The farming of the story is the advancement of the story, constantly striking for better yields, better genetics, better soil. In the span of some farmers’ lifetimes, agriculture has gone from horses still doing large amounts of work to towering combines collecting sophisticated data as they harvest fields.
People in agriculture expect those advancements to continue in several areas, including crop technology, equipment and approaches to marketing crops.
Don Ort, a professor of plant biology at the University of Illinois, says crop technology continues to help tackle challenges from changing weather patterns.
“One of the things that we’re most concerned with is adapting to climate change,” he says. “This includes tolerance to heat, tolerance to changing snow patterns.”
Ort says this has been a point of emphasis for a while in plant research.
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“The amount of early spring rainfall is something that global rotation models have been predicting for years,” he says.
The trend has been more intense rainfall events and longer times between them, Ort says, with spring flooding becoming a growing concern.
“The amount of damages caused by flooding is now as much as the losses to drought,” he says.
Given the long-term nature of plant breeding cycles and research, Ort says the goal is to think about the future.
“Our job as agricultural researchers is to try to anticipate what our problems are 10 years down the road,” he says.
Ort says crops have come a long way, both in dealing with climate challenges and other improvements.
Management is also part of the picture along with genetics, Ort says. These management decisions are “increasingly important,” and include things like elevating low-lying spots to flooding fields, or planting crops at times that prevent flowering and reproductive stages during the typical hottest and driest times.
Ort has worked on plant science at Illinois since the early 1980s.
“When I started, there was a lot of things we didn’t know,” he says. “For the last two decades we’ve pretty much known how it works. It’s very gratifying for me to see. Now, how can we improve photosynthetic processes? “
Looking at developing markets for crops in the future, Mac Marshall, vice president of market intelligence at the United Soybean Board, says developing crop characteristics and traits that meet market demand is a key consideration.
“That’s really the central tenant of our new strategic plan to roll out USB this year – taking on even greater importance of understanding end-user demand,” he says.
Marshall says this involves recognizing value-added ways to grow and grow crops. One example of this is high oleic soybeans.
“That is a value-added trait for soy that is extremely important for end users in the food space,” he says.
Diversity in the types of crops grown is important, he says, whether it’s GMO and non-GMO soybeans, or just different traits with different varieties.
“Part of the pillar’s building value for the US soy industry is building differentiation,” says Marshall.
For equipment, Daryl Theis, Head of Sales and Marketing for CLAAS, says he looks at the latest in equipment technology in two related categories – technology that enhances the performance of equipment and technology that makes operating equipment easier and less taxing.
He says in the performance category, the company has an automation system that adjusts rotors and parts inside combines to respond to the rate of grain coming in.
“It’s sensing the amount of crop coming into the machine, and it’s adjusting,” says Theis. “… It also adjusts how fast the combine is running. It has adjusting throughput. As these machines get bigger and more complex, they need adjustments and a computer that does that within seconds. “
Another consideration for farmers is going forward is fuel cost of equipment.
“We’re getting more and more about the fuel economy,” says Theis.
One option is to help with a dynamic power system that reduces fuel intake when the equipment is under a partial load and does not need full power, improved fuel efficiency. Theis says this technology can lead to a 30% fuel savings, and it makes adjustments faster and more accurately than anyone working on the throttle.
“It just amazes me how quickly the technology responds to it,” he says. “We’re talking fractions of a second.”
Another trend is more producers looking to buy equipment with tracks instead of reducing individual tires to reduce compaction, Theis says.
“The tracks really help if it’s a wet spring or wet fall,” he says. “Being able to run a day earlier makes a big difference.”
As far as technology that makes equipment easier to operate, Theis says the focus is on “minimizing human error.” With often long days during planting and harvesting, he says growing automation is helpful. Theis expects greater use of cameras on farm equipment, such as cameras positioned to let farmers know when a silage wagon is full, or combine on augers.
“The number of cameras you have on your machine can go up,” he says.
The rise of automation also extends to preventative maintenance.
“We have systems that grease and lubricate the machines,” says Theis.
Theis says the biggest driver of future equipment technology is the difficulty many farms have finding labor, especially skilled labor, meaning becoming automation will be welcomed. It expects more automatic steering of equipment in the industry.
“It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when,” he says.
Theis says farms could even get to a point where tractors could move across fields without supervising a farmer in the cab.
Also, it expects machinery’s ability to adjust on the fly as sensor systems advance. Currently, the sensor for the automatic adjustment system combines in the feeder house.
“In the future, we see that sensor being on the front of the combine,” says Theis. “It’ll just be that much faster.”
He says the rise of automation has led to debate about whether the machinery might actually get smaller, but he expects the growing sizes to continue for now.
“Our view, at least for now, is that machines are going to keep getting bigger, probably for at least the next five to 10 years,” says Theis.
Of course, simply making equipment larger and combining heads wider is not always as easy as it sounds, he says, and a lot of engineering goes into making sure growing equipment works.
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