COMPUTERS MOVE TO NEW FIELDS; FARMERS HARVESTING BENEFITS FROM COMPUTERIZED TECHNOLOGY

CHAFFEE -- Ken Schlitt eyes the rainbow of colors that fill a rectangular shape on the computer screen in his office.

The colors -- red, yellow, blue and green -- show the soil composition of a farmer's field.

It's all part of the high-tech world of farming.

Schlitt manages MFA Agri Services in Chaffee. The company fertilizes fields for farmers with state-of-the-art technology centered around satellites and computers.

The high-tech service has improved crop yields for area farmers, he said.

Instead of spreading the same amount of fertilizer over an entire field, the fertilizer is spread in varying amounts depending on the composition of the soil, Schlitt said.

The whole process is controlled by an on-board computer on the huge vehicle that is used to spread the fertilizer.

The high-tech system hinges on something called the Global Positioning System, which was created for the military.

The system uses signals from satellites to identify a specific location in a field.

The Coast Guard has towers in St. Louis and Memphis that pick up the satellite signals. Schlitt said his service picks up those free signals and uses them to map a particular location.

Soil samples are taken at various points in a field. The soil is analyzed by a lab in Iowa. Schlitt receives the results via a computer network.

A computer program allows Schlitt and his staff to calculate how much lime and fertilizer are needed to improve different areas of crop land.

"It is a nutrient management system," he said.

The Chaffee MFA has been fertilizing farm fields with the help of such technology for five years.

"Most of it is being done in a 15-mile radius of Chaffee," Schlitt said. His company has worked on some 15,000 acres of farm land.

He said the cost works out to about $10 an acre.

It can take four years of such fertilizer applications to bring a field up to the optimum level, he said.

But Schlitt said the added expense ultimately pays off for farmers in higher yields. The service can increase the average yield on a field of corn by 20 to 25 bushels an acres. The average increase is about eight to 10 bushels for soybeans.

All farmers aren't in tune with the new technology. But Schlitt said farmers need to embrace the high-tech world.

Duane Ford chairs Southeast Missouri State University's agriculture department.

He said computers and computer-driven equipment are showing up increasingly down on the farm.

"The popular image of a farmer is Old MacDonald. But that is so far from reality that that is laughable," Ford said.

Many of today's farmers keep track of their finances and the farm markets via personal computers.

"Computers are being used more and more on the farms for simple record keeping and bookkeeping," Ford said.

"My brothers farm 2,000 acres in Illinois. Both have monster computers, but all they really use them for right now is bookkeeping and record keeping," he said.

But computers increasingly are making their way from the farm house to the fields.

At some dairy farms, cows wear a device around their necks that send a signal to computerized equipment that dispenses the proper amount of food for each animal, he said.

Ford said computer-driven irrigation systems are being developed that can detect when a crop needs to be irrigated.

A cow's health record may one day be put on a computer chip and implanted under the skin, he said. The data could be called up via a scanner.

Said Ford, "If there is any lesson to be learned from agricultural development over the past century, it is that stuff beyond our wildest dreams will happen."