Illinois Farm Families Blog

A WatchUsGrow.org reader recently asked us to define "modern farm equipment," so we put the challenge to our bloggers to share what's new on their farms. This is the fourth part of that series.

This is our John Deere 2630 Display.  It’s a touch screen computer that holds maps and information about every field we farm.  The screen is moved and used in all of our equipment – the tractor that pulls our tillage equipment, the sprayer, the fertilizer buggy, and the tractors that pull the planters and the combine.  In each instance, the computer pulls up a homepage that shows a map of the fields, its boundaries and the location of any waterways and fence rows. 

On this day, Andy was making the first pass over the fields in the sprayer.   The large box at the top shows the field map. The acres already covered are blue. The white line is the tracking line.  We use auto-steer technology in all of our equipment, which means that with the push of a button the tractor, sprayer or combine – with GPS – will drive itself through the field. Notice the little green box right at the top that reads “2 in.” This indicates that the sprayer is just two inches off its target track.  

To the right of the field map is basic field data.  Below that are more numbers and symbols. Andy watches the green bar labeled 3D RTK.  The bar shows the strength of the RTK signal. RTK stands for real-time kinetic.  It uses satellites and a base station, which acts like a cell phone tower, to guide the equipment through fields with “sub-inch accuracy repeatability”.  Fancy terminology that means when Andy comes back to this field to cultivate, plant, fertilize and harvest, the equipment will follow the same paths within centimeters.  The same path can be repeated next year and the year after and the year after.   

The large bottom box tells Andy about the sprayer’s performance. The blue box surrounded in yellow shows how much product is left in the tank. Below that are the boom indicators. The boom is 100 feet wide and is divided into nine sections.  The blue arrows show that each section of the boom is on.

As the sprayer moves through the field, the computer is reading the map. If the sprayer crossed into an area already covered, the computer would shut off those sections of the boom.  When the sprayer encounters a waterway or fence row, the computer will turn boom sections on or off according to their location in the field and proximity to the area.

This technology is all about efficiency and better management of inputs.  We are reducing the amount of pesticides and fertilizers we add because we can be so precise with their application.

 Katie Pratt, Dixon

Fourat Janabi

Last year (those who’ve read the first edition of my book will know) I was anti-GMO. Why? Well, I thought I had the evidence on my ‘side’. But I can now honestly say it was because I had no idea what I was talking about. (Need further proof I’m an idiot?) My knowledge of the subject was inadequate; much of that knowledge I got from biased sources; and I’m sure there was some social conformity bias somewhere in there. (I’m sure there were many more biases; but honestly, listing my own biases is depressing. I’d rather much do it to others. That’s where the fun is at!) I’ve just released a 2nd edition of my book, Random Rationality, and that stance has been rectified.

In the meantime, I’ve delved into some of the literature and involved myself in a debate with friends on the nature of GMO on the safety issue. In doing that, I also reached out to Dr. Kevin Folta last week (his profile and academic history here, and check out his highly informative blog here) to confirm what I had learned, and find out why GMO’s are so misunderstood. Dr. Folta is a plant geneticist who works at the University of Florida. He’s a scientist who specializes in plant molecular biology and he was kind enough to share his thoughts with me on his area of expertise. Our exchange is below, you’ll find it brief, but extremely informative. (I’ve bolded some of his statements, those that I consider important.)

Fourat (Me) - What is the main thing (or is it general) about GMO’s that the public routinely confuse, or get wrong, when discussing and debating their impact?

Kevin Folta - There are so many misconceptions. The first is a fundamental one, that being that there is a debate at all. There is no debate among scientists in the discipline of plant molecular biology and crop science. Sure you can find someone here and there that disagrees, but there is no active debate in the literature driven by data. There are no hard reproducible data that indicate that transgenics are dangerous or more potentially dangerous than traditionally bred plant products.

If I had to nail down the most annoying misconceptions they would include that all scientists are just dupes of big multinational ag companies. Anyone that presents the consensus of scientific interpretation of the literature is immediately discounted as some corporate pawn. There’s nothing further from the truth. Most of us are hanging on by a thread in the days of dwinding federal, state and local support for research. The attacks on the credibility of good scientists hurts our chances to stay in academic labs and consider the cushy salaries and job security with the big ag corporate monstrosities we chose not to work for when we took jobs working for the public good. That’s pretty sad.

There is this allegation that we hide data or don’t publish work that is inconsistent with corporate desires. They need to get one thing straight. We’re not in the public sector because we are excited about listening to some corporate mandates. No thanks. We’re here for scientific freedom and to discover the exceptions to the rules and define new paradigms.

If my lab had a slight hint that GMOs were dangerous, I’d do my best to repeat that study, get a collaborator to repeat it independently, and then publish the data on the covers of Science, Nature and every news outlet that would take it. It would rock the world. Showing that 70-some percent of our food was poisonous? That would be a HUGE story — we’re talking Nobel Prize and free Amy’s Organic Pot Pies for life! Finding the rule breakers is what we’re in it for, but to break rules takes massive, rigorous data. So far, we don’t even have a good thread of evidence to start with.

The other huge misconception is that you can “prove something is safe”. Nothing can be proven safe. We can only test a hypothesis and show no evidence of harm. You can’t test all variables — nobody could. We can ask if there is a plausible mechanism for harm. If there is, we can test it. If there isn’t, we can do broad survey studies. A scientist can search for evidence of harm — a scientist can never prove something is safe.

Me - In what ways might GMO’s be most beneficial to our biosphere, and why might organic’s not be as good as to get us there?

Kevin Folta - There is no doubt that transgenic plants can be designed to limit pest damage with lower pesticide applications. That is well documented by the National Academies of Science, the best unbiased brains in our nation. Most data is for cotton and maize, and show substantial reductions (like 60%). Transgenic potatoes were amazingly successful in Romania until they joined the EU and had to go back to insecticide-intensive agriculture. Even glyphosate resistance traits, for all of their drawbacks in creating new resistant weeds, replace toxic alternatives.

Conventional farming takes fuel, labor, fungicides, pesticides, nematicides and many other inputs. Water and fertilizer are in there too. There are genes out there in the literature that address most of these issues. Scientists in academic labs discover these genes and define their function in lab-based GMOs that never are used outside the lab. The regulatory hoops are too difficult and expensive. Only the big companies can play in that space. Even little companies like Okanagan Specialty Fruits have to deal with the nonsense from those that hate the technology. Opposition to the science keeps the big guys in business, because nobody else can compete.

Who loses? The farmer, the consumer, the environment, the academic scientist and most of all the people around the world that don’t get enough food and nutrition. Who gains? Big ag.

Me - What do you consider the most important aspect of differentiating the good from the bad when it comes to considering science? i.e., what is the first thing you look for after reading a study

Kevin Folta - In the short-term I consider the system studied. Was it an animal system or cells in a dish? Most of the anti-GMO work is done on cells, especially cell lines that sound scary (like ovary, testis or fetal cells) but have little relevance to the complexities of animal systems. If done in animals, was the experiment properly controlled? Do the researchers SHOW the controls (like they conveniently omitted from Seralini’s 2012 rat-cancer work in Figure 3). Many studies that look good compare a GMO to an unrelated plant type. It is just not a valid comparison. Plants produce toxins and allergens, so you need to test the same exact plant without the added gene. If they do the rest of this properly then they need to run sufficient numbers and use good, common statistics. If they do all of this the work is publishable after peer review and should go into a decent journal, not some low-impact journal that publishes incomplete work or work that over steps the data.

A lot of junk escapes peer review. Reviewers and editors are overstressed and overburdened these days. We do the work as service for the field. Occasionally a paper slips by in a lower-impact journal. You’ll find most of the anti-GMO papers there.

Another important attribute of good work is demonstrating a mechanism. For instance, just don’t tell me that you found some evidence of GMO harming cells. Tell me how. How does it happen? If the phenomenon is real the mechanism should be dissected out in a year’s time. Omics tools are incredibly sensitive and we can detect small differences in gene expression and metabolic profiles. If GMO harm was real, the authors would define that mechanism, then collect their Nobel Prize and Amy’s Pot Pies.

The ultimate test is reproducibility. You’ll see that the best “evidence” for harm from GMOs comes from obscure journals, aging references that were published and heavily refuted by the scientific community (Puztasi, Seralini, etc), and work that was never repeated by outside labs. These are flash-in-the-pan works that never are expanded beyond the seminal study. The best sign of real science, good science, in an edgy area is that it grows. You see more scientists pile on, more research, more funding and bigger ideas. Models expand, mechanisms grow.

That just does not happen in the anti-GMO literature. The same authors publish a paper and then it goes on the anti-GMO websites and gains attention — while it dies in the scientific literature with no follow-up.

Me - Is there any split in the scientific community as to the safety of GMOs? If so, where does the split lay?

Kevin Folta - There are splits in the scientific community like there are splits for climate change and evolution. You have scientists like NIH Director Francis Collins that support creationist leanings. You have a small set of meteorologists and atmosphere scientists that claim that climate change is not real. There’s always room for a dissenting opinion out there, but they usually don’t have good evidence, just belief.

The same is true in biology and plant science. There are a few out there that let philosophy rule over evidence, but they are not at the edge of research. In the circles I work with there is consensus about the safety and efficacy of the technology. Even those that study organic and other low-input production systems support biotech as a way to do their jobs even better. That’s a strange relationship many don’t expect. You’ll not see anti-GMO writing from too many tenure-track scientists at leading universitites.

There is confusion on this. The Union of Concerned Scientists is frequently used as evidence that scientists are against this technology. When you read who they are and what they do, they are activists. They don’t do research or publish in the area of biotech. There are also others that claim to be experts or exploit some tenuous university affiliation to gain credibility. They should be looked at as deceitful, but they are accepted and believed with great credibility. People like Mercola, Smith and others sure sound like they know what they are talking about but they are not experts. Even Benbrook, a guy with a great career and a wonderful CV, goes off the deep end on the topic.

Readers need to apply all of the filters we discussed here today. What the data really say, who did the work, and if it was reproduced independently are the most important criteria in separating reality from fiction in the GMO topic. [END]

If you stand for scientific integrity, and going where the facts take you, then please share this Q&A so it may reach a wider audience. Almost every factoid from the Anti-GMO crowd has been thoroughly refuted, debunked, and repudiated by the scientific community. Millions of lives depend on the future of our food production, that means they depend on scientific experimentation and information untainted by ideology. The science is settled, and has been for some time. And as Dr. Folta above, and others, have elucidated, the intense opposition to the GMO technology has only intensified Monsanto’s grip upon the market. Facebook it, tweet it, re-blog it, or Google Plus it. Give my blog credit, don’t give it credit; I don’t really care. Good science matters more than pageviews (though pageviews are still nice), and more scientists like Dr. Folta should have their voices heard instead of the fear-based, fake-facts groups out there shouting from the rooftops who don’t know the first thing about genomics, evolution, or reality. (If you enjoyed this article, you may enjoy my last one on science in general, read it here.)

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Fourat Janabi is a writer, entrepreneur, photographer, explorer, and idiot. So, he likes to think he's important. He has worked in Baghdad while a war was raging, in Bahrain while the Arab Spring was in full swing, and in Saudi Arabia where women don't exist. He wrote a book called Random Rationality, which you can buy for Kindle. You can follow his thoughts on his blog of the same name.

Originally published on March 18, 2013 in at www.randomrationality.com. Reprinted with permission from the author.

A WatchUsGrow.org reader recently asked us to define "modern farm equipment," so we put the challenge to our bloggers to share what's new on their farms. This is the first part of that series.

The tractor in the photograph isn’t new.  It’s a 2008 with over 2000 hours on it.  You could say it’s the equivalent of a car with perhaps 50,000 miles on it.  Neither is the implement attached behind it.  The implement is a fertilizer applicator that’s over 12 years old and has been over thousands of acres.  What could be considered “new” is the technology that resides on each and connects the two together.

By having GPS- and yield monitor-equipped combines, we’re able to generate yield maps of the various fields.  Merging those maps together over the years results in a composite map that truly gives us a good indication of the yield potential of the different zones within a field.  Using that information, we can write “prescriptions,” for the application rates of various materials – usually fertilizer quantities or seeding populations.

It sounds complicated, but hang in there with me.  Once I’ve made prescription maps, I can load those into the computer in the pictured tractor.  The tractor is also GPS-equipped and therefore knows where it is within a field.  It “talks” to the fertilizer applicator tells it where to put on more fertilizer, carried in the tanks behind, or less fertilizer, based on the prescription I’ve written.

The benefits are huge, by far outweighing the costs (this equipment isn’t cheap).  The primary benefits are efficient use of the fertilizer by putting only as much as is needed only where it is needed.  This helps protect both the environment and my checkbook.  The autosteer function in the tractor keeps it going straight – much straighter than I would normally steer – and prevents skips and overlap.  The whole process is recorded and documented for subsequent download, allowing for accurate record-keeping – a must in today’s world.

A tractor still has four wheels and pulls various implements through the fields.  That much hasn’t changed since my grandfather’s farming days.  What has changed is the technology we use to be more efficient in every way, and in this case, the efficient use of fertilizer.

Chris Gould
Elburn, Illinois

Up until this January, for the past seven years, my family and I were vegetarians. After long, hard thought, discussion and exhaustive research we made the decision to fall off the wagon and get back on the meat. While we agreed on all the pros, my husband and I had different concerns about returning animal protein. The hardest thing for me to reconcile when deciding to readopt an omnivore lifestyle was that my food was once a living being.

So imagine my discomfort when I came face to snout with hundreds of little Wilburs that were being raised at Old Elm Farms.  A big part of why I began our vegetarian mission was because of animal welfare. I saw documentaries and read books and articles touting the inhumane practices associated with today’s modern meat industry. I knew that if I was going to readopt this lifestyle I could not blindly pick up my neatly packaged, ready to cook meats and never consider the chain of events that got it to my grocer’s meat case. I wanted to meet the animals that nourish my family and see the farm operations for myself. 

What surprised (and relieved) me most of all were the farmers themselves. I was spending a lot of time worrying about the poor little piggies in terrible conditions, but I never stopped to think that there are people out there devoting their life’s work to raising these animals.  While is was a bit sad to see all the pink pigs, with curious, playful personalities nudging at the sides of the pens,  it was reassuring to see Steve interact with them and seem to know them as individuals. The pigs I saw were clean, comfortable, alert and active. As social creatures, it was nice to see them together in large, open pens that provided plenty of room and access to food and water. It was clear that while a product, they were treated with care and respect.  Steve talked about how he monitors the facility conditions and makes necessary adjustments. He checks each pen daily and separates any pigs that seem to be struggling or ill. Antibiotics are given as a last resort and pigs are never sent to harvest with antibiotics in their system. His wife talked about being woken in the middle of the night when an alarm goes off indicating that there is a problem at the barn such as temperature or problems with the water supply. Farming is a 24-7, 365 day job. That is the nature of raising living beings and crops.

The bottom line is that whether they truly care about the comfort or mindset of the pigs or not, pork farming is a business, and like most businesses, it’s intent is to provide a product that consumers want to buy. John, Steve and his family want to produce the best quality of meat they can. I’m happy that they have adopted practices that they believe will do this and that just so happen to also be the right, humane things to do.

Five take-aways/surprises:

1.  Raising pigs is a very health consious/clean business. We were wore coveralls and boot covers when we toured the finishing barns. Not so much to protect us-but to protect the pigs from diseases and germs we might bring them! Less disease means less need to treat them with drugs or antibiotics.
2. And while it may seem unnatural or unfair to keep them inside-it’s actually better for them inside. When pigs live outside-they are exposed to the elements, which can alter how they eat and drink. Cold, shivering pigs, need more food. Hot pigs roll around in the mud, that they and their buddies also poop in, along with birds and rodents., which exposes them to diseases, which then have to be treated. Yuck! Indoors, everything is controlled for optimum piggy comfort-from temperature, food and water, ventilation, and best of all-their poop falls through slats in the floor.
3. The overall respect and care for the animals. Even if it’s just to produce a better product, I heard over and over, from the farmers, to the corporate reps, happier, healthier pigs make better meat.
4. That no drugs can be in their systems when sent to harvest. And the incredible amount of tracking and paperwork that is done to be accountable for this. Also that keeping them inside (see my #2) helps prevent the need for antibiotics in the first place!
5. It’s all somewhat green/eco-friendly! Using the manure to fertilize the crops and feeding them bakery crumbs and discards are two ways this process is participating in some serious recycling!

Becky Martinez, Glen Ellyn

Additionally, we've learned more about what plants need in order to grow well; exactly what combination of nutrients and at what times help them grow. Some of this has been done through simple selective breeding techniques (breeding the best plants together to get the best hybrids), some by production practices (spacing of rows, tillage methods), some by bigger equipment that gets done faster (bigger planters allow us to plant more acres in a single day, and corn that is planted earlier tends to yield more, as well as GPS allows us to plant straighter and not waste seed), and, yes, some of this improvement comes from "GMOs" (Genetically-Modified Organisms). There has been a lot of bad publicity and concerns about the process of genetically modifying corn, which is a very simple way that genes from other plants are added to the corn. Our family feels that this is such a safe process that we eat products from our corn and feed it to our cows, and we have made a very strong commitment to only do what's best for our cows. All of these practices on our farm allow us to take care of our land, do more with less in this tight economy, and create the best environment for the crops that we grow.

We are well past knee-high right now!  We are always at the mercy of Mother Nature though.  We finally got some much-needed rain on Monday, and although it came with too much wind, our corn fields were not affected. Some of our farmer friends were not as lucky as their corn was damaged by the wind. With any luck, everything will work out for all of us and Mother Nature will give a nice rain as our corn starts to pollinate and make ears in the next few weeks.

Carrie Pollard
Po-Cop Dairy
Rockford, Ill.

 

As an associate editor for Prairie Farmer magazine (which happens to be the oldest farm publication in the country, and at one time had its own building in Chicago), I travel the state looking for stories, and interviewing, photographing and writing about farmers and other assorted experts. I also blog regularly. The blog, as it turns out, is an extension of my monthly column, begun in 2001 and called My Generation. Through both venues, I try to offer up a little bit of life on a young family's farm, and our unique take on the agriculture issues of the day as young farmers. Things like the county fair, harvest, and what we're grateful for.

Our farm is nestled in the hills and hollows of western Illinois, near the Spoon River. Indeed, Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology was based upon towns just down the road from us. Here on our farm, we raise corn, soybeans, hay and cattle. We grow corn and beans on the better soil, and make use of those erosion-prone hills to grow beef cattle, instead of row crops. It's just one of many conservation practices we employ to make the best use of – and take the best care of – our God-given soils.

We are a family operation, covering about 3,500 acres. We farm with my husband's parents, and live just across the field from them…which is to say, my kids make many trips back and forth to Grandma's in the course of the day. I have come to believe, if there is any blessing at all in production agriculture, it is the ability to bring multiple generations together with a common goal, working together in community.

We have three little farm kids, ages 8, 6 and 3. Each of the older two are raising their own bottle calves. These are calves that wound up without a mother; one was rejected by the mama cow (rare, but it happens sometimes) and the other was a twin whose mama didn't have enough milk for two calves. So each day, the kids give their calves a bottle, both morning and night. They also have fun with them. I'll look out and see them snuggling with them, or putting a halter on them and running around the yard. This is the second year they've had bottle calves. In the fall, we will begin "backgrounding" the calves – feeding them gluten and other ethanol byproducts to prepare them for sale into a feeder market. That sale will take place in January. As much as the kids love their calves, they know well they are food animals. When the calves are sold, we will deduct feed expenses and the kids will add the balance to their savings accounts.

And although I grew up on a farm and know all this to be very familiar and very comfortable, I know that's not the case for everyone. I can well imagine that not knowing how my food was raised would make me uncomfortable. Sort of like having a pediatrician make a decision about my children's health without my knowledge.

So with that in mind, a group of Illinois farmers have started this blog. We hope to share more about life on our farms, and why safe, abundant and healthy food is important to us, too. There will be a variety of us posting on here in the coming weeks. I hope you'll stop back in and get to know us. Ask questions as you think of them. And please don't hesitate to contact me directly. As a farmer and as a farm writer, I'd love to hear from you.

In fact, we'd love to bring you out to our farms. If you think you'd be interested in being part of a select group of "Field Moms", chosen to tour a variety of Illinois farms, please considering applying here. We'd love to open our farms and our homes, and sit around the dinner table and have a real conversation about real food.

In the meantime, let's keep talking.

Holly Spangler
Marietta, Illinois