knows its geographic location and that of the satellites. It measures the "difference" between where the GPS satellites say the source is and where it knows it is and sends that "differential" measurement to correct the user's receiver in the field. The three basic sources of DGPS are beacon (free from US Coast Guard towers around the navigable US waterways), satellite (for an annual fee from Omnistar or Racal), and WAAS (free from US Federal Aviation Administration). GPS gives location so that a place can be marked and found again; such as, a soil sample point that can be returned to for fertilizer applications.

     The second new technology is computers. Computers provide the power to process lots of data in a short period of time. Computers also provide the ability to store a lot of data about farms and fields in a Geographic Information System (GIS). Records, notes, remote images, maps of input applications, and maps of soil properties about thousands of acres and hundreds of fields can be archived and linked so that decisions can be made using information we gather using computers on tractors, sprayers, in trucks on the side of the turnrow, combines and cotton pickers, information from crop scouts, agronomists, and researchers, information from airplanes, satellites, and the internet. No wonder some agricultural experts say we have passed from the "Age of Mechanization," through the "Age of Technology," and to the newest revolutionary period in American agriculture - the "Age of Information." Farmers now study reports and maps of their farms to look for trends and problem areas. While production decisions still dominate the farmer's time and energy and yields are still the most important side of staying in business, marketing, government programs, protecting the environment, the stability of the government in Saudi Arabia, and the bean crop in Brazil increasingly add to decision-making woes. How things have changed!

     "The most effective fertilizer is the footsteps of the master" is a saying that brings all of this home. What has changed? The soil is still soil. Scientists throughout the world are still trying to understand the relationship between our soils and productive capacity - how static soil properties impact yields and how management can best intervene to make a profit. As farming methods become more "intensive," farmers more dependent on non-farm inputs, the world marketplace more competitive, the environment and our neighbors demand better stewardship, the more necessary it becomes for eight, twelve, and thirty row equipment to be able to respond to the needs of that ten or twenty acre patch which our fathers put in beans and is now part of a three hundred acre cotton field. GPS and GIS enable the farmer to do what has always had to be done - treat each area of the field as if it is different, because IT IS.

     The future was and is new technology - bigger tractors, air-conditioned combines, and the ability to communicate using mobile radios. Now we have wireless communication between a tractor computer, a pickup in the field, and the office computer to monitor daily operations. We have cotton plants that will resist some of the most potent herbicides and insects known to man. We have machines that can run through the field, detect soil properties, and vary lime and fertilizer application rates on-the-go. We have sensors that can tell the difference between good plants and weeds and turn a herbicide on and off on-the-go. Even satellite and aerial imaging is becoming obsolete! Variable rate irrigation and driverless tractors are not far away. The future is now - but new technology is limited by the knowledge that NOW is also the future. Technology gives farmers new tools to do old jobs. The basic relationship between soil, crops, and the farmer still are inseparable. Success still pays homage to the good fortune of location and weather.

Think about these novel ideas:

     To insure uniform depth of planting with mule planters, guard attachments or guage shoes are often used...The two row mule planter has a advantage afforded by the depth lever which can be used to raise and lower the front end of the planter. This convenience is quite helpful in fields which vary in types of soil; for instance...when sandy spots are encountered the seed should be placed deeper, while in the heavy spots the seed should be planted more shallow.

     Drilling is still the most common method of planting [cotton] but the practice of planting in hills is increasing as equipment becomes available.

     Both variety and soil have their effect upon cotton plants. Some varieties produce larger plants than others even though the plants are grown in the same soil. The degree of fertility of soil affects the growth of plants; the more fertile the soil, the larger the plant...Larger varieties, then require greater spacing than dwarfy varieties and fertile soil requires greater spacing than poor soil...Some thirty-five years ago it was the usual practice to space plants 3 feet apart when growing cotton on fertile soil.

--from Cotton by Floyd Barnhart, 1952.

Variable Rate Technology - with mules. The more things change, the more things stay the same.