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saving the world, one advanced technology at at time
the AP reports on a newish planting technique, strip-till farming; it's thirty-something years old. in short, a special tiller turns up many 8"-wide strips of land, with the key advantage over no-till methods that the tiller allows fertilizers and ag chemicals to be buried deeply with new seeds.
while it's capital intensive, requiring a GPS-steered tractor and the tiller itself, it apparently pays for itself relatively quickly. the farmer interviewed paid $1M for new equipment, but saves $300k/year on fertilizer, because less runs off.
on the one hand, he has a huge (7,400 acre) farm, but on the other hand, he apparently had an old tractor, since most tractors have had GPS as standard equipment since the turn of the century.
for the last five years or so, it's been possible to buy a robot tractor that can plow (etc) by itself, though this is technically not legal. an operator is supposed to be in the cab at all times, but i'm reliably informed that it's not needed for most fields,¹ and if the tractor is moving at a slow walk, it's not hard to grab a handhold and swing up onto a running board and get into the cab. (farmers' notions of acceptable risk may differ from yours.)
the interesting thing to me, beyond the changing economics of farming, is the reduced eutrophication. convincing farmers to just use less fertilizer is hard, since for many crops, fertilizer is what limits their growth, which means it limits the farmer's income. but if they can use fertilizer more efficiently, and therefore save money, they should be for it. assuming they can afford new hardware. one could point out that this is a fine place that a tree-hugging government could intervene in the markets, and make inexpensive loans available.
1: i'm told that if the tractor is correctly programmed – point and click, assuming one has a good map of the field – the real problem isn't the machine running amok, but it bogging down in muddy spots. unbogging a tractor is apparently not easy – they're large and heavy – and while typical car methods sometimes work, the most reliable method is to help it out of the mud with another tractor on dry ground.
so farmers try to program tractors to avoid muddy areas, which takes detailed knowledge of the fields. robot tractors apparently don't try very hard to unbog themselves for fear of being worse bogged, and usually end up crying for mommy.
while it's capital intensive, requiring a GPS-steered tractor and the tiller itself, it apparently pays for itself relatively quickly. the farmer interviewed paid $1M for new equipment, but saves $300k/year on fertilizer, because less runs off.
on the one hand, he has a huge (7,400 acre) farm, but on the other hand, he apparently had an old tractor, since most tractors have had GPS as standard equipment since the turn of the century.
for the last five years or so, it's been possible to buy a robot tractor that can plow (etc) by itself, though this is technically not legal. an operator is supposed to be in the cab at all times, but i'm reliably informed that it's not needed for most fields,¹ and if the tractor is moving at a slow walk, it's not hard to grab a handhold and swing up onto a running board and get into the cab. (farmers' notions of acceptable risk may differ from yours.)
the interesting thing to me, beyond the changing economics of farming, is the reduced eutrophication. convincing farmers to just use less fertilizer is hard, since for many crops, fertilizer is what limits their growth, which means it limits the farmer's income. but if they can use fertilizer more efficiently, and therefore save money, they should be for it. assuming they can afford new hardware. one could point out that this is a fine place that a tree-hugging government could intervene in the markets, and make inexpensive loans available.
1: i'm told that if the tractor is correctly programmed – point and click, assuming one has a good map of the field – the real problem isn't the machine running amok, but it bogging down in muddy spots. unbogging a tractor is apparently not easy – they're large and heavy – and while typical car methods sometimes work, the most reliable method is to help it out of the mud with another tractor on dry ground.
so farmers try to program tractors to avoid muddy areas, which takes detailed knowledge of the fields. robot tractors apparently don't try very hard to unbog themselves for fear of being worse bogged, and usually end up crying for mommy.