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August 1993
Farm tractors to be antiques within 20 years: Purdue professor
WEST LAFAYEITE, IND.–Within a couple of decades, the tractor and plow will be agricultural history, says an agricultural engineering professor at Purdue University.
In their place will be new vehicles that use satellite navigation receivers, laser measuring devices, on-board computers and electronic vision sensors to bring in the sheaves.
"Horse plows came and went. Steam engine machines came and went. Then the farm tractor came, and now the only place it's going is to the antique museum," says Gary Krutz, professor of agricultural engineering.
Krutz recently presented his prognostications about agricultural vehicles at a conference in Osaka, Japan, on the future of all types of vehicles. Krutz's predictions:
Although small garden tractors may be with us for some time, Krutz says that farm tractors will be dinosaurs. To reduce costs, one vehicle will soon take the place of both the tractor and the combine in the equipment shed. Currently, a combine costs $2OO,OOO, and a large tractor costs $1OO,OOO to $2OO,OOO.
A satellite dish will be attatched to farm machinery to receive global positioning information. The farmer will use this positioning information for site-specific farming, in which chemical applications or planting characteristics are customized for pieces of the farmer's field that are as small as a few inches square. The satellite network for this technique is already in place.
Soil conditions will be tested as the machinery moves through the field. For example, lasers determine organic content and soil moisture, while other sensors determine the chemical nature of the soil by measuring the pH. And microphones determine the soil texture by listening to the sound the soil makes as it passes over the shank. These sensors, which will be required for site-specific farming, are being developed by Purdue agricultural engineers.
The farmer's plow will go unused, as seeds will be planted through the stubble of past harvests. Already many American farmers use this technology, which is known as no-till farming. In 1991, 7.3 percent of the acres farmed in the United States were planted this way. No-till farming, as its name suggests, means that the farmer doesn't plow his fields. Instead a drill opens just enough space in the soil to insert a seed and mix the soil surrounding the seed. No-till curtails soil erosion and compaction, cuts energy use, and reduces weed growth.
Farm implements will be pushed, not pulled, through the fields. "To be accurate to a few inches, you need to push the planter to maintain control," Krutz says. "Pulling it allows it to move too much as you go over rough terrain." Undergraduate engineering students at Purdue have been working on a prototype of a no-till planter attached to the front of a combine. The difficulty, according to Krutz, is to develop a linkage that will allow precise control while moving over the bumps in the fields.
Farm machinery will be designed to reduce soil compaction. This may be accomplished by using a 4O to 6O foot-wide planter, as compared to 15- to 20-foot for the planters that are common today. It also may mean that tank-like treads are used instead of tires. "The farmer will use the same path through the field year after year, which will reduce soil compaction," Krutz says. Studies conducted at Purdue in the late 197Os showed that soil compaction can significantly reduce yields.
Farm machinery may have on-board weaponry that could annihilate weeds, which would reduce the use of pesticides. "We might use electronic vision sensors to spot weeds and airjet cutters to cut them before they have a chance to establish a leaf canopy that will prevent the crop from growing The air jets use a stream of air with a velocity of 4,000 feet per minute–that's enough to cut a weed in half," Krutz says.
Information from in-field electronic spies about crop conditions will be sent to computers on farm machinery. "Big Brother Farmer will be watching his crop," Krutz says. "In the field will be a sensor that can move up and down the rows, perhaps on tracks like those irrigation systems use now. This sensor will have a special surface that attracts insects, so that the type and number of insects can be known. It will also have a vision sensor, similar to a camera, that will measure the crop moisture stress levels, any nutrient deficiency by looking at the color of the crop, and the insect levels. The main ag vehicle's computer will use this information when planting or spraying crops.
"To borrow a phrase from business, the sensor will be providing farmers with information about what is happening on the production floor."
Robotic harvesters may be used, especially when harvesting fruits and vegetables. "Because they have sensors, the robots will harvest only vine-ripe fruit, thereby reducing waste and improving quality," says Gaines Miles, professor of agricultural engineering. Miles estimates that 2O percent of the tomatoes picked, for example, are destroyed because they aren't ripe.
Miles and his graduate students have developed a prototype melon-picking robot, which is being tested at the Volcani Institute in Israel. The robot uses electronic cameras and lasers to spot the fruit, chemical sensors to sniff the ethylene given off by the fruit to determine if it is ripe, and a robotic arm that grabs, cuts, and loads the produce.
Although the Purdue robot cost $7O,OOO in parts to build, prices of electronic parts are falling. By the next decade, farmers should be able to buy their own agricultural robots for the price of a new pickup truck, Miles says. "Robots will become as useful and versatile as tractors are now," he says.
The ag vehicle of the next decade will still require a person behind the wheel to steer. "When I spoke in Japan, the Japanese were surprised that I didn't include driverless electronics among the considerations in the near future," Krutz says. "All of the car companies over there are working on that for their automobiles. But for farm vehicles it just doesn't make sense. You can hire a driver during harvest season for $5,OOO. Driverless electronics would increase the cost by tens of thousands of dollars."
The new technologies will require farmers with different skills than today's farmers. For some people the future is already here: "At Purdue we're training students right now to use these new technologies," Krutz says.
Despite the advantages of the new vehicles, Howard Doster, associate professor of agricultural economics, predicts that many traditional farmers may not easily give up their tractors. "The average age of tractors in this country is 18 to 19 years old, and some farmers use tractors that are 25 to 3O years old. I know, I've got one of them," Doster says. "If these new technologies are evolutionary and not revolutionary, we'll continue using the equipment we have now until it wears out." Another alternative, Doster says, may be selling out-dated tractors and combines to farmers in other countries.
Still, Doster won't make an absolute prediction about the acceptance of the new technologies. "In my office I have a bulletin from the 193Os that says that rubber tractor tires will never be economically feasible. The extension specialist who wrote that had no way of knowing that blacktop country roads would soon require them. So the conditions that drive the use of the new technologies can change quickly," he says.
NOTE: Prints of the enclosed black and white photographs are available, as are color or original copies of the enclosed graphic.
Contact Purdue News Service (765) 494-2096 or purduenews@purdue.edu
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