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

Bert Hueber finishes an ultrasound on a steer at the J. Willrett Farm in Malta on Wednesday. Hueber, a partner in Beef Performance Technology, performs ultrasounds on cattle to determine its quality of beef. “It gives producers more information to use in their marketing,” he said. EMILY OLSON | emolson@daily-chronicle.com

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Bert Hueber may use an ultrasound machine for his job, but he doesn't work for a hospital or a medical clinic. Hueber is a partner in Beef Performance Technology, and takes the ultrasound machine and the “heavy-duty laptop” connected to it to cattle operations around the area. He isn't looking for medical information: The ultrasounds let him “see” the quality of beef on a steer, and the computer analyzes the image to project how many more days the steer should be fed for the meat to reach its optimal grade. “It's a marketing tool,” he said Wednesday as he passed the ultrasound wand over the rib-eye portion of a steer standing on a massive scale in the cattle confinement building on the J. Willrett farm in Malta. “It gives producers more information to use in their marketing.” Ultrasounds are just one of a bevy of high-tech tools today's farmers use. With the high cost of input such as seed, feed and fertilizer, farmers have always been early adopters of tools to help them get the most out of every head of livestock and every acre of land, Clare farmer Tracy Jones said. “We're great users of technology,” he said. “I'm basically farming three times the amount of ground as when I started farming with my dad in 1980, and I'm doing it with the same amount of labor. ... Over the last 20 years, we've been great adopters and great beneficiaries of technology.” New tools 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. “Five-10 percent adds up pretty quick,” he said. Human touch There's also a human element to running a modern farm. Though many local farmers have only a few, if any, full-time employees, they rely on a variety of “agribusiness” professionals, from ultrasound technicians like Hueber to financial advisors, livestock nutritionists and crop scouts. Crop scouts check fields for signs of pests, weeds or disease. If they spot a problem, the farmer can treat for it, Taylor said, but if the plants are healthy, farmers can save on the cost of treatment. “Every time you treat, no matter what you spray with, you kill beneficial organisms as well,” he said. “We'll spend $6 an acre for the scout rather than $18 an acre for (disease-resistant) seed. ... You may have to spend another $10 an acre for treatment, but if you don't have to treat, you saved yourself $12.” In an effort to reduce his costs and still benefit from expensive technology, Taylor formed a partnership with a neighbor. Each continues to farm only his own land, but they share expensive equipment, spreading out the cost. “Instead of each having a planter, we have one planter we share. Instead of each of us having a couple of big tractors, we share two big tractors,” he said. “Spreading out fixed costs over more acres allows us to have bigger equipment, better equipment and more advanced equipment than we could have gotten on our own.” Consumers generally benefit from advances in agriculture that lead to higher yields, Taylor said. According to the USDA and the consumer price index, in 1957, an average acre of U.S. farmland yielded 48 bushels of corn, but in 2007, an acre typically yielded 151 bushels. Greater output tends to decrease prices: In 2008 dollars, the average price of corn in 1957 was more than twice what it was in 2007. “Generally, higher production means lower prices, so you not only have a grocery store full of food, but 1,000 gallons of ethanol saving you 50 cents a gallon at the gas pump,” Taylor said.