I'm not... however, came across this interesting 1954 farming video:
Some of that equipment looked pretty impressive... can only imagine how the technology had matured through the years.
Erik
As a communications contractor I have installed some monitoring, video, environmental monitoring etc, equipment in various produce cooling plants. I have had to sign non-disclosure agreements in some where they were designing various new systems for processing and handling.
I would guess it has advanced a little bit. LOL.
Our kind of farming is a little different... :)
Here're a couple from central KS--it's similar except we've got fewer trees and larger fields...
Truck farming is a whole different animal of course but I'd think that film was fairly primitive even for mid-50s for many operations.
Cool!
Erik
I didn't find one quickly that really demonstrates the integration of tech other than the autosteer in a brief look--it's the combination of GPS w/ other sensing that is the real difference (other than just the size--when a kid in the 60s we were planting 4-row at 3.5 to -maybe- 5 mph so covered roughly 4A (acres)/hr so would take 20 hr nonstop to cover an 80. Now planters are 12-16 rows common w/ some rigs as much as
24 or even 32 and they can run as much as 6 mph. So, we can cover that same 80A in 3 hr or less).A new air planter has sufficient "smarts" to actually measure the precise number and spacing of each seed and meter fertilizer and a insecticide application perhaps as well at the same time. The combine has a yield monitor that is tied into the gps that produces yield maps that are tied back to that same planter's outputs of crop inputs to correlate production costs w/ yield and all are tied to soil maps as well. Over time, combinations of particular seed genetics and input needs can be matched precisely to make better use of the expensive inputs (and which aren't these days????). It is even possible to preset the rates as a function of field coordinates to vary them automagically.
The biggest variable is, of course, still the weather--all can be lost on the day before cutting a bumper crop w/ a bad hail or there can be no crop if it doesn't rain enough or at the right time.
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