Milford chronicle., 1960-09-09
A Labor Day Dream
BY w. T. McALLISTER
Farm Management Specialist
University Of Delaware


While others were endangering
their lives on the highways this
past holiday weekend, / was doing
a little day dreaming about the
new things ITO come in farming in
the next quarter century. While
these are dreams, / feel there is a
good chance that many of them will
come true. For example, let's take
one of the most difficult farm jobs
to mechanic, milking the dairy
COW, and see what we might do to
take the physical work out of this
job.
BY just using some of the scien-
tific facts we already know and
simply applying them to dairying,
1t Is technically possible to design
a series of electrpnic and mechan-
ical devices to select the individual
COW, guide her into the milking
stall, wash the udder and dry 1t
with blast of warm air, release a
feed mixture accurately measured
according to milk production, and
record the amount of milk produc-
ed.
In this dream, / could see that
each imitation on the milking ma
chine was controlled independently
and each teat-cut stopped pulsat-
ing when the milk flow stopped.
When all four stopped bell sound
ed and the machine was removed
After all cows had been MIXED the
entire system was automatically
flushed and sterilized.
About the only job left for the
dairyman was to put the milking
machine on the cows. While the
lack OF uniformity among cows
largely defies mechanizing this
Job, there Is plenty of room for
designing milking machines which
are easily used, fitted on cows. and
easily cleaned.
When / awoke from this dream,
/ thought the hot sun must be af
fectiong me, so / moved inside and
switched on the television. AS
watched the ball game, / began to
wonder why the farmer wasn't
putting the television to work for
him. From central control tow
.er, one man could look over sew
eral operations on different parts
of the farm. Television monitoring
systems and electronic guidance
devices are used in industry and in
guiding planes, rockets and other
weapons of war. Is 1t too imprac-
tical to think they couldn't guide
tractors around fields?
AS / watched these imaginary
~ tl,a
fields began to wonder If it would
be possible to cut the number of
times that the tractor must cover
the same land. Flowing, seed-bed
preparation, and planting, can all
be done at once, and by using some
thing like beta radiation, weed
seeds could be killed too so culti-
vation would be unnecessary. Once
over the planting and again for
harvest would be a big improve
ment over the five-seven times that
a farmer usually covers an acre in
planting and harvesting a crop.
Well, these wild ideas aren't
really dreams. They are things
that could actually be done IL we
would apply to agriculture the sci
entific processes that are in use in
industry. There are hundreds of
other examples in agriculture that
could be cited that we read and
hear about, such as the transplant
ing of the Ova from prize dairy
cows, the field pelleting of hay. the
use of radiation to produce muta-
ton Of plants, the use. of systemic
chemicals to control insects and
the Harvesting of the power of the
sun to supply cheap energy and
speed plant growth.
Sometimes these fantastic new
ideas scare us farm boys, we won
der what will happen to the far
mer in this new industrial revom-
tion that is taking farming by
storm. AS we replace men with
machines, the remaining men will
become more important. The en-
phasis will be on brain-power ra-
ther than man-power. More empha-
sis will be on the management of
the factors of production and ex-
acting control over them. Farmers
will hire the services of these
highly specialized. expensive ma
chimes. Farms will tend to be large
and specialized. Our present ideas
about farm ownership, credit, in
vestments, taxes, and supply-price
relationship will need to change
with changing technology. think
1t Is safe to say that while the
past 25 years revolutionized agri-
culture more than the previous four
hundred years, the next 25 years
will far surpass anything we have
yet seen.