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

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 in