It has been sixteen years since I first had the privilege of speaking at this very special gathering. Much has changed since that time. I remember having conversations with many people in our equipment industry who said such things as " no till will never take off," "farmers will continue plowing at least every other year," "anyone who tries that will go broke," or "those no till farmers are different." That is the wonderful thing about historical perspectives, in that we can see how short sighted we so often are.

I am going to talk to you about some historical trends for the purpose of discerning where we might be headed in the coming decade in agriculture. But I would be remiss not to take this opportunity to say what a high privilege it has been for me to get to know so many of you personally over the years. Much that went into the design of our equipment tame out of conversations with innovative farmers like you. It would often start with you speaking of a need that you had and asked if we could do something about it. Other times it would simply be you coming to us with a suggestion as to how you thought we could do things better.

I took some of you on a trip to Russia, Ukraine and the former East Germany to look at agricultural methods there and to participate in a seminar for about 300 German farmers. They wanted to know about no till or direct seeding. They felt their subsidies were going to be reduced, and they wanted to know how they could raise their crops more efficiently.

My message to you is rather simple, but I think sometimes not obvious to some people. The technology that will emerge and remain, will be that technology that will allow for economic advantage vis-a-vis other technologies. The reason that no till farming has become successful is because of its economic benefits primarily. Now there are many other advantages to be sure, but none of those account for the tremendous success no till has achieved. What are some possible places where we may see some economical benefits via technology in the coming years.

But before we go into some of these specifics, it is most helpful to take a quick history lesson on a number of items that help set the stage. From ancient times until about 1830, there was virtually no advance in mechanization in agriculture. Willard Cochrane's book The Development of American Agriculture presents this very clearly. In a short period of time we saw the development of the moldboard plow, the reaper, the tine harrow, the threshing machine, the double disc drill, and then first steam and then gasoline powered tractors. In a matter of just 50 years we saw incredible development. The 20th century has simply seen the refining of many of these technologies that emerged in a short period of time.

In 1830 it took between 250 and 300 man hours to produce 100 bushels of wheat. By 1890 that had decreased to 40 to 50 man hours. By 1930 it decreased to 15 to 20 man hours and by 1975 it had been reduced to 3 to 4 man hours. And today some of you are seeing that number as low as 2 man hours.

We have seen few ma or breakthroughs in tractor technology (apart from the improvement in quality) since the advent of the 4 wheel drive tractor in the early 1970's. We have seen tremendous breakthroughs in seeding technology and in sprayer technology, which I believe will continue to be a focus of incremental improvements, and in some cases, major breakthroughs. We have gotten to be very efficient on the farm relative to production for hour of labor. I believe the major improvements we are now going to see relate to the better management of inputs and the better use of information in making optimum decisions on the farm.

How might this materialize? I'll tackle sprayers first. Some of you are well aware of what the detectspray or Patchen type technology was designed for. For preplant spraying or after harvest spraying, it senses the green foliage and is able to distinguish weeds from non weeds. But a computer with enough capacity is able to distinguish a wild oat plant from a wheat plant. Once we can get the computing power on the band width to be very inexpensive, it will be possible to have sensors that distinguish what kinds of weeds are in a growing crop and then select the appropriate herbicide to target the weed. This technology could be used while combining to make a map of a field showing exactly where the weeds are, what kind of weeds are there and how many there are. This information would give tremendous value for the decision making process as to the nature of weed problems on every field. The information can then be put into a layer of a site specific management system to allow the spot application of herbicide. This application can be made at the time that is deemed most effective for the particular weed problem.

Many of you are simplifying your total system by moving to Roundup Ready crops. There will still be decisions needed as to when to spray and at which rate to spray, and thus measurement of weed density and types of weeds will be of great value even in Roundup Ready crops.

I became enchanted with the concept of Site Specific Fanning in 1983 when I first learned of it. That is one of the main reasons we got into the Soil Sampler Business in 1984 and why we tried over the next 12 years to develop variable rate controllers that would allow the precision application of inputs based on many different factors. Even though it seems to many of you that the software and controllers that have been developed are not at the place where you feel comfortable plunging in with complete abandon, the technology is much closer to being very affordable and very usable for all of you. And it is going to continue to improve with most companies providing relatively inexpensive upgrades to make life easier for you.

That seems like a pretty rosy scenario, and I will try to defend it. The Yield Monitor is at a place whereby many of you have already made this step into site specific farming. There are a number of yield monitors on the market that are working quite effectively. Combined with a good mapping program, it allows you to study your fields in a way never before possible. The task of this analysis is to find out exactly what is the cause of the yield variation, determine which causes are controllable and then do something to correct it.

The problem is that there are so many variables to consider. But just as some doctors are the very best in their area of specialty, so will some farmers become. What separates a great doctor from a good doctor is the ability to diagnose. In the coming years as more and more complete farms are turned into research plots, we are going to be able develop increasingly sophisticated algorithms that take into account scores of variables and allow us to truly micromanage our land.

I don't believe anyone in the industry is going to make any money on the mapping software, but there are so many talented companies working on improving the software that without question it is going to continue to be easier for every farmer to use. The companies who are working on the software by and large except to make a profit by selling controllers or equipment. There is no question that the software has gotten better every year and five years from now will be so widely adapted that we will wonder what farming was like without a yield map.

The variable rate controllers on both air drills and sprayers will be very affordable, very accurate and very easy to use. In 1988 we introduced our first variable rate controller which simply allowed a farmer to manually adjust rates on the go. Most of the people we worked with on this technology basically changed their fertilizer rates from hilltops, to sidehills to the draws. It was also used for changing soybean varieties on the go, to plant a nematode resistant variety where there was a problem.

Controllers will be running this year in conjunction with a GPS receiver and prescription map that will allow individual farmers to accurately vary up to five products at once. As I already mentioned, the diagnostic work is not sophisticated enough to have the quality of prescription that we would like to have, but each year the prescription will be better and better.

Most companies will have their controller designed so that you can use it on your combine, your drill, your sprayer and in your pickup truck for your soil sampling. Thus the investment is going to be affordable for everyone. I do believe that many of you will be doing your own soil sampling, because you know your land better than any fertilizer dealer you work with, no matter how good he is. Where you take your soil samples is so critical for making a good prescription. We have recently developed a soil sampler that allows a farmer to take a 0-6", 6-12", and 12-24" automatically. We had wrestled with this for 10 years as to how to do it.

There are many other areas I could touch on, tractors that will drive themselves, new genetically engineered seeds that will have the capabilities of disease resistance, a herbicide component among other things engineered right into the seed, but I wanted to stay with the products that I have personally worked with and I know are part of every one of your operations.

There will always be peaks and valleys in farming. Commodity prices will go up and down. We will have too much and too little rain. But there are some fundamentals that do not change. As a country's economy improves, they move up the food chain. As they do, the requirement for greater production can accelerate. I would like to close by examining what may take place in China in the next 10 years.

The average American (I am assuming the Canadian statistics would be virtually identical) eats 92 pounds of beef per year, the average Chinese 2 pounds. The average American eats 97 pounds of poultry per year, the average Chinese 7 pounds. The average American consumes 596 pounds of dairy products per year, the average Chinese 9 pounds.

In the last four years China. has seen a 56% expansion of its economy. Since 1980 China has seen its grain consumption for feed increase from 25 million metric tons to over 75 million metric tons. As they continue to move up the food chain, this number will only increase.

China will add 400 million people to its population *in the next 15 years before its population stops growing. Most of these people will live in homes on prime agricultural land and work in factories and drive on roads will take away additional acreage of farmland. As China's population grows and its people continue to move up the food chain, it is clear that they will be more and more dependent on imports for their food requirements.

I bring this up in closing to try to send a hopeful note to you about opportunities that lie ahead. The farmers that are the low cost producers, that manage their inputs and resources well, will not only survive, but thrive. Twenty years ago a few of you got together to form this very illustrious organization. Your vision was very accurate. I hope that you do not become satisfied with what you have accomplished, for we continue to need visionaries who are on a relentless quest to make farming a better and more economically satisfying profession for all of us.