During the winter we built a toolbar for sidedressing ammonia at about 15% of the cost of a new machine and with several technology twists. We use Yetter coulters that allow running very fast (12mph was the speed here) and place them only on one side of each row. That saves weight, draft, and reduces […]

That water flows downslope and that its overland flow on cropland is manageable by changing the slope seems a complete enough truism that not much more can be said on the matter. Terraces and ditches as old and as widespread as farming itself testify to the obviousness of the fact. Yet in farming, […]

Actually those aren’t tiny trees you’re seeing, but horsetail (Equisitum) that has become more common since the dependence on glyphosate, a previous year with excessively wet weather, and a lot of tillage to “correct” erosion gullies.  Horsetail is a difficult to control weed with prolific rhizomes that can be spread with tillage, its silica coat […]

That water flows downslope and that its overland flow on cropland is manageable by changing the slope seems a complete enough truism that not much more can be said on the matter. Terraces and ditches as old and as widespread as farming itself testify to the obviousness of the fact. Yet in farming, […]

There have been some poignant historical moments when farmers have inflicted great harm upon themselves, and the standoff with spot fertilizers prices have brought us to such a precipice.  The enormous runup in commodities during 2008 left dealers holding fertilizer supplies that are in some cases far above current world prices and in all cases far above what […]

The traditional safety net in the farm program involves price floors and target prices.  In addition to free market issues, a policy downside is that the goal of reducing farm income volatility isn’t met during simultaneous increases in costs and output prices.  Crop insurance has remained as the true safety net in farming. 
The biggest improvement […]

The traditional safety net in the farm program involves price floors and target prices.  In addition to free market issues, a policy downside is that the goal of reducing farm income volatility isn’t met during simultaneous increases in costs and output prices.  Crop insurance has remained as the true safety net in farming. 
The biggest improvement […]

While any girl in ruby slippers can tell you there’s no place like home, every farmer now and again daydreams about what farming is like in exotic and far away places, and no place has become more exotic or further away than Zimbabwe, which has been experiencing a boom in ecosystem services. Ecosystem services […]

During the winter we built a toolbar for sidedressing ammonia at about 15% of the cost of a new machine and with several technology twists. We use Yetter coulters that allow running very fast (12mph was the speed here) and place them only on one side of each row. That saves weight, draft, and reduces […]

This is an autonomous tractor in Iran that uses only a tilt sensor (no GPS) in order to drive along contours. It does very well. It was built by my friend Abdolabbas Jafari, Shiraz University, Iran, and shown at the 2006 ATOE conference in Kyoto, Japan.

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Last weekend I was playing on Cornell’s entry to the MBA Rugby World Championships, hosted annually by Duke for about 25 of the world’s most prestigious graduate business programs with games played in Durham, North Carolina and Danville, Virginia. While we were arriving at the pitch, the sky ripped open and unleashed a blinding […]

It was dark tonight, flying into Ithaca; getting out of the car in the unlit driveway that passes narrowly, between hedges, past our house where it widens and separates the neighbors’ back yards from Fall Creek, I didn’t know where I was by what I could see as much as by the sound of the […]