Jonathan Gitlin

Jonathan Gitlin

Jonathan Gitlin

Jonathan Gitlin

Jonathan Gitlin

John Deere

Jonathan Gitlin

John Deere

Despite misperceptions to the contrary, farming in the 21st century is a high-tech endeavor. We're not just talking about genetically modified crops or biotech-derived pesticides though; farm vehicles like tractors and combines are now networked to the cloud and in many cases are even capable of driving themselves. To find out more about what the modern technofarm is all about, I drove up to Clear Meadow Farm in Harford County, Maryland to meet farmer Greg Rose and his self-driving John Deeres.

Rose and his family have been farming in the area for decades, and Clear Meadow is an 8000-acre farm that grows corn, soy, wheat, barley, sunflowers and sorghum in addition to raising Black Angus cattle (which you might find in Whole Foods). "We first dipped our hand into precision agriculture with yield monitors in 2000," Rose told me as I checked out a gigantic combine, its tires taller than me. His description of the job is as much data science as it is field work. Complex field maps are informed by a multitude of sensors from different farm machines, all gathering data to feed it to Rose via the cloud. The setup allows for extremely precise seed and nutrient prescriptions that can vary multiple times across the same field.

"The combine has load sensors in it that sense the volume of crop coming in, recording that as you go across the field," Rose said. That tells him how many bushels per acre each field is producing, data that gets fed into multi-year maps of each field that are color-coded to indicate different yields. "We take several years of data and make composite maps of a given field, then divide it into zones. You can manage those zones individually—taking soil samples to measure nutrient levels, and from there you know how much nutrients you need to apply in different areas," he told Ars.

The next big thing after yield monitors was AutoTrac, which companies like John Deere have had in the market for quite a bit longer than the semi-autonomous cars starting to drive our roads. "We were solving a different problem than the autonomous car problem," explained Lane Arthur, Director of Information Solutions at John Deere. "Cars have to do with staying on the road and the right distance from other cars. In the John Deere world we focused on autonomous machines that are driving in a field. So the field has a boundary around it, and what path will it take in that field. We use GPS signals to drive the vehicle; the customer sets an A-B line which determines the path the vehicle takes."

Rose started using AutoTrac at Clear Meadow about 10 years ago. "It's been a huge efficiency improvement because instead of having two or three feet of overlap or leaving plants in the field, you're dead on where you need to be," Rose explained. Crops are planted and fed more accurately as a result. And because the machines are all networked and working from the same GPS-based field maps, farmers can go into a field and plant rows of crops and then go back into the field with a different machine and not run over those rows.

This all means a more efficient farm, no bad thing given the tight margins involved in farming today."You see your input costs for nutrients really go down, particularly with swath control on the sprayers that apply pesticide and fertilizer, and planters," Rose said. Swath control is similar to the yield maps generated by the combine, "but you have a GPS-referenced coverage map which knows where you've been in the field. Whenever you cross something that's already been planted, it automatically shuts off the seed, fertilizer, chemicals. We're talking 6-10 percent savings. When you're putting down product that costs $100 an acre that's important. Most of the systems pay for themselves in the first year, and that's how we look at any new technology—we want to see it pay for itself. Some things take a couple more years—swath control easily pays for itself."

There are other benefits, too. "There's also a tremendous amount of convenience and it reduces the fatigue factor immediately. In the fall farmers have to drive at night with their lights on; if they don't have this they have to be very attentive to how the machine is performing in the field," Arthur said. "Plenty other things they need to be focused on other than driving, so it makes their life much simpler than before. In fact I've talked to farmers who've been farming for 50 years, and they will not get in a vehicle today unless it has auto track."

As Rose explains it, farming means keeping a close eye on input costs: "You can work around the clock—with some of the weather we've had lately that's been a necessity. In the past, I remember, 15 years ago you'd try to work at night and you'd always be second-guessing yourself, you didn't know where to stop, where to lift the planter up. You're not only saving on input costs though. When you double-plant it makes the crops too thick which reduces yield. That's a big thing with prices of commodities now, you really have to watch your bottom line."

Having his machines synced to each other helps with this efficiency. Because every machine knows where every other machine is, they can cover fields with fewer gaps. And come harvest time with several combines working in a field, the guy in the tractor can see which one to prioritize. "You never want them just sitting because that drives down production," Rose said.

According to Arthur, there's a generational shift happening in farming right now. "An increasing number of farmers want to use data to better manage their farm for business results," he said. "What you're seeing with this generation of farmers—people in their 30s, 40s, and even 50s—they have much more of a technology bent, and they want to use data to help manage their operation."

For Rose, that means a lot of time in front of the computer during winter months, compiling data from the farm machines as well as soil samples taken from different zones in each field. "What we've done the last five years is take the yield data, analyze it, and make composite maps. We create zones and take soil samples. Your higher production zones will pull more nutrients out of the ground so you want to apply more nutrients there. You're not just putting an average rate on the whole field, over-applying on some zones and under-applying on others. You're really spoon feeding the crops. A lot of people think we over apply chemicals but the costs mean that's just not true."

That precise management of fertilizer and other agricultural chemicals is particularly important in Maryland because of the ongoing effort to remediate the Chesapeake Bay watershed. "We have a record of everything—every pass of every field is recorded so we have that data," Rose pointed out.

For Rose and the other techno-farmers out there, GPS-guided networked farm machines that you can manage from an iPad have been a massive boon to their way of life. While a farmer's day still starts before dawn and can end long after midnight, at least now technology is helping spread the load.

Listing image by John Deere