The NY Times article for those who could not access it.
Agriculture's Future: The Digitally Enhanced Megafarm
By BARNABY J. FEDER
ARCUS, Iowa -- There is a haunting prescience to the "Evolution of
Agriculture," an old chemical company poster on the wall of Tom Dorr's
farm office. It ends in 1981 with the invention of a mobile rig to
measure electronically the nutritional value of animal feed -- the time
line's first mention of a computer.
Seventeen years later, computers have infiltrated every conceivable
element of agriculture, influencing what technology-savvy farmers like
Dorr grow, how they grow it and how they market the fruits of their
labor.
Credit: New York Times
The Dorr farm in Marcus, Iowa, puts computers to a number of uses.
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The terminal beside Dorr's desk, for instance, links him to DTN, a
nationwide agricultural and weather data network. There is also his
personal computer and printer, which is part of a local area network
connecting five computers and a server in this small clapboard building.
Formerly the home of a tenant worker, the office is now the information
hub of 3,800 acres of northwestern Iowa prairie where Dorr and his 11
full- and part-time employees raise corn, soybeans and hogs, sell seed
and run a grain elevator that serves his and neighboring farms.
With gross revenue of about $2 million in most years, the Dorr
operations rank among the 4 percent of the largest commercial farms that
account for 50 percent of the nation's agricultural output. Such
commercial-scale farmers are usually among those most active in
experimenting with new equipment and management techniques.
To really understand how far things have evolved and get a glimpse of
where they might be headed, it helps to stroll past Dorr's secretary
(and her computer), past the bathroom (crowded with three retired
computers saved for spare parts), and into the electronics-stuffed lair
of Francis Swain, the technology manager.
Swain, a tall, 27-year-old son of a used-car dealer whose reddish hair
is greased back like a 1950s rock-and-roller, describes himself as "not
in love with crops or pigs or cows." He represents a new breed of
worker, though, whom many big farms will eventually need: an agro-geek
with a passion for computers and the information revolution that is
transforming farming.
In the increasingly global agricultural market, American farmers will
come to rely heavily on technology and information systems to compete
with nations that have cheaper land and labor, according to experts like
Jess Lowenberg-DeBoer, a Purdue University agriculture economist who has
studied the adoption of computer-driven farm technology.
And so Dorr is doing what thousands of other American farmers are doing:
using machinery laden with electronic controls and sensors to achieve
pinpoint seed spacing, analyze soils for moisture and nutrients, track
weather and manage the rates at which fertilizer and pesticides are
applied. He has experimented with global positioning via satellites to
track exactly where each machine is as it carries out these functions.
And come harvest season, still other devices will calculate crop yields
in real time.
What sets the Dorr operation apart from most, though, is having an
employee like Swain assigned to the task of figuring out how to improve
and harness the information flow.
Each tractor, pig and farm field is, in Swain's eyes, simply a source of
data that can make the farm more profitable if properly analyzed. The
questions that captivate him include how much it would cost to track
soil conditions more thoroughly, how yield data from a combine might be
correlated with weather data or fertilizer records, and how computer
simulations of projected crop growth could be used to fine-tune
marketing decisions like what portion of the crop to pre-sell before
harvest.
Credit: Timothy F. Hynds for The New York Times
Robert L. Kranig, foreman at the Dorr farm, monitors an array of
computers from his tractor.
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"My dream is not to farm but to own the information company that farmers
hook up to for information on logistics, crop data, whatever," Swain
said. Dorr, 51, who began farming with his father and his uncle in the
1970s, has a love of the soil that Swain lacks. But Dorr does not let
agrarian sentimentality befuddle his business acumen. The family farm he
grew up with was part of an agricultural enterprise that besides
livestock and crops, included a feed store and turkey hatchery.
After graduating from Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, with a
Bachelor of Science in business, Dorr worked for an educational research
company for three years.
That experience exposed him to computers. While traveling for the
research company, Dorr made side trips to visit farmers who were
transforming traditional family farms into far larger commercial
operations. When he returned to join the Dorr farm, he was convinced of
the need to scrupulously log as much information as possible about
operations.
Dorr had already invested more than $20,000 in personal computers and
farm management software when he hired Swain in 1990 as office manager
and accountant. "Fran was ill at ease and less qualified on paper than
other candidates," Dorr recalled. But Swain had studied computer science
at Nettleton Business College in Sioux Falls, S.D., while completing the
college's two-year accounting program and his references raved about his
enthusiasm and organizational skills.
By last year, so much of Swain's work involved updating and expanding
the farm's information technology systems that Dorr changed his title to
technology manager.
Swain, who has often urged Dorr to invest more rapidly in cutting-edge
technology, occasionally chafes at more mundane tasks like analyzing
past weather data to be sure the strains of corn now going into
particular fields are likely to have time to mature before harvest.
"His lack of experience in production gets him out into left field
sometimes," Dorr said of Swain's proposals, like his suggestion to set
up wireless communications from field equipment to the office so that
the costs of pesticides are apportioned to the owners of a rented field
as the chemicals are applied. While intriguing, such ideas would
typically cost too much or not be reliable enough with current
technology, Dorr said.
Still, Dorr gave Swain his new title to encourage him to continue
thinking broadly and to make it clear to skeptical old-time farmhands
that Dorr valued Swain's work.
Bob Kranig is a 56-year-old equipment operator and mechanic who, along
with Mike Schwarz, a 38-year-old equipment operator for the Dorr farm,
has been the main employee coping with the surge in data gathering.
"Mike and I are intimidated to a point by the new technology," Kranig
conceded.
They will have to get over those fears if Dorr and Swain are to pursue
their vision of a 225,000-acre operation made up of three "pods," each
with its own manager but sharing an information system back at farm
headquarters. Such an enterprise would be big enough to keep 100-unit
trains running to far-away seaports, making the farm likely to receive
volume railroad discounts. Such an agricultural factory could also
negotiate bargain prices from suppliers and other concessions, like
just-in-time delivery.
To really prosper, though, this type of megafarm would need a
21st-century computer network capable of rapidly integrating information
that is piling up in various, incompatible forms -- as well as other
data that so far go ungathered.
Such integration may be an uphill battle for years to come. Researchers
have raised questions about just how precise soil samplers, yield
monitors and other pieces of today's equipment really are. And Internet
chat sessions, farm conventions, and plain old coffee shop conversations
in rural towns are alive these days with earthy gripes about proprietary
products that do not interface with each other and new technology that
promises more than it can deliver.
Still, Dorr clings to his vision of a farm sprawling over thousands of
individual fields -- many of which might be only partly owned by Dorr
and his relatives, while others could be rented, either for money or for
a share of the crop.
His information system would know what was grown in each field in the
past and how much it yielded under different growing conditions. It
would also know about crucial characteristics of the field like
irrigation, drainage and soil.
The system would also have constantly updated information on available
labor, machinery and supplies. Operations like storage, marketing and
distribution would be tied in, so that the past and the projected
profitability of each field would be constantly visible to Dorr, his
employees, landowners and the investors he says would be needed to
spread the financial risks of such a big enterprise.
Assembling this digitally enhanced megafarm would require, by Dorr's and
Swain's guesstimate, at least a $2 million technology investment. Put it
all together, though, and one can envision a farm that rearranges
planting or harvesting on the fly as weather changes or new sales
opportunities arise. Without such size and information-management
capabilities, Dorr fears that most farms will end up with as little
control over their destiny and profitability as those that today raise
chickens under contract to giant producers like Tyson and Perdue.
In addition, he says, such size and sophistication will be needed to
provide the kind of job opportunities that will keep the best and
brightest rural youngsters from moving away.
So far, Dorr and Swain concede, it has been hard to sell their vision,
which Dorr sees as too risky to pursue on his own. Investment bankers
have said the project is too small and the business plan too fuzzy to
interest them, and other farmers are hanging back.
Some are merely skeptical. Others are downright hostile to visions like
Dorr's because they see aggressive growth strategies as a threat to the
majority of family farms, which are run by part-time farmers who also
hold down other jobs. But Dorr considers such thinking a denial of the
inevitable. "The typical farmer's tendency is to go it alone until it's
too late," he said.
Yet even Swain concedes the risks of racing toward a more computerized
future. "About half of all information technology projects fail," he
said.
And he knows full well that the problem is often the unpredictable human
element. Noting that he has software on his Gateway 2000 laptop that
keeps fitness records and designs workouts for him, he added, "The flaw
is that it doesn't motivate me to exercise."
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Hal 9000 Meets Old MacDonald
As in other modern industries, information management is an increasingly
important component of commercial farming. And while current data
sensing and processing gear is seldom capable of the extensive
cross-referencing and analysis of information that might be required to
manage the digital mega-farms of the future, today's technology makes
farms like Tom Dorr's in Marcus, Iowa, much more efficient than before
the information revolution.Tilling
Technology: Using satellite data, Global Positioning Systems allow
farmers to precisely track equipment and map the land to be tilled.
Benefit: Through a tractor-based G.P.S. system, a farmhand is told when
and where to turn to begin tilling each row of a field. This can greatly
reduce overlap, which on a large farm saves hours of work.Spraying
Technology: Sensors monitor speed of tractor and adjust the amount of
fertilizer or pesticide sprayed on the soil.
Benefit: More economical use of supplies. And the system records, in
two-second intervals, the amount of pesticides that were applied.
Planting
Technology: Sensors monitor speed of tractor and adjust the seed planter
to keep spacing consistent.
Benefit: Insures optimal spacing, while letting farmhand concentrate on
other matters, like making sure the seed planter does not clog.
Harvesting
Technology: Sensors monitor, calculate and record, in real time, each
field's yield as the combine harvests the crop.
Benefit: Eliminates the long wait until the entire harvest is complete
before projecting yields and making decisions on how much to store or
sell.Forecasting
Technology: Weather stations out in the fields, linked to the farm
office by wireless transmitters, make data on wind, temperature,
humidity and soil moisture easily available.
Benefit: Since equipment like tractors and combines can travel only 20
or 30 miles an hour, it pays to know whether it is raining, or too muddy
before sending a farmhand and a tractor 20 miles to work on a field.
Illustration: John Papasian/ The New York Times
Sources: Francis Swain, technology manager, Tom Dorr's farm; Davis
Instruments; Deere & Company |
