Beyond seed and soil: Farmers' high-tech tools increase productivity

Technology has combined with factors such as seed science and advances in herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers, changing American agriculture dramatically during the past 50 years. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farm output rose by an average of 1.76 percent every year between 1948 and 2002, even as labor declined by an average of 2.4 percent per year in the same period.

Esmond farmer Paul Taylor said he believes that the most dynamic thing to happen to farming in the last 50 years has been the increase in horsepower.

“We've just got so much more capacity now,” he said. “Grandpa probably started with a two-row planter behind two horses, planting a six-row pass at 2-

3 mph. I suppose if they did 15 acres per day, they were doing pretty good. Now we're planting 60 feet wide, and we like to average 250 acres per day. It's totally changed the productivity of labor.”

And some features that probably looked like bells and whistles when they first appeared on tractors - such as air conditioning, strong headlights and enclosed cabs - have allowed modern farmers to work even longer hours than their historic counterparts, he said.

Just as Jones is confident that ultrasounds help him to get more money per animal for his cattle, he's a big believer in the tools he uses to farm 3,600 acres of corn and soybeans. His tractor is outfitted with an autosteer system, a computer that uses a GPS signal to keep field rows evenly spaced at the end point where the tractor turns around.

The tractor's onboard computer also monitors seed spacing, how many seeds are falling into each hole, and the pressure the planter is exerting on the soil as it makes a trench.

“As seed costs have gone up, you want every seed to be fully maximized,” he said.

Most farmers also do a variety of mapping in their fields. They can take the data gathered by computers on field equipment and create color-coded maps that show which areas have the best yields and differences between those areas and lower-yield spots. Those differences include soil topography, nutrients, type or amount of fertilizer applied, and the type of seed planted.

“People are surprised to find out we split the farm up in different segments and don't just apply the same nutrients and seed over the whole thing,” Taylor said. “Those maps may look like pretty colors and mosaics, but the computer actually reads all that, and as the tractor goes over the field, it applies the nutrients based on need.”

Taylor and Jones estimate that such automated equipment increases efficiency by about 5-10 percent. That may not sound like much, Jones said, until one starts adding up $4-per-gallon diesel fuel or $200-per-bag seed.