" I heard it through the AgLine"

October 30, 2009

 

·        Taking precision farming to a higher level

·        ‘Good food’ grower achieves rock star status

·        Syngenta opens seed processing plant in Pasco

·        Agritourism becoming big business in Missouri

·        Mex ag official: Drug dealers could teach farmers

 

 

Taking precision farming to a higher level

 

(wired.com) – It was 1903 when Robert Blair’s great-grandfather began farming the dry ridge overlooking the Clearwater River near Lewiston, Idaho. In 2001, when Blair took the reins, the farm’s books were still kept by hand. Now, he has deployed a set of Darpa-like technologies, including unmanned aerial vehicles and self-steering tractors.

 

“In six years, I went from just having a cell phone to my tractor driving itself, and having a small airplane flying and landing itself on a farm,” Blair said.

 

The new precision farmers are hacking together a way of making food in which the virtual and physical worlds are so tightly bound that having his tractor steered by GPS-guidance with inch-level accuracy is ho-hum. Autosteering of farm machinery has exploded over the past several years, according to an annual survey by Purdue University’s Center for Food and Agricultural Business. In 2004, just 5 percent of agricultural retail outlets offered autosteering. In 2008, more than half did.

 

In a 2009 issue of Precision Farmer Magazine, Montana wheat farmer Steven Swank described the benefits of a souped-up GPS called “real-time kinematic” (RTK) satellite navigation.

 

“RTK is so much more relaxing. It allows you to multitask, and that (allows) me to spend more time with my family,” Montana wheat farmer told Steven Swank. “I even watched a DVD in the cab with my daughter recently.”

 

Blair, at 40, is a leader of this next generation of farmers who are adapting the precision dreams of the ’90s to the realities of the soil and the history of their acreage. People dreamed of vastly reducing pesticide and fertilizer use by applying just the right amount to each plant, but the variable-rate technologies have been only patchily adopted. Instead, a new crop of younger growers has started to use something like augmented reality. Data draped over their land guides their tractors and their decision-making.

 

“The big story is the generational shift going on right now,” said Joe Russo, president of the agriculture technology company, ZeDX. “The younger people are starting to get ahold of these farms and they have a much different attitude to technology. They Twitter, they got smartphones, they’re always on the computer. Precision ag is gonna ride that wave.”

 

Farmers have adopted autosteer, especially, because it has made them money. By eliminating the slop-space that even the best farm machinery operators needed, it allows them to put more rows in their fields, effectively increasing their per-acre yields. For high-value crops, it was an obvious technology to adopt.

 

“The payback was so much more than variable rate ever was that it was a no-brainer,” said Paul Schrimpf, who has been covering precision agriculture for the magazine CropLife.

 

Blair wants to push further, though. He’s leading a charge to adapt unmanned aerial vehicles — like the Predator Drones zipping across Afghanistan — to the task of crop surveillance. In true maker fashion, he’s not waiting for the technology to be delivered to him. He has founded a company and built a prototype of his UAV that uses an off-the-shelf digital camera to take photos of his farm.

 

The images it produces aren’t just pretty pictures, they can be converted into data that can be used in water, fertilizer and pesticide decision-making.

 

Based on the color data captured by the CCD, Blair can obtain a value called the normalized differential vegetative index, which he can use to find patterns in his fields.

 

“Now we have a numeric value and we can write an algorithm to find different things,” Blair explained. “Is a stressed crop showing a different value than one that’s healthy?”

 

Farmers like Blair have antecedents in the farmer-scientists of the Green Revolution, but ever-cheaper information technology has let them map the data to their land with ever greater resolution. Blair is slowly turning the vast, uncontrolled experiment that is his farm into a living laboratory that also happens to make money.

 

Innovating on a farm is tough. Raising living things is not software development: Biology takes time, an iteration takes a year. Being pegged to the cycle of the Earth rotating around the sun makes farmers a little more conservative than those who spend every waking moment bathed in fluorescent light and charged on Mountain Dew. Still, some farmers press ahead trying to use technology to fatten their margins. Blair’s e-mail signature includes the Thomas Jefferson quote, “I am not afraid of new inventions or improvements.”

 

Here’s how precision agriculture works on Blair’s farm. He has incorporated several pieces of of the overall platform including yield monitors, boom control, variable rate applications and autosteering.

 

First, he installed yield monitors, which are a kind of real-time scale that records the amount of wheat harvested in small chunks of a field. They’ve become increasingly popular because they quantify the kind of hard-won data that farmers used to spend decades understanding: what parts of their land are the best (and the worst).

 

“What the technology has allowed us to do is to see where those areas are and define them,” Blair said.

 

yield-image-overlayThe yield monitors generate maps (as in the small image) that tell Blair which parts of his fields produce 120 bushels of wheat and which just 20. With that resolution, he can manage that land according to what it needs.

 

To determine the optimal fertilization and chemical inputs for different areas of his farm, Blair conducted tests over a period of five years to figure out how his crops responded to different amounts of nitrogen. Often, he’ll reduce the amount of fertilizer on the poor producing areas of his land because their limiting factor isn’t nitrogen, but some other factor like water or another soil component. Now, his poor land planted with winter wheat might only get 50 pounds of nitrogen per acre instead of the 100 he’d put on the best land.

 

Beyond variable-rate application like this, Blair also uses automatically controlled sprayers. These booms, pipes with nozzles set into them at regular intervals, are mounted on farm machinery and used to apply chemicals and fertilizers. They tend to spray in large rectangles, even if the farm land isn’t a prefect rectangle. With automatic controls on the booms, they can be programmed to only spray on the farmland, not on adjacent areas. It might not seem like a major area for savings, but the math works.

 

“Let’s say you have two RoundUp sprayings at $20 a pop. Then insect spray at $30 an acre. That’s $70 an acre,” Blair said. “You’re able to save 10 percent, that’s $7 an acre.” Multiply that by the 1500 acres he farms, and it’s clear how quickly he could be paid back on any four-digit investment.

 

Lastly, autosteering makes it easier to run the farm and ensures that he doesn’t waste any land because of farm machinery operator mistakes.

 

“I get on a big field with my autosteer, as soon as I make sure I’m on the track, I’m on my PDA phone checking e-mail,” Blair said. “I’m looking at the internet. What’d the market do today? I’m reading news.”

 

Everything he does on his farm is devoted to gathering and using data to maximize the efficiency of his farm. “People that have vision of where agriculture is going to go seem to realize that the key is the databases,” Blair told PrecisionAg.com in a video to celebrating his 2009 win for Precision Farmer of the Year.

 

And it’s the search for more — and more timely — data that led him to developing his own UAV. He wanted to correlate what his fields looked like during the growing season with the yields at harvest time.

 

Blair’s UAV is hand-launched, which means that he literally runs, jumps and throws it in the air like a javelin. The craft locates itself and flies a predetermined path over his farm, sending back images like the one above.

 

Piloted fixed-wing aircraft can provide similar resolution, but Blair thinks his company can compete on price and deliver equal or better results. It’s possible to get similar photos from satellites, but the resolution (in time and space) isn’t good enough.

 

“With what I’ve been able to fly on my own farm, I’m looking at goldfish in a pond,” he said. And he can fly his UAV whenever he wants.

 

It’s some gee-whiz technology out on the Idaho ridge, but Russo of ZeDX, was skeptical. UAVs are relatively expensive and complex technology.

 

“There are not many farmers that are going to do that,” Russo said. “It’s not just the machine, but the time and changing your practices. All the backend costs.”

 

And, for the time being, the Federal Aviation Administration has not come up with rules for UAVs that would allow Blair to actually sell his UAVs or the images they produce. Like so many other precision farming techniques — and technologies more generally — the path from good idea to widespread implementation is likely to be a lot longer and difficult than first anticipated.

 

The precision farming transformation began in the Midwest in the 1980s.

 

“You look at ‘86, ‘87, ‘88, I equate it to the moon launch of precision agriculture,” said CropLife’s Schrimpf. “You had guys putting 286 boxes into cabs and using aerial imagery that was shot by a plane and trying to use it to control an applicator.”

 

It gathered steam amidst the noise and fury of the internet boom, but only now has precision farming spread to the rest of the country and truly begun to impact the lives of farmers. Sixty-eight percent of farmers have tried or use some precision farming technique, according to a Farm Industry News reader survey. Questions remain, though, about how much precision farming is going to change the big picture problems that food system critics like Marion Nestle and Michael Pollan have identified.

 

Genetic engineering of crops and precision engineering used to be presented as the technological fixes to the agricultural challenges of our era. They were going to keep farming profitable enough to keep people putting out enough food to feed the nearly 7 billion people of the world — while minimizing environmental downsides of industrial farming.

 

William Booth in a 1999 Wired article breathlessly summarized the promise of precision farming: “If machines and computers can help a farmer apply just the exact amount of disincentive and encouragement, exactly where it is needed, it will not only save billions of dollars and jack up profits, but give the farmland and the surrounding streams and forests a much needed respite from the relentless dousing of nasty and wasteful fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.”

 

The scientific research on the ability of precision agriculture to reduce chemical usage is somewhat mixed, but on balance, a review by agronomists Jess Lowenberg-Deboer of Purdue University and Rudolfo Bongiovani of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology in Argentina found decided benefits.

 

“Most of the papers reviewed indicate that PA can contribute in many ways to long-term sustainability of production agriculture, confirming the intuitive idea that PA should reduce environmental loading by applying fertilizers and pesticides only where they are needed, when they are needed,” they wrote in a paper published in a 2004 paper in the journal Precision Agriculture.

 

“The concepts of precision agriculture (PA) and sustainability are inextricably linked,” they concluded.

 

But even some precision ag proponents aren’t sure that the technologies will solve the big problems that the globe’s food system faces.

 

“From a macro perspective, I don’t know that there is a direct correlation between precision farming and massive increases in yield that could help feed the world,” said Nate Taylor, who works with Russo at ZeDX.

 

Long-time precision farming researcher, John Phillips, who recently retired from his post at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, said much the same about the environmental benefits that precision farming could deliver. Precision farming could be “a big player” in reducing the amount of nitrogen that leaches into groundwater, but it wouldn’t be the primary solution.

 

“We’d have to see some changes in the rest of the farming system,” Phillips said.

 

And the economic benefits? Croplife’s Schrimpf said that the profitability — and adoption — of technologies that reduce environmental impacts tend to float on the sea of natural gas prices.

 

“In years when fertilizer is expensive, dealers can possibly sell precision farming on the fact that you could save fertilizer at the end of the day,” Schrimpf said. “When fertilizer is really cheap, growers don’t necessarily get that benefit.”

 

Instead of investing in and committing to precision agriculture, they just purchase variable-rate services, say, in some years from specialized companies.

 

For all those reasons, everyone agrees that precision agriculture hasn’t taken off as quickly as people thought it might. Farming, though, is changing in ways that would be shocking in any industry, let alone human civilization’s oldest and most fundamental one.

 

In 1903, when Blair’s great-grandfather founded the farm, there was exactly one working airplane and few cars in the entire world. More than 35 percent of the U.S. population farmed for a living. There was no synthetic fertilizer. No hybrid plant varieties. No transistors. Most power on the farm came from human and animal muscles. Change might seem to come slowly to farms. And the many techno-utopian farms imagined in the past never seem to come about, but in just a few generations of a long-lived family, the layers of technology can create astounding change.

 

“We’ve gone from horses to tractors driving themselves,” Blair concluded.

 

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‘Good food’ grower achieves rock star status

 

(AP via Yahoo! Finance) MILWAUKEE -- After years of tilling away in obscurity, Will Allen has found sudden fame as the face of the urban farming movement.

 

In the year since he won a so-called genius grant from a Chicago foundation, Allen has mingled with former President Bill Clinton, appeared in Oprah Winfrey's O magazine and spoken to scores of groups across the nation and overseas.

 

"The thing that makes me happiest is that more people of color are joining the good-food revolution," Allen told The Associated Press. "Ten years ago, an African-American would say, this is slaves' work, why you doing this? Now we have more people of color at my talks. Before this I had never been interviewed by black media, and now I've had stories in seven or eight black magazines."

 

A former pro basketball player, Allen is the founder and chief executive of Growing Power Inc., a Milwaukee-based company that develops urban farming techniques and teaches young people how to grow food in poor, inner-city neighborhoods.

 

His goal is to teach people how to grow nutritious foods anywhere, in any climate, and the publicity generated by the MacArthur Foundation grant may help him do that. Allen's work caught Clinton's eye, and he was invited to the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City last month. There, the former president introduced Allen by saying: "This guy's my hero."

 

"He said Hillary (Rodham Clinton) and he had been following my career," Allen said. "It was surprising."

 

Clinton's global action group also committed to helping Growing Power raise $1.9 million to help Allen to teach his farming methods to women and children in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Allen said he's focusing on women because they're the primary farmers, and children because they suffer most from the lack of food.

 

"It's about building sustainable food systems," Allen said of his mission, "creating a whole industry around local food systems that can improve communities. That can help end crime and create thousands of jobs. It's about working to make sure everyone has access to good food, to healthy food, high-quality, safe food."

 

The soft-spoken 60-year-old grew up in a farming family, which gave him the background to start Growing Power. Believing it would be impossible to grow healthy food in polluted soil, Allen developed a way to make compost -- tons of it-- from waste food and other organic material. His techniques improved on earlier methods that yield only several pounds of compost at a time, he said.

 

From there, Allen began growing vegetables in thousands of pots, making efficient use of limited greenhouse space. In cities such as Milwaukee and Chicago, where he has farms, vacant lots and flat garage rooftops can be ideal locations for gardens that produce fresh vegetables year-round, he said. He also created a self-sustaining system of fish farming, in which lake perch and tilapia are raised in water that also circulates to feed growing plants.

 

Allen credits persistence, hard work and a lot of trial and error for his farming success. He feels uncomfortable when called a genius, but his son said the title fits.

 

"Absolutely, he's a very intelligent man," said Jason Allen, a partner at a Milwaukee law firm.

 

The MacArthur Foundation grant provides $100,000 per year for five years, which winners can use however they want. Allen, whose interns and volunteers often include inner-city youths, set aside most of his award for grants to poor college students who have no cash left over after paying for tuition and books. Many of those students feel isolated when they can't afford to join friends at movies or other college activities and are at risk of dropping out, he said.

 

Allen said playing hoops for the University of Miami and the American Basketball Association helped prepare him for the scrutiny that comes with speaking to thousands of people. But both he and his son said he'd be just as happy out of the spotlight.

 

"I think he likes meeting people and teaching farming techniques, but if he had his druthers he wouldn't travel," Jason Allen said. "He'd just work on the farm."

 

Allen said he's trying to get back to focusing on his farm after several months in which he was so busy he even declined an invitation from the White House chef to visit first lady Michelle Obama's new herb and vegetable garden.

 

"I just haven't had time," Allen said. "Maybe next spring or summer."

 

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Syngenta opens seed processing plant in Pasco

 

(tricityherald.com) PASCO -- Mayor Joyce Olson remembers when the city's northside processing center was called a "field of dreams."

 

It wasn't a complimentary description of the empty land there.

 

As Olson surveyed it Wednesday during opening ceremonies for Syngenta's new $42 million seed processing facility, she was reminded of how that has changed.

 

"I couldn't help but think back to the 1990s when the whole concept of a Pasco processing center began to emerge," she said. "It's intrinsically rewarding to see how it's all evolved."

 

Syngenta's seed processing plant, which sits on 40 acres, is the newest addition to the center, which began as a joint venture between the city and the Port of Pasco in the late '80s to attract agriculture processors.

 

"The city was saying, 'We need to target, we need to focus, we need to find a way to attract processors to Pasco,' " said Jim Toomey, the port's executive director.

 

The Pasco Processing Center began to take shape in 1994 when J.R. Simplot purchased and developed the first plot of land. Fifteen years later, Syngenta, which processes seeds grown around the world, is operating in Pasco.

 

Construction began in June 2008, shortlyafter Syngenta bought land from the port, and finished this month. The facility provides 30 full-time jobs and about 100 seasonal positions during sweet corn harvest.

 

The Pasco facility is one of two Syngenta vegetable seed processing plants in the U.S. and will process sweet corn, watermelon, squash, melon, broccoli, peppers, tomatoes and spinach. Syngenta controls about 40 percent of the worldwide market share for sweet corn seed.

 

The company's other U.S. seed processing plant, in Othello, focuses on peas, snap peas and green beans. Dan Berdett, president of Syngenta's North American vegetable division, said the relationship with area farmers and the region's agricultural reputation were two of the driving forces behind the company's decision to build in Pasco. "A lot of it was about the growing environment."

 

Pasco was chosen from 47 sites worldwide.

 

The plant will receive seed from area farmers and from around the globe. Sweet corn, one of the plant's focal points, will come from the Mid-Columbia during its growing season and South America during this area's off-season.

 

A world map set up inside one of the cavernous warehouses Wednesday had pins stuck in each city or region that produces seeds for Syngenta. The company receives tomatoes from Morocco, melons from Thailand and squash and cucumbers from China, to name a few. It has processing plants in India and Holland as well.

 

Pasco officials are excited to see a multinational company build and operate in the city during tough economic times. Toomey said attracting companies with the size and stability of Syngenta is "incredibly important."

 

"You cannot underestimate it," he said.

 

Gary Crutchfield, Pasco city manager since 1984, remembers when the city, port and Franklin PUD were working to establish the Pasco Processing Center. He talked about the initial struggles, the eventual growth and the recent addition of Syngenta.

 

"It's been great to see it converted from sagebrush to industrial facilities," he said. "I call it a home run; probably a grand slam."

 

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Agritourism becoming big business in Missouri

 

(AP via DailyJournalOnline.com) CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo.  — The clouds over Pioneer Orchards on a cool October morning don’t bother owner Stan Beggs.

 

The busloads of schoolchildren that soon arrive bring a smile to Beggs. He enjoys watching youngsters’ faces light up as they take part in his hayride, drink a cup of apple cider or eat one of the apples grown on his orchard.

 

Between 200 and 300 students visit the Jackson orchard on a typical day during the fall, and 3,000 may attend during October, the orchard’s busiest month.

 

“People are seeing the value of spending a day at a corn maze, picking apples in an orchard or enjoying an afternoon at their local winery,” Beggs said. “Families are understanding they can drive less distances and enjoy quality time together at a very affordable price near their hometown rather than spending a lot more money hundreds of miles away.”

 

While agritourism isn’t new, the concept has only become popular in the last decade, said Dr. John Hagler, director of the Missouri Department of Agriculture.

 

“It’s not just the product but the experience that’s a vital part of what we do,” Hagler told a group during a University of Missouri Extension agritourism conference. “Consumers are paying attention now than ever before to agritourism options. Right now people are struggling to pay their bills and are realizing they can buy a better product at a farmers market, farm or winery than at their supermarket. It’s time for us to capitalize on it.”

 

One industry that has experienced significant growth since 2004 is the state’s wineries. Five years ago 52 wineries were operating in the state compared to 92 today, according to Jim Anderson, executive director of the Missouri Wine and Grape Board.

 

Statewide, the industry generated about $701 million in 2007, the most recent year a figure is available.

 

“We’ve seen people venturing not just to Missouri’s wineries but those from throughout the nation,” Anderson said. “People can stay in a bed and breakfast or go biking across the state and top it off with a visit to a winery. It’s a concept that is appealing to more and more people.

 

“From the agritourism aspect we’ve seen wineries take off because people are wanting more of a local product,” Anderson said. “There’s something about that connection to the soil that people seem to long for.”

 

Keller Ford, general manager of River Ridge Winery in Commerce, Mo., said the appeal of purchasing a local product and the adventure of getting to a winery have made such destinations more popular. Ford said it is common to have local visitors and visitors from Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and other states.

 

“Nearly every winery is off the beaten path, so people have to pass through in what many instances is beautiful countryside to get to one,” Ford said. “And every winery has its own unique personality. And I think when times are tough with money, instead of going to Gulf Shores or Colorado, people might opt to try a more economic-friendly option like a winery.”

 

Nancy Hadler, new co-owner of Tower Rock Winery & Vineyard in Altenburg, Mo., said her out-of-town visitors have been from Indiana and Lake of the Ozarks, Mo., since she reopened the winery Sept. 12. She believes the area is gaining a reputation as a destination for wine lovers.

 

“What’s interesting is we’re having customers visit when the winery was owned by the former owners but we’re also getting many people who never came before,” Hadler said. “People are looking for a relaxing afternoon, which we offer with our pond surrounded by the woods. It feels like you’re getting away from it all.”

 

“In 10 years our wineries have come a long way,” she said. “Since we’ve nearly doubled in just five years I believe the future looks bright for our industry.”

 

At the 10-acre Saline Valley Tree Farm near Perryville, Mo., owner Marty Buchheit is gearing up for a busy season of selling trees every weekend from the Friday after Thanksgiving through Christmas. For the past 25 years Buchheit has been selling his scotch, white and Virginia pines to visitors who travel as far away as St. Louis and Hayti, Mo. Some are new customers, while others are those he sees year after year.

 

“What keeps them coming back is the experience of going out and cutting their own tree,” Buchheit said. “In some instances families will pile in two to three cars and come out here. It’s been a great way to attract tourism to my farm.”

 

For the past 10 years Beggs Family Farms in Blodgett, Mo., has held its annual family festival. Visitors from Southeast Missouri as well as those from Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee make the journey each year to enjoy the farm’s corn maze, pumpkin patch, homemade fudge, glow-in-the-dark miniature golf course and wagon ride. At other times of the year, the farm sells watermelons.

 

Co-owner Donnie Beggs said the event — held each weekend in October for the public and Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays for schoolchildren — brings in thousands of visitors to his farm. While they spend money, Beggs said the profits didn’t come until about five years ago.

 

“You can’t get in agritourism in this area and think in one or two years you’ll make a bunch of money and be set for life,” Beggs said. “If you want to get into it, you better be ready for the challenges that come with dealing with the public and be prepared to wait a few years before you see a time in profit.”

 

Through the years, Beggs has added features to the festival such as the corn maze and the Phobia Farm.

 

“We figured it’s important to have enough options for people to be entertained for five or six hours,” Beggs said. “... Like other successful agritourism destinations, we try to focus on providing good, affordable family entertainment that appeals to a wide range, both young and old.”

 

While the Christmas trees and corn mazes are attracting tourists to the Saline Valley and Beggs farms, a Stoddard County farmer is using ducks to bring in people from as far away as Georgia and West Virginia.

 

Ken Minton, who operates MoDucks.com and Minton Farms in Bernie, Mo., has provided seasonal leases and one-day guided duck hunting trips since 1999. Duck hunting takes place on 1,600 of the farm’s 4,000 acres, with the remaining land used for growing corn, rice, wheat and beans.

 

“When you’re getting people from 10 hours away you know you have a quality product,” Minton said. “It not only gives people a good time but helps our economy.

 

“Lots of people come each year, and while they’re here they’ll spend money on food and lodging,” Minton said. “That’s just one direct result of agritourism — people helping out the local economy while having a good time.”

 

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Mex ag official: Drug dealers could teach farmers

 

(AP via kjct8.com) – MEXICO CITY -- A Mexican agriculture official has caused a stir by reportedly suggesting that Mexican farmers could learn a thing or two from drug traffickers.

 

Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Jeffrey Max Jones was quoted by the newspaper Reforma on its Web site Wednesday as saying that farmers "should follow the example of drug traffickers because they produce what the market demands."

 

"Today, on the other hand, farmers produce (crops) and later check to see if there is any demand in the market."

 

The Agriculture Department issued a statement calling Jones' remarks "unfortunate."

 

More than 13,800 people have died in drug violence since late 2006, when President Felipe Calderon ordered a nationwide crackdown on traffickers.

 

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