Agriculture companies filed inside of the QCCA Expo Center Sunday, January 19, 2014 for the 23rd annual QC farm show.
The traditional tractor is anything but today. Analytical engineering is responsible for giving today’s farmer an advantage and an opportunity; to make farms bigger and better.
"Today we probably have more innovative technologies in agriculture than any other industry," said Matt Wolfe, a sales rep for Ag Leader.
For many farmers that attend the annual event, it’s change that they have to adapt to.
“Farming has changed quite a bit since I began back in 1962,” said Fred Koch, a now retired farmer.
Fred and his wife Anita both grew up on farms. Anita recalls when her father moved to Illinois to work on a farm.
“He came up to Northern Illinois to husk corn by hand,” Anita said.
Today, corn husking is obsolete in American farming. In fact, farmers in the 21st century face an ever changing industry. GPS, auto steer, and computers all play a vital role for the modern day farmer.
“Today I work for a farmer and we drive a tractor where we just turn it on and it drives itself,” said Fred Koch.
Something he says is unimaginable.
Then there are those like Alan Johnston.
“When I started farming we had one tractor that had a cab on it, and that was a luxury,” Johnston said.
He’s been operating his family farm for 30 years and says it has grown substantially. He credits technological developments.
“We farm about 4,000 acres today with four men. If we didn’t have the technology in our equipment, it would take an awfully big crew and a lot of machinery,” Johnston said.
But the agriculture industry doesn’t show signs of slowing down anytime soon. The United States crop production has progressively increased for decades, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. And as new technological advances are made, more crops are produced.