Farm Of the Future

By Kristin Kloberdanz/Geneseo

Clay Mitchell climbs into his combine, pulls a lever and sits back as the lumbering machinery crashes into a 40-acre cornfield. As the front of the machine noses through the furrows like 13 red moles, chomping at the stocks and churning ears into grain, Mitchell checks his e-mail on a wireless laptop, downloads the moisture content of corn being stored in a bin a

mile away and chats on his cell phone. Except for turning the combine around at the end of each row and the occasional moment when he has to brave the autumn chill to yank clogged ears out of the 30-ft. header, Mitchell's work in his cab more closely resembles a corporate employee's than that of a farmer. In fact, Mitchell calls his combine his "office on wheels."

Is this the future of American agriculture? This 2,500-acre centennial family farm in Geneseo Township, Iowa, is a hotbed of previously unmeshed technologies that have agricultural experts buzzing and farmers considering what might be. "Clay Mitchell is probably the most progressive farmer I've ever met," says Tony Grift, assistant professor in the agricultural and biological engineering department at the University of Illinois. While researchers have been studying for years how technologies such as wireless networks and the global-positioning system (GPS) could be suited to farm work, Grift says Mitchell, 31, is one of the first independent farmers to put them to use: "Clay is bringing it all together."

With a Harvard degree in biomedical engineering, Mitchell is no average farmer. After graduating in 1999, he worked and traveled for a year. He then took the unusual step of returning to the family farm where his father and great-uncle still work in the corn and soybean fields and his mom handles the bookkeeping. In the face of soaring costs and fluctuating crop prices, family farms nationwide have faced increasing difficulty, and many have shut down. Since his return, Mitchell has morphed his old farm into a technological experiment--making the farm economically stronger and environmentally sound. "The technology has allowed much larger benefits," he says.

In 2000, Mitchell set out to increase fertilizer efficiency, not only because of rising costs but also because of the tremendous amount of runoff waste on his property. At that time, he learned that the GPS was being used in the precise cultivation of high-value fruits and vegetables, mostly in California, with great results in terms of yield. He asked California-based Trimble, a navigation technology company, to design for him a GPS that would work for the hulking machines of grain country. That fall, Mitchell installed the Trimble AgGPS AutoPilot guidance system on his tractor, making his farm the first in the Midwest to use auto-steering.

With GPS guidance, Mitchell can dig a small furrow in the land and then pinpoint to within an inch where each seed is placed. With such precision farming, he injects fertilizer right on top of the seeds without ever touching the wheel. The heavy machinery takes the exact path every time it passes through the rows, also allowing him to minimize the amount of land that is compacted--a serious cropping problem. Since installing a GPS three years ago, the Mitchell Farm has seen a 30% to 40% drop in fertilizer costs and an 8% annual increase in yield over the rest of the county.

With time to spare in the cab, Mitchell decided to turn his tractor into a rolling office. In 2002, he established a wireless network for the farm using specialized 2.4-GHz NavCom Safari Network radios for high-speed Internet access. As a result, Mitchell can surf the Web for weather conditions and stock prices and download aerial images from anywhere on the farm. Because the network also provides a mechanism for remote machine monitoring and controlling, he can check on his grain bins to see how the product is drying and even make transfers from miles away. "Last fall, someone came with a load of grain and dropped it in the bin," father Wade says. "The timer for drying was set too short, but from the combine, I was able to change it." Without this system, the farm would have to hire someone to monitor the grain bins, and as Mitchell puts it, "labor is a tight commodity."

The wireless network also provides GPS correction signals for what Mitchell calls his "most innovative work": real-time kinematics (RTK) nozzle control, which he helped develop for pesticides. Normally, when farmers spray their fields, they have to make several passes over the land to ensure every odd angle has been soaked. When they cross a waterway, they have to manually turn the sprayer off and on. "This is expensive and takes time," Mitchell says. With the RTK nozzle, the controller knows where the land has already been sprayed and turns the valves off automatically. Mitchell estimates this cuts by 20% the expensive chemicals he uses on his land and is much healthier for the environment. "It's easy and economical," he says. "I'm sure there will be a thousand on the market soon."

Mitchell, a Jude Law look-alike and an avid skier in the off-season, is still improving his technologies--and he's on a mission to spread the word on how it's done. This winter, he plans to zero in on high-speed farming--that is, making every operation much faster. "We're adding suspension to the machines and improving the algorithms for guidance," he says. "The benefit will be smaller, lighter machines that have less impact on the environment and that are more affordable to family farms."

Despite working with several companies--KEE Technologies, Trimble and Capstan--to develop the sprayer this past summer, Mitchell does not stand to make any money from his innovations. Although he tests John Deere products on his farm, he will not sign a contract or do testimonials for any company. "If something that starts in my head is used, that is absolute gratification--it's better than money." In the past few years, Mitchell has traveled the globe, from France to Japan, giving presentations on how wireless and GPS technologies can help farms. He has also been host to a steady stream of international visitors, researchers, farmers and manufacturers. "Mitchell's farm is like the house of the future," Grift says. "People can actually look at it and make the distinction between a wild idea and a possibility."

Unfortunately, for many farmers, such technologies are still out of reach financially. Typical costs for GPS and wireless network systems can run into the tens of thousands. As the seasons pass, however, the results may more than make up for the initial costs. "When Clay first started with the autopilot, the economics didn't seem feasible," says Doug Hefty, a farmer neighbor of the Mitchells'. "But as time went on, I had the opportunity to see what the yield did on his corn hybrids. He surpassed me by leaps and bounds--it's embarrassing. He's using less fertilizer and nitrogen than I am but growing 20 bushels more corn an acre."

Mitchell hopes the agricultural industry will come up with economical, easy-to-install technologies before small farms disappear altogether. "The plight of the family farmer is that most of them moved to the suburbs a generation ago," he says. "Many of them could have been saved if more of these practices had been in place. Technology will allow families to farm without help." And surf the Web at the same time.