NEW TECHNOLOGIES BOOST CROP YIELDS

A soil sample is taken from each 2 1/2-acre area after the field has been mapped in a grid.

Roger Krebs, a custom applications and agriculture student at Southeast Missouri State University, left, and Robert Owen, MFA Agri service technician and custom applicator, took soil samples in one of the grids. The round antennas on the pickup truck cab receive signals from a the satellite and are logged into the onboard computer.

CHAFFEE -- Farming wasn't ever an easy way to make a living, but the methods were fairly simple: Plow up the field, plant seeds, fertilize, cultivate and harvest the crops.

Locations were determined by geographic features -- a farmer knew where he stopped working by finding an old tree or fence.

But times are changing quickly for America's farmers. Local farm-service employees point to two major developments: conservation farming and use of global, positioning satellites.

The first is a new way of planting. The old way was to till a field several inches deep, exposing valuable topsoil to be washed or blown away.

Strack Equipment, an implement company in Jackson, sold several John Deere 750 no-till drills last year, ushering in a new way to plant. Leon Tuschhoff, manager of Jackson Implement, said he sold the first no-till drill about seven years ago, but the machines have become popular in the last five years.

No-till drills slice open the soil, insert seeds and close the dirt. They can operate in a field that has been tilled only a couple of inches deep or one that hasn't been tilled at all.

The new equipment makes 15-inch rows or closer for soybeans and milo instead of the traditional 30-inch rows.

Carol Raines, a Strack employee, said corn farmers soon will experiment with the closer rows, too. It is a new concept for Raines, but one she promotes. She has been with Strack for 24 years and on a family farm for many years before that.

"In this area, where there are a lot of rolling hills, the no-till drill has become popular," she said. "People realize that they can't let topsoil just wash away."

Because today's farm chemicals are so effective, farmers don't have to get other pieces of equipment between the rows to cultivate, Tuschhoff said.

With closer soybean rows, soil is protected by foliage earlier, so less is removed by rain and wind. More rows don't necessarily mean more soybeans; the close spacing of the plants mean they don't bush out as much and don't produce as many beans. But there aren't fewer beans either, and no-till drilling is good for the soil.

"The farmer of today is understanding that if you deplete your soil's value, you won't have any crops in the future," Raines said. "Farmers also realize that while fertilizer and equipment keep increasing in price, the price of a bushel doesn't, so they have to be careful."

Perhaps even more complex than the no-till drill is the Global Positioning System used by MFA Agri-Services in Chaffee. The system uses satellites all around the Earth to indicate the position of farm equipment in the field.

Each farm is sectioned into two-and-one-half-acre areas. Soil from each area is tested to find out about nutrients and chemical balance. The information is programmed into a computer on a fertilizer truck, and the computer communicates with the satellite to control how much fertilizer is spread on each section.

Bobby Owen, a GPS technician with MFA, called the process "precision farming." So far, agri-service companies like MFA and Co-op offer it, but the systems are too expensive for the average farmer to own.

"At first some were skeptical," Owen said. "But the more they saw, the more they were ready to climb on board. One farmer signed up for us to do 600 acres, but when he saw the variability in his soil, he signed up for all 2,500 acres."

Owen expects the only people who won't use GPS are older farmers ready to retire. For the next generation, GPS will be a must for higher, better-quality yields.

"Younger farmers will have to produce more with what they have, and this is the tool to do it," Owen said. "There won't be any more farmland; with housing developments, there's less and less all the time."

The next step for GPS, said Owen, will be a truck that allows the on-board computer to mix fertilizer especially for a particular area.

He also expects farmers will put yield monitors on their combines to chart yields from each area. Once a farmer knows that, he can compensate and make all parts of his farm have high yields.