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Agriculture innovations are pushing boundaries to make Iowa crops healthier, more resilient
The Gazette will host a series of talks about the future of agriculture this week
The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
Short corn. Aerial drones.
These are two of the leading agricultural advances that promise to increase farm efficiencies and yields in the coming years, according to experts.
Short-stature corn — although still not very short at 7 to 9 feet — has the potential to resist wind damage, be planted more densely, and allow wheeled farm equipment into crop fields for more of the growing season.
Drones are evolving to carry more weight and operate longer without a recharge, allowing them to deliver pesticides more precisely and timely than planes.
Their uses will expand as they become more powerful. They already can be programmed to operate virtually independently.
"I look five to 10 years out, and I think autonomous is going to be much more widely adopted," said Mark Licht, an assistant professor and cropping systems specialist at Iowa State University. "I think those technologies are going to become proven."
The two advances are part of broader efforts to precisely anticipate and mitigate factors that are detrimental to crop growth, including how to most effectively apply fertilizers and pesticides.
Licht and more than a dozen other researchers, manufacturers and farmers are set to discuss those and other advances this week during The Gazette's Iowa Ideas In-Depth Week, the focus of which will be Innovation in Agriculture.
The hourlong discussions — starting at noon each weekday — will cover agriculture trends, manufacturing, new product development, plant sciences and creative land use.
Registration is free for the talks, which will preview further discussions at The Gazette's annual Iowa Ideas conference in October.
Rise of the machines
Drone technology has rapidly advanced in recent years.
When Kevin Butt, an agriculture professor at Ellsworth Community College in north central Iowa, first encountered drones, they were merely capable of flying over fields and taking photos.
Spraying crops with them was a far-fetched idea.
“I never would have imagined we're doing this today,” he said.
When Zach Hanner, of Iowa City-based Rantizo, started tinkering with ag drones, the machines could spray pesticides on about six acres of field per hour.
Now, five years later, they can do about 10 times that.
"Drone numbers are roughly doubling each year," said Hanner, chief supervisor of agriculture operations for the company. "It's becoming more and more commonplace."
Rantizo sells and supports drone systems for farmers. A typical customer most often uses one or two drones to spray fungicides on corn. The systems usually cost about $50,000.
One of the company's biggest customers in Illinois uses four drones to spray about 5,000 acres once each year.
The drone systems are valuable to farmers — even though they might only be used once annually — because they can more easily navigate obstacles that affect low-flying airplanes, and farmers can choose when to spray.
They're not at the whim of a pilot's schedule, when lots of farmers might be seeking help all at once.
And the drones work mostly autonomously. Using global positioning satellites and a programmed route they can venture across fields with the push of a button. Operators are required by federal regulations to monitor the drones, and they occasionally refill the machines with pesticides and swap batteries.
The result will be fewer crop-dusting planes, Hanner and Licht predict. But it's likely that the planes will be used along with drones for the foreseeable future. The planes can spray at higher rates.
Drone manufacturers continue to seek ways to increase their capacities. Advances in battery technology will help, but some have considered creating hybrid systems that use electricity and another fuel to more rapidly expand their spraying speed.
"Right now we're in kind of a lightspeed of development for these drones," Hanner said. "We're seeing each iteration, year over year, that are getting bigger and faster, more capacity, and being way more capable of competing with traditional aerial equipment."
Butt agrees that drones will have an increasingly important role in agriculture — perhaps by identifying and destroying weeds — but it’s difficult to say how their uses will evolve.
However, he’s sure that autonomous machines will take on a larger role because there is a shortage of skilled workers. Students who graduate from his school almost assuredly will be hired, he said.
Some of the first jobs to be occupied by machines might include those that are monotonous and require hours of labor in fields.
“Instead of a farmer spending six hours in a tractor tilling up the soil, they can have a robotic tractor do that, and then they can spend their time doing something else,” Butt said.
Shrinking of the corn
Shorter corn stalks are more resistant to wind than common taller varieties, which has made them a popular idea in recent years after severe weather events.
A 2020 derecho caused nearly a half-billion dollars of crop damage in Iowa, and similar storms that feature strong, straight-line winds have occurred more frequently than usual in recent years.
The short-stature corn varieties being developed are often about two feet shorter than others. They also can be planted more densely.
That gives them an edge when strong winds blow, but they have other advantages.
"It's more resistant to blow over, but it also enables you to get in and access your field and your crop all season long, so you can start thinking about different ways of providing the right amount of nutrients to that plant at the right time of its growing cycle," said Brett Wilson, who leads a large research team that develops the varieties for the ag giant Bayer.
He added: "Whereas today, lots of farmers are hindered — they can't get into the crop after it gets too tall."
Switching to shorter varieties has tremendous potential for increasing corn yields, he said, but it will require farmers to adjust how they tend their crops to be more precise with fertilizer and pesticide applications.
The ears are also lower to the ground, which can make them more difficult to harvest.
"There's a lot of onus on us as a company to get our customers to see the potential for yield that this product provides to them," Wilson said. "We have a lot of work in that space to do over the coming years.
Wilson and Licht are set to discuss crop genetics during a Thursday In-Depth Week session about plant sciences.
Iowa Ideas In-Depth Week Explores Innovation in Agriculture
Iowa Ideas, a project of The Gazette, is hosting a free, virtual In-Depth Week series called Innovation in Agriculture, March 24-28.
The week features five sessions, held 12-1 p.m. each day. Full session descriptions, including a list of panelists, and registration can be found at iowaideas.com. Here is the week’s schedule:
• Monday: Agriculture Trends: How has Iowa embraced innovation in techniques and teachings when it comes to agriculture?
• Tuesday: Manufacturing: What equipment, products and systems born out of Iowa are leading new manufacturing in the ag industry?
• Wednesday: Idea to Market: Which technologies have the potential to advance agriculture to new levels?
• Thursday: Plant Sciences: How has the evolution of crop genetics in recent decades enabled farmers to more easily weather a changing climate and new pests?
• Friday: Creative Land Use: What are the best options for edge-of-field and in-field practices to reduce fertilizer runoff and improve the health of fields?
Comments: (319) 368-8541; jared.strong@thegazette.com
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