From: samodena@csemail.cropsci.ncsu.edu (S. A. Modena)
Subject: INFORMATION-BASED FARMING
Summary: the greater world begins at my property line
Keywords: telecommunications competitive bar code scanners farming
Organization: Crop Science Dept., NCSU, Raleigh, NC 27695-7620
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 08:52:24 GMT

If you have not read Richardo Salvador's posting in technology's effect
on farming society, I suggest you do so *first*.  They are cogent arguments
that frame what follows.

The following is a a glimse of Crop Science departmental seminar that I
delievered about one year ago.  It certainly was different from the usual
fare.  It's a long one, so don't fall asleep at the wheel.

INFORMATION-BASED FARMING

There are financial firms which do world wide trading in agricultural
commodities.  They are active on the Chicago Exchange during the North
American Day.  Then they close their "position" books and ship them
by high speed satelite link to Asian/Japanese Exchanges for continued
trading.  When the Pacific Exchange winds down, the "position" books are
moved again by satelite to London for a day's work....and of course,
thereafter, to New York in a never ending circuit.  Many companies have
offices or proxies on all of the important world commodity/stock
exchanges.

Recently, some dummy in the U.S. Government tried to get a bill passed
that would require all U.S.-based business interests to submit their
crypto-schemes to the National Security Agency, which is obstensively
charged with protecting the United States' Internal Security.  Did I mention
to you that nobody ships billion-dollar position books without first
"protecting them" to the hilt with
the very best unbreakable encoders that millions of dollars can buy?
NSA's *primary* job is to monitor ALL telecommunications traffic
originating in and arriving to the USA: telephone, telegraph, radio,
satelite, magnetic tape...and more that I can't think of....yes, they
use Crays and their sucessors for the kind of signal intercept I'm
talking about.  (Don't some people want the CIA to concentrate on
INDUSTRIAL spying now that the Cold War is *over*?)

A North Carolina farmer welcomes his contracted Agricultural Consultant's
arrival and they step into his muddy, semi-flooded field together.
"What's going to happen to these beans if it rains more before it drains?"
At least this farmer is paying cash to get an "expert's help": at least
he thinks he can't afford NOT to hire some smart advice.  The ag consultant
is able to look at this farmer's fields *in the context* of all of his
other clients' fields, maybe as many as another 1000 fields in a two
county area that he services.  What he has to say is grounded on that
broader view.

Of course his neighbor down the road can only "afford" to visit the
County Agent.  Well, in some NC Counties that service is excellent.  But
there are some poor counties with just one agent and one homemaker.  But
soybeans might still be the #1 acerage...on the other hand there is a
switch to cotton and since it's all so new, ag consultants, county
agents or NCSU scientists are in high demand to get a handle on the
new insects and strategies it's going to take to get a cotton crop in.
There's no turning back, the whole infrastrutcure for the return of cotton
is in place!  There's big bucks riding on it.  One ag consultant from
South Carolina is saying "monoculture beans plus five years of poor
weather" has positioned *at least* 30% of the Carolina Farm Families
to go under with one more bad weather year this or next year."

And of course many producers just don't go near anybody......very, very
independent-minded folks....besides, they have been burned plenty before!

Anyway, our farmer and ag consultant keep getting interrupted.  The consultant
drives a jeep: 1 CB radio plus two cellular phones, one of which is connected
to toot the Jeep's horn when it rings!  Plus this consultant has two
hand-held VHF radios hanging off his belt that he uses through two
repeater services to keep in contact with his scouting supervisors.
Did I mention his laptop 386 DOS computer?

As the consultant answers the phone in the jeep, a French SPOT satellite is
being steered to look down at that county to get an accessment of flooding
and the status of the soybean fields in eastern North Carolina.  Doing
10 meter x 10 meter imaging into advanced diode array detectors the
data will stream to Earth and be sent to a "service" agency that sells
crop forecasting information to anyone who has the MONEY to buy the 
information.  Of course, the Russians are pleased to offer you a picture
of our consultant's license plate, if you so desire, because someone
has got to come up with the dollars to keep the FORMER spy system operating.
This is peace time, Folks.  Market Economy!  (If you can't picture
what I'm talking about, just go see Patriot Games...but remember, our
LandSat system is 20 years out of date and produces very expensive and
nearly spectrally worthless data since it was an after thought to
the world wide manned space craft show-off system.  Besides, who'd
want it: it almost was disbanded because the main-purpose shuttle
system went off line while we searched our souls over greedy short-
cutting at Thiokol ).

In Carter's Presidency, a foreign policy decision changed the price
of soybeans and corn at the whisk of a pen.  The vast infrastructure
that moves and finances US grain export became 70% redundant in
the space of 1 year.

Today, a minimum of 1/3 of US agricultural production capacity has
"foreign exposure."  What does that mean?  That means we must sell
one-third of our ag products abroad or go under.  Who sets the price point? 
Who discovers the fair market value?   Traders/Speculators on the Chicago
Exchange? Yes, but who is INVESTING the money in soybean futures?
Certainly some Americans, but just as certainly Mexicans, Brits,
Japanese and many, many others.  How? Why? Because high speed
International Telecommunications has thoroughly broken any meaningful
or possible US Federal or...for that matter...any nation's ability to
artificially regulate my financial opportunities based on yesterday's
concepts of Central Bank/Governmental legal fictions.

Now there are people in the Research Triangle Park, NC with the needed
excess dollars, and with I-40 fully extended from Greensboro to the
Atlantic Ocean, it is possible to get out of NC's murder capital
(Durham) and buy what was farm land and put their kids in a rural
environment school for the price of driving one hour each way to work
each day.  Like their predecessors in Boston/Route 128 Electronics
Beltway who invaded New Hampshire, farm land and property values are
moving into the stratosphere.  Without a doubt, living on a "farm" is
a luxurous and status-connoted way of life....and if any traditional
farmer thinks he is going to be allowed to live a "rich man's"
style of life at public subsidy, he's sadly mistaken....

So what's to be done: whatever the idyllic, nostalgic appeals our "farmers"
make to the American Public, there are people in Tokyo, Bombay, 
Mexico City, Kuwait, etc. that just couldn't care less.  Of course,
if their return on investment can be satisfied, they are perfectly
willing to let Wilson County in North Carolina structure itself culturally
anyway it pleases!  But, if that SPOT satellite reveals that the soybeans
are becoming irreversibly cholorotic and the grade (if there is anything
worth harvesting) is going to go through the floor, then the world
community of investors is going to shift it's financial support out
of Wilson County and the people of Wilson County "can eat cake" ...
after they move to Durham to find work at MacDanald's.

Now, let's ask a few basic questions about our "example" farmer.  Does
he think that the 25% illiteracy rate that pervades NORTH CAROLINA has
any influence on his financial position or world view?  How many
cellular phones or walkie-talkies does he strap to his belt everyday?
Does he have a CompuServe account--or Doane's Information Service?
That county agent: does he know how to use the world-wide telecomminucations
system that is available through the Method Road UNIX cluster that is
known as "CES.NCSU.EDU" when his phone rings and our "farmer" says:
I got a sick herd of cows and I'd like get anything the EPA or
FDA has on their databases for the ####### insecticide I spilled yesterday
near my well casing."  Does our farmer contribute money so his cousin's
son/daughter can finish HARVARD LAW SCHOOL with the intention of coming
back to Wilson County and setting the legal services it takes to
rake over all the scam artists in and out of the government that are
bleeding away their milk allotment checks?  Can this "farmer" call
his investment broker at 3 A.M. to get some tactical advice on 
reapportioning his securities and futures portfolio because his
satellite surveillance service in Paris just called to say that the
soybeans crop in the midWest is going to be 1) "early" and 2) "record-
breaking."

Does our "farmer" talk to anybody outside of his church circle?

Well........?  

Well, some North Carolina producers are so forward-looking that it is
exciting!  And the rest are going to have to move to Durham......
There are, I believe, a rather aggressive core of $200,00-to-$10,000,000
dollar operators who know and use everything worth making a
"modern" farm operation GO!  And then, there's all of those folks who
have trouble reading the newspaper.

My job and goal is to serve the needs of the North Carolina agricultural
producers.  What I do is to try to understand the problems, needs and 
ambitions of North Carolina's plant-based agricultural producers and
ALSO the way that the ENTIRE world impinges on their economic activities
and efforts for a ag-based livelihood.

My specialty is software development for data and information management
in operational decision making.  I believe that economical access to
and exploitation of telecommunications is critical. My specialty is
wacking weeds the smart way: IPM.

My door is open.  No one needs an appopintment to visit me or to
call me.  When I receive an invitation to go to Grifton to talk about
bar-code scanners and relational databases, I jump in the departmental car
and head out to give my roadshow.

Some people encourage me to keep up the creative effort and some people
think I'm just a damned, smarty-ass Yankee.  But my door is open to
every single person who willing to teach me what I should know in
order to use my creativity more effectively down on whatever the farm will
be in 2002.

My brother and I once went into stock car racing.  There were 16 races
in a season.  We could not get the
car build sooner than the 4th race of the season.  Because the brakes
and the suspension were set up wrong, my brother (a real driver) could
only spin the car out and finish last.  I went to the library and read
all of the car engineering books and got a few useful concepts due to
my dropped-out-of-college chemistry education (then).  Like I said, 
my brother was a great driver: fearless and fair.  He won three of the
remaining 12 races due to the grace of 400 horse-power and our ability
to keep the tech inspector thinking that all of our rules-stretching
was in the engine compartment.  We did it with (almost) all off-the-
shelf affordable technology and a large salvage yard at our disposal.
We NEVER stopped experimenting.  Experimented up to Class Championship
after that year.

What we did at our local NASCAR track, I can *help* do in North
Carolina's agriculture: become competitive at an affordable price.
But you have to want to compete.

Steve
DISCLAIMER: If you can't tell that I speak ONLY for myself......
and, of course, most of my mouthings are self-acknowledged heresy.
---
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
|     In person:  Steve Modena     AB4EL                           |
|     On phone:   (919) 515-5328                                   |
|     At e-mail:  nmodena@unity.ncsu.edu                           | 
|                 samodena@csemail.cropsci.ncsu.edu                |
|                 [ either email address is read each day ]        |
|     By snail:   Crop Sci Dept, Box 7620, NCSU, Raleigh, NC 27695 |
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         Lighten UP!  It's just a computer doing that to you.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
         




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