DlS— Lancaster Farming, Saturday, June 9,1984
I never expected my oldest
daughter Tracy to have anything
to do with agriculture. In college
she majored in communications
and showed a keen interest in
history. Then she went to England,
married a Welshman and worked
for a newspaper. A couple of years
and one grandson later we learned
that she had become the token
American woman in a British
electronics firm-something to do
with marketing.
And then a few weeks ago this
neat farm equipment brochure
came m the mail along with a note
from Tracy. It seems Griffith
Elder and Company Limited of
Suffolk, England is a customer of
her Macro-Marketing Limited.
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Farm
Talk
Jerry Webb
Delaware Extension
Her company makes electronic
components and she had just
closed a sizeable order to Griffith
Elder who manufacture an at
tachment that fits on a combine
that allows a farmer to weigh his
crop right in the field
The device, known as Yield Per
Field, attaches to the discharge
auger of most combines. It looks
about like the usual auger spout
but it’s actually wired to an
electronic panel in the combine
cab. And according to the
manufacturer “Using the most up
to-date solid electronics the Yield
Per Field enables grain to be
accurately weighed as it passes
from the discharge auger of the
combine into a transporting
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vehicle”. Griffith Elder claims this
device helps cost conscious far
mers measure the true effects on
yields of modern farming prac
tices from crop treatments,
cultivations, fertilizers and
chemicals. The company also says
Yield Per Field helps overcome
the disadvantages and inac
curacies of trailer or barn based
units providing more information
than any other weighing system.
The incab micro-computer does its
own moisture tests and records the
weight of each tank full of grain.
Each load is automatically
recorded and totaled within the
control box. All the operator has to
do is turn it on. As grain is
unloaded from the combine the
gross weight is displayed and
recorded.
As I read the literature I couldn’t
help wondering if the British were
that far ahead of American
manufactures. I hadn’t seen any of
our farmers weighing directly
from the combine. And then a few
days later the machinery issue of
Successful Farming Magazine
landed on my desk. In it was a well
illustrated article titled “High
Tech Machinery Takes To The
Field”. And there among a dozen
or more state of the art electronic
gadgets was the American
counterpart. The Acu-Grain
Measuring System, a sixteen
hundred dollar device complete
with micro-computer that
measures the grain coming out of a
combine's discharge auger.
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Successful Farming says the
biggest challenge confronting
equipment designers these days is
finding accurate inexpensive
sensors to convert the properties of
crops and soils into electrical
signals. The Acu-Grain device uses
a potentiometer to measure the
deflection of a swinging plate in
stalled at the end of a combine
unloading auger. This converts
into bushel measurements and per
acre yield. The company claims
accuracy to one percent.
As indicated the gram flow
device is just one of many elec
tronic gadgets showing up on
modern farm equipment. The
story described a device that uses
sonar to maintain sprayer boom
heights. Another that controls
combine speed for maximum
harvesting efficiency and another
that provides precise depth control
for chisel plows.
And if you want something really
space age, researchers at the
Coastal Plains Experiment Station
in Tifton, Georgia, are developing
an irrigation controller. It’s based
on little transmitters buried in the
field. They radio messages to a
computer mounted on a center
pivot irrigation system. The
computer then controls the speed
of the center pivot and tailors
water application to individual
areas of the field. According to the
researchers the computer can then
take a number of variables into
account to determine an optimum
irrigation scheme for the entire
system.
Of course, tanners have had
electronic censors for corn plan
ters for a long time. I remember
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the Dickie John Company when it
was essentially a one man
operation demonstrating its seed
drop censors at a crop show in
Delaware almost twently years
ago. Since then that company has
gone big time and is marketing a
full range of electronic farm
devices.
My daughter’s farm equipment
customer also markets a Unfe of
stationary scales known in
England as vehicle weighing
platforms. The company’s Ton-Tel
Axle Weighers range from a
straight forward digital readout of
individual axle weights to one
where the vehicle is weighed
without stopping and a digital
readout together with a printed
tally of each axle weight is
provided. According to the com
pany this system sells for a
fraction of traditional vehicle
weighing machines. Griffith Elder
says the Ton-Tel is easily tran
sportable, inexpensive to maintain
and very accurate. The real secret
of the device rests with the
microprocessor and all of those
little electronic components that
my daughter’s company sells.
Well, selling electronic com
ponents to a British farm equip
ment company is a long way from
production agriculture as we know
it here ont he Delmarva peninsula.
But in her own way, Tracy is
making a contribution to
agriculture. In fact she may well
be working in an industry that will
have a significant impact on the
future of production agriculture.
I’m sure her electronic com
ponents will be showing up in all
sorts of agricultural applications
during the years ahead.
mill
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