Futuristic and old-fashioned

• Farming family

Don Davis/State Capitol Bureau Gary Thoma of Neilsville, Wis., climbs off a New Holland tractor Tuesday at Farm Technology Days near River Falls, Wis. With Thoma is his daughter Kaitlin (in tractor cab), wife Kelly and friend Maggie McDonald. Thoma said small farms like his face a tough future.
• Tractors at Farm Days

Don Davis/State Capitol Bureau A pair of Minneapolis Moline tractors attracts a crowd Tuesday at Farm Technology Days near River Falls, Wis. More than 200 old tractors are on display, along with a much larger area of modern technology.

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Farming future leaves much to the imagination

RIVER FALLS, Wis. — Agriculture of the future will be “Star Trek” meets “Green Acres.”

Experts predict that within 25 years little robots will roam fields zapping weeds, testing soil and turning plant genes on and off to fit the conditions, a bit like mechanical helpers on the starship Enterprise. At the same time, some Americans will continue to feel a need to work the land, and smell the soil, while bouncing up and down on a tractor seat, as Oliver Wendell Douglas did on the farm comedy.

Farmers in recent years have embraced global positioning systems to better grow crops. They use computers and satellites better than many of the country’s biggest corporations. Dairy farmers are beginning to use robotic milking machines.

There is little argument about the future: Technology will continue to drive changes.

What is to come excites Matt Hanson of the Dodge County, Wis., extension office, an expert in handling manure, a product farmers like to call nutrients.

“I get excited reading some of the research that is going on that is kind of unrelated to agriculture; it is related to robotics,” he said.

Hanson predicted that science soon will develop little robots that scan fields looking for weeds, for instance, “and spot spray on individual weeds, kind of like those robot vacuums in homes or mowing yards.”

Those robots also will be able to analyze soils, Hanson added, “sending a message back to the producer via e-mail or cell phones or whatever technology we have in the future.”

Farm implement giant John Deere is working on the concept. “It is closer than we think,” Hanson said.

As for livestock, Hanson predicted that each lot of meat will be traceable back to an individual animal, so that an e-coli outbreak, for instance, need only lead to a small recall of bad product.

While there appears to be general agreement that technology will dominate agriculture, there is a difference of opinion.

“I think farms in general are going to get larger,” said Dick Wolkowski, senior soil scientist for the University of Wisconsin Extension Service. “I don’t think there is any question that to keep up economically, the 30-cow herd and running cash crops on a few acres just doesn’t cut it anymore. Farms are going to have to get larger. I am not saying factory farms, or anything like that. It will be family farms.”

Hanson disagreed with Wolkowski about the size of future farms. He predicted farms will not need to grow in size, just grow more per acre with “this technology that really helps us fine tune our production techniques.”

Technology is automating work and turning farmers into computer operators, Hanson said, but many still like to smell the soil: “I enjoy getting on a tractor and doing some mindless field work.”

Climbing off a shiny new New Holland tractor at Farm Technology Days near River Falls, Gary Thoma of Neilsville, Wis., had doubts about the little guy.

“I don’t think it will survive,” he said of the 440-acre farm he and his brother work. “You can’t compete.”

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