Feb 15, 2008 12:00 PM, By Karen McMahon and Jodie Wehrspann

Land management

The average age of the American farmer is mid-50s, and this has major implications for the future of farmland. More land will roll to family members who are not farming. These non-farming landowners will turn over the land management to professionals. As a result, professional land management firms, rather than individual farmers, will become the new major decision makers for inputs and renters.

Mosaic

Cargill spun off the fertilizer company called Mosaic in 2004. A hot world market for fertilizer has helped propel Mosaic stock from $15/share in 2004 to $94.34/share at the end of 2007. In fact, the Minneapolis-based company was the top earner of a local stock index with a 342% increase in price during 2007. With the fertilizer shortage continuing indefinitely, Mosaic is sure to keep climbing upward.

Nitrogen

The availability and price of nitrogen fertilizer will continue to be an enormous factor in the profitability of corn. All efforts will focus on precisely applying nitrogen at the optimum time to promote corn growth because N will not be a low-priced option in the near future.

On-the-go sensors

Expect to see new developments with on-the-go sensing from vehicle-mounted devices that help regulate the application of seed, fertilizer and chemicals. “A fertilizer spreader might be able to have a sensor at the front that will test, say, soil pH every few feet and change the rate of lime application as the spreader passes over that point,” says Marvin Batte, Ohio State University.

On-the-go sensing technology has been around in other forms, including nitrogen sensing, since the 1990s. Examples include GreenSeeker, Norsk Hydro (Yara) N sensor, and Crop Circle, which all measure the greenness of leaves for variable nitrogen application.

Precision guidance

Automated steering systems with GPS will fully populate the ag equipment business in the next decade. The early adopters in farming already successfully implemented precision guidance systems. Now the masses will join. Most tractors and combines are manufactured with the ability to handle GPS-directed steering systems.

Quad stacks

Quad stacks were the latest in the explosion of stacked traits in corn and soybean seed. Recently, Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences trumped the quad stack with an eight-gene stack. This new multiple-stack product could be called an octostack, but the two companies opted for the name Smart Stax.

With its endless list of new features, the new stacked-trait seed is beginning to sound like a new car. In the future, maybe the seed companies will have to create seed with standard, deluxe and premium packages of stacks.

Remote sensing

Remote sensing technology is not new but is getting a face-lift. Instead of a week to turn around satellite photos, the new Optigro from John Deere takes only two to three days. As a result, growers can quickly react with rescue operation plans before too much crop damage occurs. The images help show crop stress, pests, weather damage, and low nitrogen and moisture levels.

Robot rally

Instead of sitting around a conference room talking about automated machines, a group of agricultural engineers staged a robot rally as part of the Precision Ag Conference held last summer. Robots with names like AgAnt and Agbo were demonstrated. Sure, these robots may not look as posh as the lifelike androids shown each year at Las Vegas electronic shows, but these field versions promise to be more productive, volunteering for the most mundane tasks like weeding and tilling. The University of Illinois is one hot spot for the research. Tony Grift and his university team just received a $300,000 grant to develop one of these androids for the field.

Remote diagnostics

General Motors did it for cars with OnStar and now you can get the same immediate service response in your tractor from Leica Geosystems. Leica's service is a remote diagnostic system called the Virtual Wrench, which is a feature on the company's autosteer guidance system. The Virtual Wrench lets the folks at Leica tap into its real-time kinematic (RTK) system 24/7 and fix it at the touch of a button from their headquarters in Englewood, CO. So a farmer in a tractor cab with the autosteer system (called mojoRTK) can push a button on the system's small console and get a live technician to respond, just like with OnStar.

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