Thursday June 15th

Last Thursday was day 2 of my experience in Alamance County.  I travels to McPherson Farms in Mebane.   It was a beautiful sunny hot day in the middle of a wheat field about 2 miles south of the Tanfer outlets were the city and country begin to meet.  Micheal McPhearson was cutting his last field of wheat for the season and I became his ride along.  After several laps around the field he said “you want to drive?”  So I did! I got to drive the biggest machine I’ve ever driven a John Deer Combine going a whopping 4 mph!  We were there about 3 hours and the majority of the time was spent in the tractor,  I got to hear lots of stories and background about McPherson farm as well.  Luckily the combine had ac!   
Later that afternoon the IFAL tour group stopped by for a quick visit on their way back to A&T to see the remaining of the wheat field being cut and also learn about soil samples and GPS tools used in agriculture.  This wheat field we had just cut has been mapped out into a grid and soil sampling had already been done.  These samples are then sent off the a lab to get analyzed, a report is then sent back to the farmer with a recommendation of what to apply to the field for the next crop, which was going to be soybeans.  The fertilizer truck from southern states was also at the field for us to see it and the GPS equipment inside.  The map and coding for this field could be input into the trucks computer and then the truck can spread the recommended rate of fertilizer / lime onto the field.  The cool thing about this new technology is that it can spread differ amounts in different areas automatically as the driver is going around the field!  Why would you spend money for this ?  This technology helps save money by not wasting extra fertilizer that may not be needed in all areas and also will increase yields.  Overall agriculture is really big in lots of technology currrently and it going to continue to grow!  What do you think will be next ?  

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