More to come!

More to Come!

EQUIPMENT planners and designers are not about to run out of challenges in the near future.

We asked our panel of engineers to indicate the general areas in which they expect to see the greatest changes in the next 25 years and got some interesting views.

"I would prefer to go farther into the future than 25 years,' said Bill Larsen. "Then I wouldn't be around to be proven wrong.'

Despite the hazards of possible poor prognostication, Larsen went on to predict that the electronic revolution will enter more and more areas of agriculture, resulting in, among other things, increased reliability of components.

He said he believes monitors will evolve into controllers and will probably include devices that will adjust seeding and fertilizing rates for different predetermined places in a field. The machines might even respond on-the-go to data from sensors that read moisture and fertility levels in the soil.

Another engineer suggested that farmers will have computerized maps showing soil moisture, fertility and yield levels, with the possibility of entering subjective evaluations of weed and insect infestations as desired. Such maps would control seeding rate and depth, amount of fertilizer and application of pesticides. Some steps are currently being taken in these directions.

More than a third of our respondents predicted additional development in sensors, such as for crop and soil moisture, and additional monitors for speed and accuracy of equipment operations. They also frequently saw increased use of electronics and microprocessor controls for automatic adjustment of planting and harvesting equipment.

Improved tillage

Our prediction panel generally saw tillage systems evolving to minimize soil compaction, partly through restriction of all wheel traffic to the same paths year after year. Minimum tillage, soil and energy conservation and improved yields will be the goals for other predicted changes in tillage equipment.

Merle Miller commented that "biotechnology and genetic advancements are widely heralded as the next major development for achieving higher crop production.

"Most major crops are already planted with purchased seed costing several times the value of the harvested seed. Purchased seed, further enhanced by genetic improvements against disease or for greater production, will be still more costly, in turn placing more pressure upon planted seeds being properly placed and nourished.

"This could lead to a cartridge or capsule containing a seed with starter chemicals. The need for precision planting will continue to rise, not only for better germination, but to facilitate higher planting travel speeds.'

Bill Larsen predicts the horsepower race will end, not from less need to do more and more work, but from the problems with soil compaction and wider and wider implements.

Wider implements have raised prices exponentially and placed the operator farther from the decision point, which increases risk and decreases performance.

Larsen projects that new high efficiency chemicals will require much more accurate application for effective use, thus demanding guidance systems or placing the operator in a line-of-sight position to prevent skips and overlaps.

More for less

Increased efficiency in machine development over the next 25 years is also the focus seen by Bob Tweedy. He looks for trends toward reduced field losses, higher quality of products, and reduced inputs of labor, fuel, capital and expense on a per-unit-of-result basis. He also sees a stress on management, primarily from electronics and information processing.

Howard Johnson, head of ag engineering at Iowa State U., believes corn and soybeans will remain dominant crops in the Midwest for some years, but there will be more experimenting with vegetables and other new crops. He also suspects we could be harvesting biomass to produce energy within the next 25 years.

Russ Poynor, retired from IH and now a cosultant, said "corn seems to be the crop for which we excel in production and fail in consumption. In the 1930s, the term "chemurgy' was coined to express the need for non-food uses of farm crops, and there is a similar great economic need for today's corn farmers. I am hoping for increased acceptance of ethanol blend motor fuels.'

George Pratt suggests that cutting production costs may not solve current agricultural problems, which he believes stem from over-investment in farmland. He also thinks competition from imported machinery is going to become more severe and may be a major problem facing the industry in the next few years.

Storage challenges

Pratt, head of ag engineering at North Dakota State U., observed that "there is lots of room for improvement in crop storage and processing.

"As soon as the grain leaves the auger of the $100,000 combine, the degree of sophistication employed in the storage of grain seems to be much less than it is for the production of the grain.

"It is common practice to store very high quality grain outside. Farmers frequently risk storing this high quality grain at mosture levels that are too high. Many complaints come from foreign buyers on the quality of grain received.

"I understand that we just recently reached the point in the world where production slightly exceeds the needs. We're obviously not able to distribute the production in a satisfactory way today.'

As Alf Gerritse of Canning, Nova Scotia, said in Within ASAE, Nov. 1985: "We learned how to feed the world, but no one has set the table or knows how.'

Critical water

Availability of water for urban use and irrigation will be increasingly critical in future years, commented one engineer, who suggests that a breakthrough in desalting sea water might make it feasible to reverse the flow of the Missippi River.

There's only a 450 foot difference in elevation between the Gulf of Mexico and Southeast Nebraska, he notes. Then, with tongue in cheek, he asks: "Where are we going to put all that salt from the water recovered? Spread it out on Texas, because they claim to have most of everything anyway.'

Photo: The merger of electronics and hydraulics is seen in this Hydreco valve body, one of many advanced components available for designers of tomorrow's machines.

Photo: The future is likely to see an emphasis on fewer field passes with wider implements, like this Unverferth tool, as pressure continues to reduce crop input costs.