Today’s farmers are using all of the technology at their disposal to increase yields, which is critical if we hope to feed a rapidly growing population. But digitally driven farming is not without its potential downsides.
(ILLUSTRATION: MAGOZ)
September 11, 2013 • ByTechnically, Hunter Fincher is driving a 10-ton tractor as it rumbles over a bare patch of western-Tennessee farmland. You wouldn’t know that from looking at him though. Fincher is sitting in a well-padded chair inside a glass-enclosed, air-conditioned, XM-radio-equipped cabin atop the machine, enjoying the view of the lush green hill country around us. No hands on the wheel, no foot on the gas. Occasionally he glances at an iPad-size touch-screen that’s charting our progress. “I want to duct-tape a lawn chair to the top of the tractor and just ride!” cracks Fincher, 24, a fourth-generation farmer wearing a stubbly goatee, plaid shirt, and sneakers.
Fincher’s tractor is equipped with the latest technology from John Deere, the world’s biggest farm-equipment manufacturer. Guided by satellite and emitting the occasional R2-D2 beep, the 10-foot-high behemoth automatically grinds its way up one furrow and down the next. The tractor is towing an array of seed dispensers mounted on boom arms, each poised over furrows precisely 30 inches apart. The machine’s on-board computer system adjusts the rate at which the dispensers drop corn seeds to match the productivity of the specific patch of dirt we’re passing over. If one of the dispensers strays over an already-planted furrow, the system toggles it off.
“My generation is really grabbing hold of this technology,” says Fincher, his twang stretching his vowels like taffy. “We grew up with video games. This is not much different.”
Increasingly, America’s millions of acres of farmland are being mapped, analyzed, planted, and harvested by computer-controlled machines that are directed much more by vast quantities of information than a plowman’s steady hand. Today, one of the most valuable crops farmers are harvesting is data.
ROBERT MARBURY, 29, WEARS the unofficial uniform of the ag-industry folks who frequent the John Deere dealership where he works in Alamo, Tennessee—collared shirt and clean jeans, baseball cap corralling his floppy brown hair. The store has always had three departments: parts, sales, and service. Two years ago it launched a fourth, devoted to data.
Marbury runs that department, overseeing all the high-tech gear that makes possible what’s known as “precision agriculture.” That phrase has been bandied around for the last decade or two, but things have come a long way in the meantime. Today, combines equipped with sensors and accurate-to-the-inch GPS systems track the quantity and moisture content of crops as they’re harvested. Sophisticated soil analysis and aerial photography give detailed insights into field conditions. Computer-equipped tractors and spraying machines use “yield maps” based on all this data to micromanage fields, varying the application rate of seeds, fertilizer, and pesticides yard by yard. Growers—especially of the row crops like corn, soybeans, and wheat that make up the bulk of America’s agricultural output—are adopting these technologies fast. Two-thirds of the farmers surveyed last year by the American Soybean Association reported using auto-steering tractors or yield maps, or both. John Deere corporate has expanded its precision ag group from about 40 to 800 employees in the last dozen years....MORE
