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During his life, my dad, along with his father and brothers, saw farming evolve from horsepower on four legs to horsepower on steel wheels and then on rubber tires.
My dad passed away in 1999 at age 83, a third-generation farmer on a farm that began when his grandparents bought 160 acres of virgin north Iowa prairie in 1875. I am the fourth generation on this farm, and today my son operates it as the fifth.
Since my dad’s time, the changes have continued, but at a much faster pace. My son and I will occasionally talk about what Grandpa would think if he could see how farming has changed in a mere 27 years.
Back then, I saw my dad pull a four-row planter with a John Deere A. No cab, no lights that could be called useful for working after dark, and what really amazes me is that he started after mid-May and hoped to be done by the first days of June. That was planting corn only, no soybeans, on a 260-acre farm that also raised oats, hay, cattle, hogs, and chickens.
By 1999, I planted corn with a 12-row planter, guided by a mark in the soil made in my previous pass across the field. When the sun set, I had to quit because I could not see the line. My rows were not as straight as my neighbor’s. I described them as “having a graceful arc.”
My son now plants using a 24-row planter, guided by satellite, and when the sun sets, he keeps going as long as he wants. His rows are arrow straight.
About 25 years ago, I invested in a bioethanol plant a few miles north of here, across the state line in Minnesota, to create a stronger market for corn. I was tired of selling for less than $2 a bushel.
In addition to that first facility, a field across the road from our farm became the site of another bioethanol plant that has now been in operation for over twenty years.
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Today, bioethanol has become a dependable demand source for a crop that has grown beyond what we once thought possible. We’ve seen a rapid increase in productivity and corn yields. Last year, we grew a 16-billion-bushel corn crop in the U.S. That caught the corn market (and us corn growers) by surprise. A crop of that size was unthinkable in 1999. We need more bioethanol to continue to be a dependable market for our huge supply of corn. I like being our own best customer. I made a point to know which stations sell E15, and I buy my gas there.
But there are still limits to each planting season that no amount of bigger and better equipment can change. The growing season begins with the last frost each spring and ends with the first frost each fall.
We can plant faster and cover more acres than ever, but when corn sits in the ground for three weeks, without emerging, it tells me that nature’s growing season is going to have the last word on when our race to the finish starts and ends.
Maybe that won’t always be the case. Somewhere, a seed geneticist could be working on a corn seed that grows like tulips, pushing through at the first warmth, shrugging off a late frost, and standing straight and tall by noon.
Or how about a variety of corn that is high in starch, producing more bioethanol per bushel? That seed will probably have its own herbicide, too.
We might even see a day when both harvesting and planting take place in the fall, with new machinery without cabs or steering wheels to accomplish the new fall harvesting-tilling-fertilizing-planting operation.
Instead of sitting in a cab, farmers will be remote, sitting at a desk, watching the work being done on a computer screen from wherever they want to be. Maybe Miami Beach?
Think of it: The only activity each spring will be pickup trucks driving up and down roads looking for that first newly emerged corn. Muddy fields? Who cares.
And you know what? It will still be a race to get it all done.
Some things don’t change.
