In direct violation of universal “mom rules,” every busy season on our farm demands some of us spend 12-plus hours on screens and drive with no hands on the steering wheel.
Many farmers thank my husband for helping them do it. As a precision farming manager for a farm equipment dealership network across Illinois, he fields calls and texts from farmers in dismay when this technology doesn’t work.
My dad claims the advent of auto-guidance on the farm among the best inventions in his lifetime. When harvesting soybeans this fall, our combines, or harvesting machines, will drive on back-and-forth passes hands-free when connected to satellite signals. Their accuracy will measure to less than an inch, far better than car navigation systems. In cornfields, row sensors on the corn head attachment of the combine sense the location of plant rows for hands-free guided driving.
Even more impressive, this satellite-guided technology communicates with field operations to prevent overlap. Just think about the efficiency – and straightness – of mowing a large yard if auto-guidance steered the mower on a repeatable line every pass and prevented it from overlapping. As a result, our combines use less fuel, our operators reduce mental fatigue, and we can focus attention on what the machine is doing.
Then enters the screen time. When not steering, my dad and brother look at touch-screen monitors in the combine cab. Those screens allow them to watch machine performance, witness real-time crop-production results and reference field data throughout the growing season. A mounted iPad shows all the year’s applications by site-specific location: number of seeds per acre, the crop varieties planted in an area, and applications of fertilizers or pesticides.
During spring planting or summer field scouting, we use that iPad to make notes for on-farm research, such as testing biological products for improved soil health, new seed varieties for improved yield or the application of a new crop-protection product.
At our local middle and high school, my husband taught a workshop on tractor auto-guidance and screen-monitoring technology. A seventh grader may have discovered his dream job, asking, “Do you basically play video games all day?”
Not exactly, but if you like technology, consider a career in agriculture.
About the Author: Joanie Stiers farms with her family in west-central Illinois, where they grow corn, soybeans, hay and cover crops and raise beef cattle and farm kids.
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