Australian grain growers look to technologies of farming and cropping systems to maximise their productivity. Zero tillage cropping, variable rate inputs, soil moisture probes, and precision planting are a few practices that farmers may adopt to support their farming practices. To implement cropping technologies, and to achieve the outcomes promoted by the technological innovators, farmers need an alignment of machinery, mobile connectivity, knowledge, skills, farm services support, finance and people on the farm to make it happen. This paper shifts the focus beyond binary and hierarchical notions of humans versus technology and human versus nature, to insider research into the farming practice, alliances, and neighbourly relations to specifically examine how agency makes farmers enact a precision farming technique called controlled traffic farming. Using an actor network approach this paper examines what controlled traffic farming is, and why it makes farmers follow the ‘invisible road rules’ in the field using an actor network approach.
During harvest, as an observer-researcher sitting in the tractor with my camera, notebook and pencil perched on my knees, sharing the confined cabin space with a farm worker, I saw a precision farming system [a system designed to maximise crop yields] from a very different perspective to that of the designers of such technologies. Leo knew he was being watched. I asked him what he was doing every time he touched a new switch, button, screen or control stick. But then I realised that he was not abiding by the rules of a controlled traffic farming system. I didn’t say anything. And this was when I had my ‘uh-huh’ moment and I could see that no matter how prescribed a technological farming system was, there was room for human error and interpretation. Even with a prescriptive and precise cropping system, together with his employer’s instructions and his above average hourly pay rate because farm labour was scarce, technology and science fell short of accounting for everything. The farm worker was not abiding by the road rules in the field set down by the system.
This paper is an analysis of farmer agency in the context of a precision cropping system entitled ‘controlled traffic farming’. The paper uses ethnography to look beyond what industry expects from this kind of technologically-driven farming practice, and to offer a more nuanced understanding of how agricultural science and technological systems plays out on farms. With experience as a controlled traffic farming project consultant, as well as my thinking as a landholder and grain grower, I position myself as an insider researcher concerned with the roles and rituals of social interaction on the farm and the practices by which farmers maintain their legitimacy. As a place-based ethnography located in the vast farming spaces of Australia, my research also encompasses the hierarchies, positions, and ways of thinking that comes with geographical location, rurality and the social isolation within the farming landscape. In what follows, we take up each of these dynamics in turn.
This paper aims to draw attention to farmers’ relations with non-humans, like machines, technology and farming methods. Relational ties within the network are thoroughly explored. This approach is related to material-semiotics, but at the same time it remains faithful to ethnomethodology in its detailed descriptions of common farming activities, practices, sequences and the habits that makes Australian farming. Actor network theory offers a powerful approach for capturing the ways in which ‘agency’ is produced via a heterogeneous network of interactions of human and non-human actors such as knowledge, technology, money, farmland, animals, plants, and so forth, and how these interactions depend on both the quality of the actors and the networked context of interactions between actors (Noe and Alroe 2003). This analytical approach demonstrates that agency can be interpreted as a collective property of humans, non-humans and objects and seeks to present the relationships between things that form an assemblage of agents.
As a heterogeneous product, agency generates effects. The sociology of translation located within actor network theory is used to show where these effects are found. This study works with two farmers from commercial farming businesses to demonstrate that farmer agency exists to exercise control within the agri-food structures, but it requires specialized non-human relations and associations to generate such effects. This paper explores these concepts by interrogating farmer agency in the context of machination and technology for crop production. This research is place-specific in the dryland agricultural zone of the Wimmera Southern Mallee region of Victoria, Australia, however it contributes to a global understanding of how agricultural science and technology is adopted and held in place by agency.
What The… CTF
Controlled traffic farming (CTF) offers insight into how farmers organise their farm practices. Farmers who follow CTF have adopted the concept, by accepting the benefits and making the system fit their farm. This farming system is advocated by a specific group of scientists as well as CTF farm leaders. The Australian Controlled Traffic Farming Association has over 700 members. Some peer-reviewed CTF research includes the whole farm benefits of CTF (Kingwell and Fuchsbichler 2011), soil emissions of nitrous oxide and methane (Tullberg et al 2018), modelling to estimate environmental impacts (Gasso et al 2014), and estimating annual machinery costs for CTF (Bochtis et al 2010). This work aims to contribute to the CTF literature about how CTF science is adopted and held in place by agency constructed as a relational collective. Critical ethnography moves beyond the traditional agronomic perspectives that CTF scientists and farmers offer. This paper can support the innovators and designers of farm machinery and technology by showing that machines, technologies, humans, skills and land are a collective that work together to enact controlled traffic farming.
Controlled traffic farming is a science that enables farmers to potentially be more productive by following the same wheel tracks in fields for every operation. The objective of a CTF system is to minimize soil compaction and achieve all the benefits advocated by CTF scientists such as improved water infiltration, mitigation of randomized machinery passes which cause soil compaction, improved plant performance in non-trafficked zones, hardened designated wheel tracks for faster field access after rain, and reduced fuel consumption. CTF is a prescription based precision farming system. It relies on global positioning systems (GPS) for real time kinematics (RTK) auto-steering guidance. Axels on the prime mover, whether it be a tractor, combine or a self-propelled sprayer, share the same wheel base width. These are aligned with implements in a ratio to ensure that the machines travel on exactly the same tracks in the paddock for every field operation, indefinitely (see Figure 1). The GPS and the auto-steering software ensure that the implement, like the seeder or the boom-spray, are not overlapping nor underlapping. Machinery accuracy can be as precise as one centimetre.
In an increasingly automated world one may assume that farmers wholly submit and give over to their fully-automated machines and technology for their decision-making. Yet farmers do not give up control. When they apply a controlled traffic farming system they are actively re-shaping a technical system. Soil type, topography, micro-organisms, and knowledge are also part of the system. This work sets out to challenge that farming is more than just a farmer’s set of decisions. This work argues that agency is not purely human. Agency is defined as a property of humans and non-humans using an actor network approach to explain how technology and science re-articulate the agential properties of farmers, their machines and the other agents that enter the farming complex.
Controlled traffic farming has been used by grain growers in Australia over the last twenty years. However, not every farmer who grows grain has adopted this system. This article offers two case studies, one farmer who has adopted CTF and another farmer who has not. Empirical evidence is provided to show how agency is distributed as a collective and performed by farmers, machines and other entities. The paper marshals the methodological approach to analyse the social, cultural, material, natural, human and technological elements at play in these case studies. This analysis contributes to a broader understanding of the complex relationship between farmers, technology and their land.
Figure 1. This photograph captures the straight lines and mathematics of CTF ratios. The image shows the wheel tracks and the 12m swath of canola crop remaining to be harvested, parallel to the operating combine harvester. (Photograph taken by the author).
CASE STUDIES: AGENCY IN THE AUSTRALIAN GRAINS SECTOR
This is a story of two farmers who grow grain. These farmers are neighbours who reside in a small rural farming district in the Wimmera Southern Mallee region of Victoria. This rural district, marked only with a hall and a tennis court, is called Telangatuk East. They are aged in their mid-40’s and were once class mates at the local primary and secondary schools prior to their senior schooling years. They are both volunteer members of the district Country Fire Authority and occasionally have a hit of tennis in the local social tennis competition.
Tony, our adopter of controlled traffic farming, went to boarding school in Hamilton, a regional hub in the western district of Victoria, about 100 kilometres south of his farm. He did not complete his final year of high school, leaving early to undertake a farm apprenticeship in the Mallee in the mid-1990’s. The Mallee is a region, spanning the north western region of Victoria and South Australia that receives low annual rainfall, and features sandy soils and sparse low vegetation. It was on this 2400 hectare farm where he first experienced continuous dryland cropping. After three years he continued his education with a diploma in agriculture, and then he worked extensively in southern Queensland and the Riverina region of New South Wales laser-levelling greenfield zones for irrigation development. Wayne, our non-adopter, completed his secondary education at the state high school in Horsham, the regional centre of the Wimmera, before he commenced a farm apprenticeship in the western district. Wayne worked on a much smaller, intensive mixed enterprise farm, focussing on sheep production, pastures and high rainfall opportunity cropping.
Both Tony and Wayne returned to Telangatuk East around the same time to farm full-time with their parents, but they needed to supplement their farming income with some off-farm work. Over time Tony has undertaken contract windrowing and harvesting, owned a precision-planter and grader board machinery hire business, and managed a consultancy project for a multi-national Malaysian corporation for the re-development of economic land concessions in Cambodia. Wayne continues to operate a canola windrowing contracting business. Both of these farmers have married. They each have two children; all of whom attend the local community school.
Tony continuously crops 1350 hectares, leasing land from another neighbour and his parents as part of the farm succession plan. Tony has implemented a full controlled traffic farming (CTF) system. Tony has a farm worker called Leo who helps him at sowing and harvest times. Wayne crops 630 hectares and has over 2000 cross-bred sheep on 450 hectares. He owns half of the land, and all of the machinery, with a profit-sharing arrangement with his parents as part of their farm succession. Wayne does not practice CTF as he runs sheep as part of his mixed farming enterprise, but he is interested in the system. The fieldwork in this study examines these neighbours by tracing their actions to understand the agents in their actor networks and how they enrol machinery and technology in their farming practices to find meaning in what they do and do not control.
These farms are located in the water catchment of the Glenelg River; a border dividing political representation in the Federal Parliament and a natural division between high and medium rainfall zones in western Victoria. The landscape is diverse with the Black Range State Park to the east (see Figure 3 for aerial image of the landscape). Remnant paddock vegetation, shallow top soil, creeks, and native pest populations of kangaroos, cockatoos and emus are dominant landscape features. The mean annual rainfall is 550mm. The vegetation density, the undulation and non-arable zones are symbolic of the traditional grazing enterprises. Tony is the only farmer in the district who does not have stock on his property as a risk management strategy and for income diversification. The district population is 50 people. More broadly, the Wimmera Southern Mallee (WSM) region covers just under 34,000 square kilometres with a total population of 47,000 (WSM Regional Partnerships 2017). The agricultural sector accounts for 25% of jobs in the WSM and 47% of all businesses (WSM Regional Partnership 2017). The region has a projected estimated growth rate for the period of 2016–2031 of -0.6% (Wimmera Southern Mallee Regional Growth Plan 2014). Mobile telephone service and mobile data is limited. This locality is marked as a black spot in the detailed local government boundary map of Horsham Rural City Council (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Map of the Wimmera Southern Mallee region in Victoria (map sourced according to copyright laws from Regional Development Victoria)
This fieldwork took place over four months leading up to and throughout the harvest period of summer 2018 – 2019. The data for this project includes informal conversations, hand written notes capturing farmers’ sequences of action. These notes included what they touched or modified, meaning whether they reacted to a situation or if were proactive in what they did, as well as who they talked to and the topic of conversation. Digital images were taken to support the findings. In total 210 images from three different cameras, a DLSR, iPhone and a drone, to support the research methodology by capturing what took place inside machinery cabins, in the field, and from aerial views. The observations focussed on how the participants operated their harvesting machinery and technologies. To protect their identities, Tony, Leo, Walkers Machinery, Bert and Jake are pseudonyms. The results are succinct stories describing farming practices, decision-making and discussion of how CTF influences human agency. Actor network theory is used to examine agents’ associations and to explain from an insider perspective how agency is distributed as a collective and performed by farmers, machines and other entities.
The CTF Farmer
About twenty years ago Tony commenced implementing a CTF system. Back then he was still farming with his father and his younger brother. Tony saw that compacted soils, which was caused by decades of grazing, hay production and cropping, were limiting their crop production. After a bus tour with a grower group to outback New South Wales to meet a CTF farmer, together with expert knowledge from soil scientists from the University of Queensland who were publishing widely in farm extension magazines, Tony gradually introduced CTF to his family farm business. The process started by moving the tractors’ axels out to 3m spaces and matching the width of the seeder to the width of the combine harvester’s front. Tony removed fences and some tall paddock trees for easier traffic-ability and to reduce the trees’ interference with the GPS signal.
At the same time farmer case studies of the successful implementation of CTF were being regularly published for a farming audience. Tony was reading as much about CTF as he could. While modifying his farm and his farming network, Tony had access to new CTF knowledge, some basic farm soil data, a record of their annual yields, and a membership to a grower group.
In these published journal articles the CTF scientists tended to speak on behalf of the non-human actors who could not speak for themselves, such as residue, soil microorganisms, plant roots, rainfall infiltration and soil air pockets. On the other hand the CTF farmers spoke on behalf of their costs, machinery, a quicker return to the field after rainfall, and their crop’s performance. By enrolling a number of agents from the farm services sector who too shared Tony’s goals, his fields were transitioned to CTF so that machinery could only drive up and back on the same invisible lines across the fields, indefinitely. Tony, his father and his brother, all witnessed an increase in crop yields; controlled traffic farming was a translation in an actor network sense, by enrolling actors, aligning goals and stabilising the network.
Two decades later, in spring 2018 Tony was faced with a new problem. He could not find a new or second-hand combine harvester front to fit his CTF system. This was a moment when Tony could have forgone the CTF system and returned to randomized traffic widths, choosing a cheaper and readily available 10m front. This would have been easy. Instead, he chose to implement a new CTF ratio. In simple Australian language, he was getting bigger gear. This change meant that he would need a new self-propelled boom-spray as well as a new air seeder for sowing season. Paddock trees would need to be removed. Tony viewed the standing paddock vegetation as an obstacle, nonetheless they were still a contributor to his CTF collective. But the actors in his system were agents because they demonstrated agential capacity to translate the CTF science. CTF is a translation of humans, machinery, nature and technological agency, which as a collective enact the benefits of the science on the farm. Transitioning systems, Tony stabilised his cropping practice by replacing CTF agents with new CTF agents.
For a CTF system to be enacted at harvest the auger on the combine needs to extend over the chaser bin. The chaser bin is a cart that is towed behind a tractor, allowing the combine to harvest and empty its grain simultaneously (see Figure 3). The John Deere dealership had assured Tony that an auger extension kit on his new combine would be long enough for his 12m system. They installed a kit as part of the contract but it failed to reach the required length. This meant that the chaser-bin could not be filled while both machines remained on the CTF wheel tracks. Tony knew that the auger was too short. He said that another extension kit would have to be installed before the next harvest; it was too late this year.
Figure 3. This photograph captures the harvest where the combine’s auger is extended over the chaser bin to unload canola in transit. The farming landscape typifies the dry summers at Telangatuk East. (Photograph taken by the first author).
The Farm Worker
Combine harvesters are designed to auger grain into a chaser bin while harvesting to maximize harvest efficiency (see Figure 3). The tractor tows the chaser bin, which is filled with grain, to empty into a field bin or in a truck. This was the job for Leo, Tony’s farm worker. Leo was driving the John Deere tractor. He had GPS and auto-steering technology to drive in straight lines. Leo’s task was to follow the same wheel tracks as the combine harvesters once they had harvested the crop.
The chaser bin was limited in its technology, but remained mechanically sound and robust. It had no modern features to support Leo’s judgement of how full the bin was. It just had one window, like a port hole, for Leo to see the grain through the bin wall. Leo’s decision-making was based on his sight and feedback from the combine drivers, as they had a better view into the field bin that he did (see chaser bin alignment in Figure 4).
Figure 4. This photograph captures the tractor and chaser bin aligned with the field bins. The farm worker is auguring the canola from the chaser bin into the field bin with his judgement of sight for accuracy. (Photograph taken by the first author).
Leo was working alongside two large capacity John Deere combine harvesters; Tony’s combine and a brand new demonstration model. This combine had 3m axels and a 12m front which meant it fitted Tony’s CTF system. It featured the latest technologies and modern driver comforts. As a sales pitch the local dealership brought it to Tony’s farm to let him experience this new machine, while harvesting his crop and sharing the synced paddock data between both machines.
The paddock was heavily timbered with 10 remnant Eucalyptus trees. Two trees had dropped limbs which increased the area of the fixed obstacles. Figure 5 demonstrates the vegetated landscape where the combine harvesters were working.
Figure 5. Two combine harvesters, remnant trees and fallen tree limbs are captured in this photograph and demonstrate the complexity that the chaser bin driver must consider. (Photograph taken by the first author.)
Tony had instructed Leo to remain on the new wheel tracks that the combine left behind in the stubble. Leo drove along the headlands and watched the two combines; from a distance they were hard to differentiate. The chaser bin had to be positioned on the combine driver’s left side, on stubble only. Leo followed the combine, staying on the new wheel tracks before disengaging the auto-steer software. He had to steer the tractor straight, avoiding the combine on his right side, but staying close enough to collect the grain. He had to use his judgment of where to drive. He then set the speed on the control stick, and steered the tractor over to the combine and into a safe zone to fill the chaser-bin. Over his right-hand shoulder he watched the auger swing out from the combine and over the bin. The grain crept up the window of the bin. Once filled, Leo moved back onto the wheel tracks. He re-set the auto-steer to guide the direction of the tractor, and slowed down as he no longer had to keep up with the combine.
Leo wasn’t abiding by the CTF system. His hand movements were discrete; he switched software off and on, and he pushed the accelerator forward for speed and pulled it back to slow down. The GPS guidance and auto-steer system were over-ridden. He merged the tractor about one metre towards the combine to collect the grain while in transit. Leo was utilising his own relations with machinery and guidance software by operating the tractor manually. Considering a network approach, the actors were all present yet they were fluid. Leo was re-negotiating the assembled collective through the terms of the short auger, because the machine was not realising the full benefits of CTF. Leo wasn’t being negligent, disrespectful to Tony, nor sceptical of the CTF system – if he had remained on the CTF wheel tracks as he had been instructed to do, the grain would have fallen on the ground.
The Non-CTF Farmer
Wayne was a mixed farmer. He did not follow a CTF system even though most of his machinery axels were on 3m widths. He relied on GPS guidance and auto-steering at harvest and sowing. Wayne had participated in a local CTF trials with a grower group a few years ago, and he knew that from this small trial CTF showed yield advantages. But Wayne wasn’t convinced that it was worth the effort. Wayne equally liked his sheep. He said that he looked to his neighbour Tony for cropping advice, and to Jake, his best friend and a farmer further along the road, for his stock advice. Wayne had employed a former school friend as his crop consultant.
There was 30 remnant native trees scattered across the 25 hectare field of barley. The barley variety was relatively new to Australia, with end point royalties to Seedforce for the intellectual property rights to sell the grain. However, Wayne wasn’t selling this grain; it was allocated as his stock feed.
Wayne negotiated his older model Case IH 2188 combine harvester between most of the tree trunks. He disengaged the auto-steering software to avoid the trees. He didn’t always resume the auto-steering after by-passing the trunk; Wayne manually steered the combine towards the upcoming trees rather than re-engaging the software. Wayne had not paid for a subscription to unlock the Trimble software to monitor his crop yield. He disclosed how much the annual subscription to the GPS base station costs. Yet he had no way to map his yields despite his alliance with Trimble technology. The combination of paying for a yield monitoring subscription and the fall-back position that his grain will be fed to sheep, demonstrated a different set of relations in his farming practice.
Wayne’s father, Bert was driving the John Deere 8220 tractor towing the chaser-bin (see to Figure 6). This chaser-bin had been modified resulting in an ambiguous form of measurement. To unload, Wayne used his UHF radio to call Bert. Bert drove tractor out from under the shade of a tree and lined up next to the moving combine. Wayne’s auger extended over the bin and emptied the grain tank. When this was finished Bert returned to his place in the shade. Wayne was counting how many times Bert took the fully loaded chaser bin down the road to empty the barley into the grain shed. This was Wayne’s method of estimating the average crop yield from the field.
For Wayne the total grain loss from the combine wasn’t his priority because it shared goals with his mixed farming. The grain that was not collected in the combine could be eaten by the sheep. The dial in the cabin that measured grain loss never moved, suggesting it was ineffective. Stopping the machine, he got out of the cabin to manually adjust the concaves. He made the threshing clearance smaller to reduce the amount of grain which was un-threshed and spread on the ground. Back in the cabin he said that he “is looking forward to a new header so I don’t have to do this”. Wayne made a comment that he wanted a clean sample for Jake who was coming by later to get a trailer of the grain to feed out. The amount of chaff remaining in the grain sample didn’t seem that important to Wayne. If it wasn’t for Jake he had no reason to adjust the header settings to create a cleaner sample.
Wayne owned his combine harvester. Wayne spoke about his concerns of transitioning to wider equipment and the need to remove some of the standing vegetation in his fields. He mentioned the state legislative requirements to get a permit to cut down native vegetation. He talked on behalf of the trees and the waterways. Nature offered physical obstacles and abstract barriers through law, but for Wayne these were agents in his collective. Wayne did not give up control over nature, rather he actively worked with the landscape and the laws to determine his size of machinery. He wanted to buy a newer second hand New Holland combine in the coming year with modern technologies, but at the same time it also had to align with his Trimble GPS system and his existing MacDon front from his windrower. His wife was not in favour of trading their Case IH; she did not share Wayne’s goals because she was content with the current actors in their network.
Wayne’s relations were hybrid. His agency was an assemblage that generated a collective effect; sheep, sheep feed, lower financial commitments, family, land, machinery, technology, cropping inputs and advice were translated for production. He demonstrated both recreational and business relations with Jake as he sold him barley directly from the header rather to a grain buyer. Wayne’s wife, Janine was camping with Jake’s wife during harvest. Both families bank with the same rural finance company, basing their business on the employee who worked as the regional representative. When this representative was moved to another branch, Wayne was very disappointed. Wayne’s agronomist, Peter, was his old school friend. Wayne terminated his former agronomist to allow Peter to give him crop recommendations, based on trust. Wayne looked to enrol people in his network. Wayne assembled agents in his farming network through brand and human loyalty.
The Culture of the Australian Grains Industry
Modern farmers continue to change and modify their agricultural techniques to keep up with the terms of trade in the global economy. Wayne is looking to increase his machinery size for work efficiency and Tony has implemented CTF for crop yield benefits. Increases in crop yields, decreases in production costs, management of risk and/or improvement in work efficiency are key ways in which farmers attempt to maintain competitiveness. Higgins (2006) states that the agency of farmers is the subject of ongoing conceptual and analytical debate in the critical studies of agriculture and food. The culture of the Australian grains industry, and the structures of the commodity chain, contextualise why farmers refer to science and technology, such as controlled traffic farming, for profitability and productivity advances.
Australian agriculture is structured to enable farmers to produce near-identical bulk commodities. Farming practices are moderated by others even when connections within this chain seem implausible because farmers are legally required to meet extensive quality standards set by regulators and as a consequence many actors are aligned to safeguard production. Agriculture is governed from Australia’s capital city, Canberra. Levies are deducted at grain sales and this is matched with government funding to finance the peak industry body, the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC). Australian farmers participate as individuals in a colloquially-named ‘global playing-field’. They are not subsidized; their inputs and grain prices are influenced by the value of the Australian dollar and global supply and demand. Grain grown from using a controlled traffic farming technique is not segregated, penalised, nor rewarded; it remains a bulk commodity subject to standard commodity grades, validating the inquiry into why farmers would make such an effort to enact such a practice.
The commodity chain consists of numerous private enterprises engaged in increasing farm productivity and profitability. They are positioned in the economy by farmers’ subscriptions, fee for services, retail costs, research funding from levies and so on. Competition exists within the farm services sector to undertake agronomic field research. Controlled traffic farming research is competitive under this governing structure of the industry. Farmers do not receive any premiums or segregation benefits at the point of sale, however levies may be directed to ongoing CTF research if scientists and grower groups are successful in their competitive application for research in this field.
For Australian farmers, global competitiveness comes by supplying high quality grain compliant with the strict market conditions. Farmers feel coerced and powerless to challenge the political conditions under which they operate, hence they rely on new production techniques.
INSIDER RESEARCH ON FARMS USING ANT
Actor network theory (ANT) is a theory, or rather a family of theories within the field of Sociology of Translation and technosciences proposed by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon (1986), and John Law. This work utilises some of the frameworks from within ANT to examine agents’ associations and to explain from an insider perspective how agency is distributed as a collective and performed by farmers, machines and other entities. Hierarchical social orders are also flattened, working from the ontological premise that humans, non-humans and objects are not separate realms. This is founded on the rejection of epistemology and objectivity, by redefining ontology to allow for multiple ontologies (Latour 1999; Latour 1999b; Latour 2005). This approach shows the role played by science and technology in structuring power relationships (see Latour 1987). It is clear that certain entities control others but by remaining agnostic, the power dynamics between humans and non-humans becomes visible. This means that in a farming environment the insider researcher needs to be aware of the agricultural sciences, natural resource sciences, social sciences, technological and information sciences ready for interpretation at every moment. It is the researcher’s role to forgo these ontologies and listen to the participants, or agents, as well as the others that they mobilise, in the study. Giving generalised symmetry to actors implies that the researcher must act impartially and refer to the differing protagonists in the same terms, regardless of their effect upon others. Describing the way in which actors are defined, associated and obliged to remain faithful to their alliances is how we determine performative agency.
Agency is a property of a collective. Agency is about moving beyond human notions of conscious action to an actor network approach where human agency is dissolved among many. As a post-human, practice-based method actor networks shape the idea of agents and the performativity of agency. Each performative definition of what society is about is reinforced, underlined and stabilised, by bringing in new and non-human resources (Latour 1986). The method focused on inanimate entities and their effect on social processes (Cresswell, Worth and Sheikh, 2010). Upon this point the notion of power can change, transferring it to the many resources used to strengthen and hold society still.
An actant is an entity that ‘performs’ in network relations with other actants (Noe and Alroe 2003). The term actant replaces the term actor since the latter implies only human agency (Higgins 2006). Higgins (2006) defines agency as a property of humans and non-humans through the arrangement of relations, not just those which are social relations. Agency is performative in that it is constituted in and by these relations (Higgins 2006). The ways in which actants perform in an actor-network is framed by the actor-network – meaning that among all the ways in which an artefact, or actant, could be performed such as a zip tie or fence, limits the possibilities that are actualised within the particular actor-network. The notion of ‘translation’ is characterised as the transformation of objects as they are enrolled into the network and mobilise actants of the network (Noe and Alroe 2003).
Approaching these farms as actor-networks there were many elements that were translated and enrolled into the objective of crop production. There were the farmers, tractors, combines, chaser bins, technologies, mobile phones, satellite signal, land, crop, sheep, remnant vegetation, soil, family, farm labour, grain, market prices, knowledge, skills, values, time, stress and so forth, depending on the heterogeneous strategy of each enterprise. The outcome of the sequence of operations required to undertake the practice of farming resulted in the interactions in the actor-network.
Controlled traffic farming as a translation took the form of a black box. Using the actor network infra-language a black box is the term used to describe an alliance for transforming and translating a diverse range of interests so that an object of controversy is no longer subject to contestation and dispute (Higgins 2006). This is not to suggest that controlled traffic farming is a controversy, rather an actor network analysis identifies black boxes at moments when they open and expose the parts which hold them together. The parts were exposed when the combine auger did not reach the chaser bin, forcing Leo to over-ride the GPS auto-steering guidance system and manually drive beside the moving combine. Black boxes are a consequence of agential capacity of human and non-humans when the relations between these materials hold and generate an effect. Controlled traffic farming demonstrates the agency between the farmer, and his machines, nature and technology to generate effects on soil and crop yield, which allowed Tony to be competitive as a grain grower in the Australian grains sector.
The relationality of entities is that the entities enrolled get their forms and performances through the relations in which they are located (Law 1999, p 4). This re-interprets our understanding of farm enterprises from an ANT approach. To explain further, if Tony planted Trojan wheat in a field, and the following day Wayne borrowed Tony’s John Deere disc air seeder to plant this same variety of wheat on his farm, and theoretically both crops were sown at the same seed and fertilizer rates and received the same rainfall during the growing season; the fields will not average the same. To begin, Tony’s wheat is translated into a controlled traffic farming network, where different entities are enrolled to produce the crop. Wayne’s crop is translated into a mixed farming enterprise, where sheep as an entity are immobilised in the network and generates a different effect. The same kind of difference can be explored for the other entities enrolled such as farm size, software, grain marketing strategies, rural finance and so forth.
The actants enrolled in the networks on the farm can be actor-networks themselves, e.g. controlled traffic farming, GPS auto-steering technology, prime lamb production, John Deere as a global entity, and local John Deere dealerships, Trimble, and Telangatuk East. The networks also enrolled entities not limited to the physicality of the farms. Actor network approaches bring with them a value of time and a stored energy from historic associations. The CTF scientists, farm succession, Tony’s brother’s labour, the trip to outback Australia to visit a farm with a grower group which Tony no longer subscribes to, all add to complexity of the heterogeneous network. External entities are enrolled and mobilised as actants into the farming processes: seed, machinery dealerships, John Deere’s data storage facility in Brazil, education, work experience, and weather forecasts. The kind of entities and actors that are enrolled or not enrolled into the network and how they are enrolled is characteristic of the enterprise (Noe and Alroe 2003). Comparing Tony and Wayne’s education, technical training and cropping work experiences prior to their move home, together with the implementation of CTF and yield monitoring references, and the difference in the number of relations in each network can all be used in ‘summing up’ that Tony’s average crop yields will be different to Wayne’s average yields.
The sociology of translation relies on observations and artefacts. Farmers’ motives are not really known but they can be inferred by what remains behind. Latour (1999) defines the program of action as a series of goals to undertake operations. Tony and Wayne’s goals may have begun by determining the crop types and varieties based on the paddock rotation, market demand and price, balancing nitrogen against the climate outlook, using retained seed, and/or keeping production costs low. Wayne may have considered achieving ample stockfeed for his stocked rate, with surplus grain to sell to Jake.
Social research on farms typically seeks the barriers of adoption suggesting that farmers have limited choice in their actions. Noe and Alroe (2003 p.6) oppose this idea, offering that actor networks are built on choices, but there is no master plan prescribing the mobilisation of the network and there is no platform for making these choices rationally because the network must establish its own schema of rationality. They interpret this as when you ask a farmer why the farm is organized in the way it is, the researcher will often get the answer that it is because it is the only rational way to do it, because of … etc. And the argument leads to a place where there was no choice (Noe and Alroe 2003). Only through a reflexive communicative process of the actor-network, the fact of choice becomes visible (Noe and Alroe 2003).
Latour (1986) states that society is not what holds us together, it is what is held together. “Social scientists have mistaken the effect for the cause, the passive for the active, what is glued for glue” (Latour 1986 p.276). The Australian agricultural sector, led by the Agriculture Minister, do not hold farmers, commodities, trade partners and companies together. Practices, as an act of doing, are privileged over ideas. So rather than assuming that structures exist or actions will occur, associations locate knowledge in activities, events, processes and sequences. Power is not something a human may possess nor hoard; either they have it in practice or not, as others have it. Latour (1986) identifies two sources of power. When someone has power – in potentia – nothing happens and they are powerless. When they exert power – in actu – others are performing the action and not the subject. Power over something or someone is a composition made by many people (Latour 1986 p.265) and for farmers this composition is extended to their machinery and technology. The amount of power exercised varies not according to the power someone has, but to the number of other people who enter into the composition.
Controlled traffic farming consists of a composition of actants. Power over something or someone is a composition made by many (Latour 1986). Controlled traffic farming had power as it made Tony, Leo and the staff from the local John Deere dealership abide by the invisible road rules in the field. Wayne knew that if he wanted to implement a CTF system he would have to remove some trees. As a performative behaviour, it gave Tony identity, and it made the local machinery dealership strive to translate his farm in their own network strategies by demonstrating the new combine in the aim to make a sale. Controlled traffic farming enrolled the GPS guidance, software, farmers, machinery widths, machinery manufacturers and made them follow the system even during a period of transition; there was little room for creativity and self-expression. Only momentary decision making occurred to disengage from guidance to steer around the remnant paddock trees to avoid collision and turn at the end of the paddock during operations.
Like power, agency as a composite produces an effect. Controlled traffic farming is a pre-determined system created by others for farmers to follow through modifications to machines and utilisation of technologies. Agency is what has to be explained by the action of others who enrol. This is evident by the memberships to Australian Controlled Traffic Farming Association, the diversity of CTF research projects, the financial risks to farmers to adopt CTF, the factory standard machinery to fit CTF multiples, and the after-market axel and auger extension kits to keep the system alive. All of these effects support the hypothesis that CTF as a collective assemblage of actants have agency. Agency was a product that was distributed among many.
Agricultural robotics is nearby, removing farmers from their machinery and placing them elsewhere in the network. It’s predicted that farm operations will be undertaken by swarm-like micro-machines. This work demonstrates that farmer agency will not be lost when robotics become normal practice. The assumption that farmer agency disappears as technology replaces manual work is not correct. Creativity and freedom in open fields may decrease, and research and development may be left to the experts, but farmer agency, when we understand this in relational terms as a collective assemblage to generate effects, will always remain.
Controlled traffic farming is a networked assemblage of agents that generates effects. Controlled traffic farming brought with it collective action which held power in a two-fold effect; it supported farmers’ grain production and yield advantage, and secondly, it enrolled farm machinery manufacturers to supply objects to fit the system. Yet farmers’ power remained on the farm. The grain grown with a CTF system and traded as a bulk commodity was not segregated nor awarded premiums. This brings ethnographers to ask the fundamental question of ‘why should farmers bother?’
Farmers’ actions are rooted in economics as much as they are ideology. Grain growers increasingly look to technology and science to enhance their productivity. Actor network theory is an insightful tool to show that farmer-agency is reliant upon those far away from their farm, including CTF scientists and the innovators in farm machinery and agricultural technologies. As a practice, controlled traffic farming can be assimilated with any innovative farming technique that brings automation, machination, technology, robotics, humans and land together; where farmers’ agency is not purely human but will always be present.
Amity Latham is an Australian grain grower. She has consulted both locally and in Asia specialising in farm practice change. She graduated from The University of Melbourne with a BAppSc(NRM), has a Grad. Cert from The University of Sydney and a Master’s degree in Sustainable Agriculture from Charles Sturt University. firstname.lastname@example.org or DM @dunstanplant
Acknowledgements – special thanks to my support crew from Federation University: Professor John McDonald and Professor Keir Reeves – both for providing invaluable drafting advice and solid guidance for this paper and for the trust in my work to date. Thanks also to EPIC curators: Professor Tania Lewis from RMIT University, and Dr. Dan Perkel from IDEO for drafting advice. This research would not have been possible without the generous sponsorship from Regional Development Australia – Grampians Region and Federation University Australia. Amity Latham is supported by a Research Training Program scholarship administered by FedUni Australia on behalf of the Department of Education and Training. All views and opinions in this paper are those of the author alone.
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a process of separating cereal grain seed kernels from the remainder of
the plant. Over the centuries beyond the start of the Agro-industrial ages our species
have tried, experimentally improved, designed, manufactured, discarded, and adopted
dozens of specific ideas. When reduced to the minimum, whether the crop is from a
chef's window box or a 50 section wheat field all of these ideas adopt the same basic
Cut the plant stalks (above ground) from root (below ground). This is referred
to as "reaping".
Gather the stalks and prepare for transport or separation.
Transport as required.
Slightly bruise or slightly wrinkle the stalks. Way back in time, this was
accomplished by stomping on the dried plants by man or beast of burden.
Shake and sift the seeds separating them from the hulls, straw, and "chaff".
Introduce moving air at various process steps to efficate the separation.
All that said, we have just past through one of the more dramatic steps in this evolution.
That is the nearly complete elimination of manual labor. American agriculture turned
this historical leaf in the middle of the twentieth century. This story I am about to tell
describes the scene as it was happening. Many others have described these events
but this is a first hand account as I remember it at ascertain time and place.h
Setting the scene
We lived in the Township of Hartland, in the County of Pierce, and the state of
Wisconsin. The area abstract shows the township divided into mostly regular one mile
square sections. By the math, a section contains 640 acres. Typically, these sections
are subdivided into 160, 80, 40 acre parcels or farms. Not to say there were not
exceptions especially when encountering rivers or other geographic anomalies.
For the most part, roads of some type separated the sections. It follows that the
farmstead for the farms would be arranged along these roads. Indeed, looking at the
abstract will reveal an average of a little more than two (family) farms per section side.
Additionally, most of these farms were occupied by families having two or more kids and
most of these kids could be engaged in the harvest.
All of this bit of table cloth engineering is intended to set the stage for an understanding
of the life culture and economics of the community. Our farm was located along the
side of one section and next to the corner of another section. Our family operated 200
acres comprised of 160 acres in the home section and 80 acres in the adjacent section.
The farm was divided into tillable acres and wooded pasture. Our farm was about 60%
tillable of which 35% was in clover or alfalfa, 30% was corn or soybeans, and the
remaining 35% in a feed mixture of oats and wheat. Oats and wheat were of a more
traditional variety than the dwarf hybrids favored by today's farmers. The stalks were
about a yard high just as they ripened.
Each farmer either grew or purchased the feed grains required for the farm's livestock
through the year. A small percentage of the crop was saved for seed in the following
year. Any surplus could be sold to a local feed mill or to other farmers. Farmers
monitored grain markets on the radio in order to price out these transactions.
So here we have a sort of typical farmer with 40 to 50 acres of ripening grains that need
to be harvested -how do we do it? Just before the great change the grain stalks were
cut just above ground level and bundled using a horse or tractor drawn machine called
a grain binder. These bundles were manually arranged and stood in "shocks" to dry.
Once dry, the shocks of bundles were gathered up and transported to the location of the
threshing machine or "separator". The threshed grain was, in turn, transported to
storage. The chaff was blown into a pile to be used for animal bedding through the
The whole effort was very labor intensive. Moreover, it was fraught with vast
opportunity for loss starting with the decision to cut the crop. As the crop grows it is
always subject to knockdown by hail or wind. In fact, well ripened grains may fall under
its own weight. It becomes critically important to cut and bind the crop when it is ripe
but before it literally tips over. If the grain goes down it can be especially difficult to get
the cutter bar under the grain heads. If the cutting takes place too early the grains will
be green with a high moisture content and immature formation. High moisture can lead
to mold and spoilage. Timing can be everything.
So we have the shocking step designed to give the grain bundles time to air out and dry.
The shocks are out in an open field subject to the vagaries of the weather. If rained on,
the shocks may take a few extra days to dry out. Shocking is all manual as is the
loading of bundles for transport and offloading the bundles into the separator. And,
more opportunity for loss; the stalks a pretty dry by now and a certain amount of grain
will be shook loose in all of the handling.
The threshing machine itself had evolved into a trailer mounted, metal housed collection
of rotating bars, shaker tables, blowers, fans and elevator chains all driven by exposed
belts and pulleys. These were big machines standing 10 feet high and four or five feet
wide by 25 feet long. The front of the machine was fitted with a dragline trough into
which the grain bundles were pitched from the bundle transport wagons. Chaff and
straw was blown out the back of the thresher through a directional tube. Grain
collection is made at the bottom of the machine about 2/3 of the way back where it is
lifted by a chain elevator to a high point on the machine. Gravity takes over as the grain
is tripped through a measuring basket and flows to the next transportation mode be it
gunny sack or bulk.
Threshing can also be a source of loss. The machines are not perfectly efficient and
there is always the problem of accidental spillage. Great care was taken to make sure
the machine was level both side to side as well as fore and aft.
Change in the wind
The great change in the evolution of grain harvest was facilitated by the introduction of a
machine that integrated features of the grain cutting device into the threshing machine.
The combination was known as a combine. Combines are towed or propelled directly
through the field of ripe grain. The crop is cut and threshed by a single machine while
all most eliminating added manual labor. Straw and chaff was dropped in the field and
grain was temporarily stored in a hopper on board the combine. The advantages of
the combine over the old threshing machine seem persistently obvious but new
technologies usually drag along some disadvantages real and imagined. Chief among
these problems is the cost of acquisition. The new combines were expensive and
required a tractor of adequate strength to power the machine as well as drag it through
the fields. In the meantime improvements were arriving almost with the seasons as
various manufacturers competed. Big operators with huge acreages were the first to
see wide spread adoption of these new machines but, by the 1930's smaller machines
were being manufactured and began to be adopted by some family farms in the
Change was in the air and this change was rapid to the point where threshing machines
came to be relics of the past in less than 75 years. The height of this change in our
family's community occurred in 1950. I was privileged to be able to participate and
observe the old ways before they disappeared.
Organizing the community
Getting the grain crop harvested and put away took some spontaneous organization.
The intense manual labor requirement coupled with a limited time window dictated
cooperation among the farmers. This organization tended to revolve around availability
of the big threshing machine. The processes of cutting/binding and shocking were
relatively lonely activities in that the process could be effectively accomplished by one
or two persons. But, the efficient use of the threshing machine demanded a sizable
crew to load and unload wagons, transport product, and maintain the threshing site.
The first step is cutting and binding. The mid sized farms, 80 acres and above, usually
owned a heavily used, older grain binder and were able to get their own grain down on
their own schedule. When their own grain was accounted for the reaper machine or
grain binder could be hired out to a smaller farm. A typical tractor drawn binder could
cut and bundle 15 or more acres per day.
Most binders included a trip basket that carried the tied bundles so they could be
dumped in a convenient quantity for shocking. Shocking seed grains is a laborious,
almost mind numbing activity. Each shock was comprised of six bundles stood up and
leaned against each other so that the seed ends were high in the air. Then a seventh
bundle was slightly spread out on each end and laid across the other six to help shed
any rain that might occur. The shock would stand in the field for 2weeks to a month
before it was threshed.
The task of shocking meant walking from pile to pile of bundles and making the shocks.
Each bundle weighed about ten pounds, was frequently laced with thistles or other
weeds, and was maybe a little damp. Usually, the sun was blazing overhead and stalks
wanted to get inside your clothes. A good hat, Bib overalls, a closed but loose long
sleeve cotton shirt, and high top work boots made up the costume of the day. A jug of
water was a welcome companion. And, be prepared to sweat. Even in the face of
chores to be done, the end of the day was welcome.
The picture of a field of row upon row of neatly shocked golden sheaves of grain is
mostly just a memory these days but a memory to be savored. The picture is especially
treasured in this part of Wisconsin with rolling hills and fields following the contour of the
The individual fields are ready - it is time to bring on the thresher. I have already hinted
about availability. Only the larger farmers could afford such a machine and, then, only if
he could hire it out beyond his own use. Indeed, if it was only for his own use, he
needed access to a big crew to get the job done. Well before the harvest, there was
discussion among all the participants to arrange convivial relationships for the upcoming
harvest. Estimates of acreage, operations costs, and schedules were traded
culminating in an organizing meeting. In our case, the meeting was held in the dining
room of the family who owned the machine. I began attending these meetings with my
Dad when I was about eight years old.
I don't ever remember anyone involving "Robert's Rules of Order" but the meetings
were very orderly probably because everyone had the same desire to get the job done.
One thing I do remember and I think it affected my whole life. That is this. Invariably,
there would be someone who sat quietly through the meeting and then could be heard
bitching about something when we were out in the field working. I never understood
such behavior and vowed to never keep my mouth shut. For the most part it has served
The attendance at these meetings could be rather large including folks sitting on the
floor and standing in doorways. Farm owners and some of their older kids were
represented as well as a few farmhands looking for work. Eight to ten farms might be
involved adding up to 20 or 25 attendees.
Decisions and announcements concerned machine costs, labor costs, and schedule.
The route to be taken usually alternated clockwise or counterclockwise from year to
year. Exceptions to order could be made but were to be avoided if possible to keep
threshing machine movement to a minimum.
In those days the farmers were expected to supply tractor and driver at a buck an hour.
Laborers such as the field (bundle) pitchers got $.75/ hour. Tractor drivers who were
mostly kids between 9 and 12 made $.25/ hour. (For reference, the minimum wage was
$.75 in 1950 and increased to $1.00 in 1956.) A flat rate was established for moving
and setting up the threshing machine. Charges for the machine itself was based on the
number of bushels that were delivered through. All other labor and hourly rates were
based on the hour meter on the thresher called separator hours. Of course that means
if you are in the field pitching bundles but the threshing machine is down for
maintenance, no one is getting paid. Alternatively, all of the farmers were anxious to
minimize hours so no slackers were tolerated especially if your work involved feeding
That brings up another memory. All kids who reached the age of 13 were expected to
advance above tractor driver status. For my part I was a skinny little kid that had not
really begun to develop. I also had developed an extreme allergy to rust and dust on
grain. I was scared of taking this next step yet it had to be. My dad tried me out on the
load of bundles to be pitched off the wagon into the mouth of the thresher. After the first
load I was hopelessly behind and was relegated to the field pitching crew. There, out in
the clear air, I was just fine and grew to rather like the work.
Any special work such as bagging the grain or baling the straw was the responsibility of
the farm owner. He supplied the extra labor and made sure he didn't slow things down.
The final agreement had to do with nutrition although I doubt we had such a
sophisticated term for it. Each farm was responsible for feeding the entire crew for
dinner at noon and supper at the end of the day. Most of the Farmer's wives got
together and shared this activity. More on this later but please note, we ate good.
Machinery and Equipment
There were few new machinery articles in our 1950's community. Most of the draft
horses were gone, replaced by small row crop style tractors. But the vast majority of
these tractors dated back to the late 30's with a few post war examples. The farm
implements towed or pushed by these tractors were frequently modified horse drawn
devices. There was, in fact, a large variety of manufacturers and styles of equipment at
use in the fields.
The tractors represented an example of this variety. Starting with the old International
McCormick Deering 15-30 that pulled the thresher. Of the 15 or so tractors listed, all
saw service at one time or another on the harvest.
McCormick Deering 15-30 standard. - 26.67 drawbar HP ( increased to 30 HP in
1929), 3-speed transmission, Maximum speed 4 MPH
McCormick Deering Farmall F12 - (belonged to my Uncle John) 3-speed
transmission, maximum speed 3.8 MPH. This tractor had been modified with
electric starter and lights. I seem to remember it having some kind of overdrive
transmission that gave it a much higher road speed - maybe 8 or 10MPH.
McCormick Deering Farmall H - 24 drawbar HP, 5-speed Transmission,maximum
speed 16 MPH
McCormick Deering Farmall M - 33 drawbar HP, 5-speed Transmission,maximum
speed 16 MPH,
Allis Chalmers WC - 23 drawbar HP, 4-speed transmission, maximum speed 9
Allis Chalmers WD - 34 drawbar HP, 4-speed transmission, maximum Speed
Oliver 70 - 28 drawbar HP, 4-speed Transmission, maximum speed 5.9 MPH
Oliver 77 - 33 drawbar HP, 4-speed Transmission, maximum speed 11.5 MPHy
Oliver Super 88 - 47 drawbar HP, 6-speed Transmission, maximum speed 11.8
Case DC, 33drawbar HP- 4-speed Transmission, maximum speed 10 MPH
John Deere B (styled) - 18 Drawbar HP, 6-speed transmission, maximum speed
John Deere A (styled) - my Dad's tractor, a 1939 model, 26 drawbar HP, 3-speed
transmission, maximum speed 6.3 MPH.
Ford 8N - 22 drawbar HP, 4-speed transmission with 3 speed over/under drive for
a total of 12 speeds forward. Maximum speed 23.1 MPH. The auxiliary
transmission is called a "Sherman Combination Transmission" and is very
desirable in today's antique tractor trade.
Minneapolis-Moline R (belonged to my Uncle Ernie) -20 drawbar HP, 4-speed
Transmission, maximum speed 13.2 MPH
Minneapolis-Moline U (belonged to my Uncle Ernie) - 28 drawbar HP, 5-speed
Transmission, maximum speed ?.? MPH
The array of tractors was a total fascination and sometimes a challenge to me as a
young driver. I learned to drive on a John Deere with its hand clutch, forward to go fast
throttle, and excellent brakes. The foot clutches on most Farmalls and Oliver's were the
first challenges quickly mastered. The Allis Chalmers had hand operated brakes that
took a lot of getting used to when trying to steer straight ahead. The Ford was fun
mostly because it was speedy. Don, the guy that owned it, always had the wheels set
way out so you could dump it into a slide on a gravel road without fear of tipping.
The reapers or grain binders most of the farmers used were getting old and were
probably on their second or third owners. They consisted of a sickle bar above which a
large reel helped position the stalks of grain to fall on a platform when cut. Canvasses
moved along the platform and up to the top of the machine. From there, gravity helped
the grain stalks slide down into a twine tying mechanism. The knotter was almost
universally a "Deering head" patented by Deering and licensed to other manufactures.
These machines were designed to be horse drawn. An iron seat was mounted high in
back to allow the operator to guide the team of horses while keeping an eye on binder
operation. Three manual controls were available: cutter bar height, reel height, and
reel position fore and aft. Other adjustments such as twine and grain positioning
mechanisms could not be made while the machine was running. The grain stalks falling
through the tying area piled up against a barrier until sufficient to make a bundle. Then
the tying mechanism was tripped, a twine bearing needle rose up to the Deering Head
where a knot was made and the twine was snipped off. The tied bundles dropped into a
basket attached to the side of the binder. The operator kept track of how many bundles
were in the basket. When the desired number was ready the operator used a foot
control to dump the basket.
An operator was still on the grain binder even when it was being pulled by a tractor.
Power for grain binder operation was gained from a main drive wheel set under the
heavy part of the machine. As the binder was drug through the field, the wheel turned.
Gears and chains translated the movement into sickle bar motion, reel turning, canvas
movement, and tying head motion.
Grain binders were too wide to be transported on a public road between fields. Auxiliary
wheels were provided for transport. One wheel in front and one to the back allowed the
machine to be towed sidewise from one end.
Special note: my Dad bought a used grain binder from a farmer in Minnesota. I can still
remember going with him to get it and towing it home behind his 1939 Ford. We
crossed the Mississippi river over the old spiral bridge at Hastings MN.
I've already hinted at some of the peculiarities of the threshing machine. It was late in
their development, designs were mature and fairly common across the array of
manufacturers. Some of the intrigues between companies are interesting to reflect on.
For instance, a chief investor in the Belle City company was a first cousin of J I Case,
another manufacturer. Belle city in turn supplied other manufactures such as
McCormick-Deering. Even John Deere got in the game after they had already
successfully fielded combines of their own design. They bought a dying company and
moved production into the same operation where combines were being produced.
But, all of this history made little difference to me in those days. Threshers were big and
noisy and came with lots of dust, dirt, and blowing chaff. The machines always seemed
to sit in a cloud of debris that made breathing and seeing difficult when ever one got
close. Slapping belts, chain drives, augers, pulleys and exposed gears were
everywhere just waiting to grab anything loose. Ladders and steps were mounted to
allow access to the top of the machine in the midst of all this cacophony and chaos.
The operator was constantly about with his grease gun and oil can trying to anticipate
the needs of a fine running contraption.
Other implements besides the tractors, reapers, and thresher we're required. The
bundles had to be picked up and transported to the thresher. For wheel "hay racks"
were pulled by tractors for this task. These wagons were fitted with flat beds and
sported a "standard" at both ends. The beds were about 7 feet wide and 15 feet long.
The standard stood five to six feet high. The beds and standards were made of wood
much of which had been harvested from the farms themselves.
These were slow speed farm wagons but I was quickly learning the ins and outs of good
wagon design. The front axel on these wagons was solid with steered wheels on either
end. The wheels were steered by rods connected to the towing tongue. When the
tongue was turned the wheels are supposed to turn and track the towing vehicle.
Obviously, the geometry of the wheel steering has to be correct to prevent under or over
steering. In addition, just like a car, things such as camber angle has to be just so. An
improperly configured wagon could begin to whip back and forth even at the low speeds
of some of these old tractors. Still a good wagon would pull true even behind that Ford
at near 25 MPH.
The grain was usually hauled away in a box wagon and transported to some form of
elevator. Most of these wagons were just boxes with a port in the rear endgate. There
was no lift and the grain had to be shoveled or pushed through the portal into the
elevator. But, we had one neat solution. My Uncle John had cut up a vintage dump
truck and saved the manually hoisted box as well as the frame and rear axle with dual
tires. The frame was shortened and a hitch had been fastened in the front. Now we
could crank up the box on this trailer and avoid having to shovel.
Cranking up the gear driven hoist was not so difficult. I can remember doing it a lot
when I was eleven or twelve. I suspect the secret was again in the geometry. A good
percentage of the loaded weight was aft of the pivot point. I always liked using this
And, finally, just a word about grain elevators. Most were of a linked chain drag line
style. Paddles on the chain pushed and encouraged the grains up the sloped bed of the
elevator. Variations included wood construction as well as all metal units. Typical
elevators were 25 to 30 feet in length and could lift grain as much as twenty feet
vertically. Auger style elevators were in use but much less common in the middle of the
On the Run
The calendar moves on. We are in the early days of August, our grain crop is cut,
bundled, shocked and dry enough to thresh. All preparations and planning are in place.
There are eight farms in this years "run". The largest farm will take three days or more;
the smallest farm will take about 4 hours. With favorable weather, the run should be
over in two weeks just in time for the annual county fair. The days will start at eight am.
Bear in mind that these farmers will have to get cows milked and chores done before
showing up for a day's work in the field. Moreover, they will have to return to their
homes faced with cows to be milked and chores to be done at the end of the day.
The separator has been towed into place and "set" level. The big old 15-30 has been
backed into the drive belt powering the thresher from the tractor. The machinery is run
up to speed and all looks well for the start. Individual tractor and wagons head to the
field carrying a field pitcher or two and a kid to drive the tractor while bundles are
loaded. The tractor and wagon move slowly among the rows of shocks while the field
pitchers toss the bundles onto the wagon. The bundles are carefully laid up on the
outsides of the wagon to hold the load in the center in place. The load is ready in about
15 or 20 minutes so the driver and field pitchers head to the next wagon rig. In the
meantime the load heads off to the thresher.
Loaded wagons line up on either side of the thresher for the unload. The hour meter is
recorded and the work day officially begins. Bundles are pitched in and start to flow
through as evidenced by wisps of straw starting to exit from the big directional tube at
the back of the machine. More bundles go in and the old 15-30 barks as the tractor's
governor calls for more power. The sounds settle into a symphony of stresses and
strengths. Dust picks up and the sound is punctuated by the periodic dumping of the
grain metering bucket.
A man near the back of the machine climbs a ladder to access the straw blower tube
and adjust for a small wind that has picked up. This straw boss will make sure the straw
is piled properly and make sure the grain transport is coordinated. This responsibility
tended to fall on the farm owner. The owner appointed a surrogate to run his tractor
and bundle wagon while his crop is being worked.
Soon the flow is established and the process moves along steadily. The field pitchers
move through the shocks in the first field and on to the next and the next. Wagon after
wagon depart the fields. Straw piles up and wagon boxes of grain are hauled off to be
stored in the barn or granary. The sun creeps higher in the sky. Drinking water is kept
plentiful as the various workers sweat through their clothes.
Custom in this region calls for a mid day dinner break. Dinner is served in the dining
room of the farm house. Dinner service is staggered slightly in order to get the whole
crew served. Service is family style and focuses on traditional meat and potatoes with
copious sides of vegetables, salads, and, eventually, desert. This community is made
up of second and third generation immigrants in the mold of Scandinavian, German,
and Irish heritage. Cooking was a prized skill; threshing time was an opportunity for
these skills to shine.
Timing is everything and so it was with these spreads. Frequently gardens were
brimming with fresh tomatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers, and sweet corn. Spring
chickens were just the right size to make a perfect meal. I can honestly say that every
dinner was a treat.
Following dinner, the typical crew sat around on the lawn and talked, smoked or
snoozed. The break was a rough hour before the pitchers hitched a ride to the field, the
15-30 was lifted from idle and the work day resumed. The sun continued to shine and
everyone continued to sweat. The day wore on. At some farms a special treat in the
form of kool-aid and cookies arrived in the field in mid afternoon. Anything to break up
Workers on the crew talked a lot whenever they were away from the noise and dirt of
the thresher. They were all friends-they were a team. There was little time for bitching. Complaining
and whining were not tolerated. Any complaint quickly became a target of
ridicule. The team went on about the work.
A second meal was served at the end of the day. Usually not as elaborate as dinner, it
would have impressed any visitor. The end of the day could be somewhat chaotic as
timing and effort was adjusted to finish the effort on one farm before advancing to the
next. It was important to allow time for the thresher man to knock down the setup, tow
the machine to the next farm in rotation (at four mph), and setup for the next farm.
Ideally farm to farm movement took place at the end of the day. To that end, any given
afternoon might be a little shorter or longer to meet the schedule.
Those really small farms where only 3 or 4 hours were required would be scheduled in
the morning so the machine and crew could be moved over the noon break. But, of
course, all of this planning and scheduling was at the whim of the weather. More than
once I can remember high-tailing it out of the field to avoid getting drenched. Everyone
There were also equipment breakdowns. I remember once when word came out to the
field that we were shut down because this or that was broken and someone would have
to be dispatched to St. Paul to get a new one. My dad came to the rescue. He allowed
as how a temporary fix could be achieved using a couple wraps of baling wire. Sure
enough we were soon back running while waiting for the new part. Everyone cheered
and Dad was given a new moniker, "Haywire Bill". He was my hero. The name stuck for
the rest of his life.
And so it went. Hopefully we were done by the time the county fair rolled around. And,
soon enough, it was over. It was time to settle up- time for another meeting. In 1950
settling up meant shuffling money around. The "books" we're kept pretty current
throughout the run. There was little reason for argument when it came to settling
matters. Consequently, the settlement meeting was accompanied by a case or two of
I remember walking away with $15 to $20 when I was driving tractor and as much as
$125 for a season as field pitcher. As a driver, that $15 was a big deal. I could use a
few dollars to go to the county fair and save enough to buy family Christmas gifts. The
pitcher wages were even more important as I started high school about then.
Final thoughts and Observations
In the last year our threshing machine owner bought his own combine but kept the run
going one more year to let everyone have a chance to make new arrangements. He
also bought a new Oliver 88 which powered the thresher on that last run. The following
year, my Dad bought a new John Deere model 30 combine and never looked back. For
us it was the end of an era.
Over the years since 1950 the amount of US acreage devoted to grains has remained
almost constant. Acreage allocated to corn, soybeans, wheat, and oats has rippled a bit
especially since ethanol has demanded evermore production. While acreage has
remained relatively constant, production yields have gone up dramatically. Some of the
improvement is due to new grain hybrids as well as intense fertilization and weed
control. But estimates suggest as high as 93% of the improvement is due to improved
Farms in the area of our old farmstead have been consolidated to where anything less
than 1000 acres are mostly gone. Any remaining 20 or 30 acre plots are considered to
be hobby farms with the owners traveling off to jobs in the "cities". Even parts of our old
farm have been subdivided for residential plots. Life goes on -it is just different. I feel
very fortunate to have experienced some of the old ways.


13 November 2014
UNODC: the Afghan narcotics problem remains a major global challenge and shared responsibility
On 12 November 2014, the Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released the 2014 Afghanistan Opium Survey. According to the survey, in 2014, opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has increased by 7 percent to 224.000 hectares, with production levels potentially climbing to as much as 17 percent. Figures also show that, due to the unfavourable security situation, attempts to eradicate crops have decreased by a whapping 63 percent.
NPR reports that the UNODC and other experts point to the fact that opium cultivation in Afghanistan is driven mostly by domestic speculation: as Afghans become more uncertain or fearful about the future, the more they hedge by growing opium. These sources show that due to the growing uncertainty in the past few years, brought about by the drawdown of NATO troops and the presidential election, more people turned to speculating on opium.
The New York Times has made a grim prediction, deeming it unlikely that the new and fragile Afghan government will soon produce better results on poppy eradication than the United States and its allies, the former of which has already invested USD 7.6 billion into combating Afghanistan’s opium production.
At the Vienna launch of the report, the Executive Director of the UNODC, Yury Fedotov, warned that the narcotics problem in Afghanistan remains a major global challenge and shared responsibility adding that: ‘We cannot afford to see the long-term stability of Afghanistan -and the wider region- derailed by the threat of opiates. What is needed is greater resolve towards addressing narcotics in a serious and tangible manner with the economic, development and security agendas.’
Source: UN News Centre | Opium harvest in Afghanistan hits new high in 2014 – UN
Source: NPR | Afghanistan's Opium Harvest Sets New Record
Source: The New York Times | Afghanistan’s Unending Addiction


Are you scared of what chemicals lurk in commercial fertilizer or pesticides? No longer worrying about these toxic chemicals is just one of the many benefits of gardening organically. Organic gardening is also cheap and requires very little equipment. Read on for some advice concerning how to work in your organic garden.
When laying sod, it is important that you do it correctly. Before laying the sod, have your soil prepared. Weeds should be removed, and you should break up the soil into a tilth. The next step is compacting your soil and carefully leveling it. Afterward, you want to make sure the soil is moistened. You should lay your sod staggered, and have the joints offset. After the sod is in place, go over the top to ensure everything is level. Use loose soil to fill in any gaps between seams. The sod needs to be watered daily for two weeks, by which time it will likely be rooted and ready to walk on.
Use slug-proof varieties of perennials wherever possible. Slugs or snails can kill a plant very quickly. They often enjoy feeding on perennials with very smooth and tender leaves. Young plants are a special favorite of theirs. Some varieties of perennials are not preferred by snails and slugs, particularly perennials that have hairy, tough leaves or a taste that isn’t appetizing. Selecting an unappetizing perennial, such as campanula or heuchera, will help stop them from being eaten.
Coffee grounds can be used to amend soils that are high in alkaline. Coffee grounds add acidity to the soil and are very cheap. By amending your soils, you will help your plants grow and flourish.
Choose perennials that are not vulnerable to attack by slugs. These mollusks are capable of consuming an entire garden full of flowers in a single night. They have a tendency to enjoy perennials that have thin, smooth, tender leaves, especially those of young plants. Perennials that have tough or hairy leaves are often times unappetizing to snails and slugs. Examples of these slug-proof plant varieties include achillea, euphorbia, and helleborus, to name a few.
Search for evergreen variants that produce berries. These will help give your garden a burst of color, even in the wintertime when the majority of vegetation has lost their colors. These plants will help you find some good color throughout the winter season: Winterberry, Common Snowberry, American Holly, and American Cranberrybush.
Organic gardening is healthier. You won’t be exposing your plants - and you to ultimately toxins or chemicals. Use the tips you simply read to assist you start planting your organic garden. Additionally, you will see more animals in your garden, because organic gardens tend to be more attuned to nature.


If your garden has a regular inflow of exotic birds, by the virtue of your bird feeders and bird baths, besides all the aesthetic blessings and overall good it reflects on your garden.
The one problem that you are going to face anyways is every time you try to grow some new grass in your garden.
While you plant the seeds in the right way, the sprouts barely come out of the seed and you never see the grass indeed growing out.
And this might be solely because of the fact that the birds that tend to come into your garden also tend to feed on your grass seeds, like in my case.
Here's My Story and How I prevented this from happening.
I too faced this problem in my own backyard, which is also quite reasonable if explored.
Firstly, these seeds have several nutritional benefits for most birds, and secondly, birds are well aware of the fact that grass seeds are harmless and hence tend to feed more on them.
Now, we all know how effortful a task it is to plant grass seeds, and I clearly couldn’t lose any more of it to my carelessness and hence knew, this problem has to be solved.
Thus, I conducted detailed research on the same to find out the following pro tips on how to keep my garden grass seeds safe from the birds in here and have listed them below for you, in case you too are suffering from the same.
Methods I Used To Keep Birds From Eating Grass Seeds
A Repellent Net To Your Rescue
While you newly sow the grass seeds into the soil you can layer it up with an anti-bird net to prevent the seeds from being pecked by the birds.
It’s a simple process because you simply have to place these repellent nets over the grassland during the germination process that won’t allow the beaks of the birds through it and hence no threat is involved.
You can also dig the seeds ⅛ of an inch deeper into the soil to avoid the threat altogether. Observe carefully on a regular basis to watch when the seeds germinate.
As soon as they do, do not forget to remove the repellent net to encourage better growth of the grass.
These nets are mostly lightweight and made out of polyurethane, which does not, however, create the most ideal conditions for your grass, for its bad conduction of electricity, no room for penetration, and tendency to mold.
Hence, it’s necessary that you remove them on time to actually let your grass seeds survive.
Using Fake Owls And Hawks Is An Interesting Process
All birds are afraid of their predators and hence we can use this exact idea to keep the birds trying to feed on our grass seeds in check.
While we cannot actually bring their predator birds into our garden, we can however use some decoys to scare the birds away.
The one thing that we need to take care of is to make sure that we are making it look real enough, with some added sound effects, mechanical movements, and also changeable locations.
Soon the birds will start to find a threat in your garden and won’t bother to come in here again.
Straw Can Defend Your Seeds Too
Straws are lightweight and environment-friendly layers to use on your seeds.
They will allow all the environmental requirements to penetrate through them to reach the seeds for fruitful germination, yet hide your seeds from external threats, like birds.
However, if your garden faces a windy direction, straws are most likely to get blown away easily and thus you can dig the seeds into the ground to about the depth of ⅛ of an inch to prevent them from getting blown away with the straw and also hide it from the birds.
A Decoy Feeder Is Always Attractive
Well, birds literally spend most of their lifetime in the air, and hence, having to descend on land to have their food is not the most favorable option for them.
Rather, it might be the lack of food above the ground that actually makes them fly all the way down to find their food.
Thus, if you can effectively solve this problem and let the birds have an array of edible seeds closer to their natural habitat, why would they bother putting extra effort, right? And that is what decoy feeders are for.
Place some decoy feeders in the main points where they can effectively attract birds, but remember to keep them fairly away from the place where you have sown your grass seeds.
If they get their food right away, they won’t bother to put in that extra flight.
Burlap Sheets Are Good Options
Burlap sheets are some efficient solutions to the problem, with their added benefits.
These generously allow the water to seep through the layer and also accommodate room for heat and light to penetrate through and reach the soil.
These features of burlap make it extremely favorable for grass seeds because of the allowance of proper conditions, heat, light, and water to germinate in a natural environment.
These are also quite resistant to windy weather and hence can protect the seeds from blowing as well, which is definitely a win-win situation for you.
Mulch Can Be A Good Weapon
Mulch is definitely a great solution to most of your garden problems, literally. These substances not only help to add up and maintain the right proportions of moisture in the soil.
But also do not let any unwanted plants germinate in your garden area, creating an enriching yet obstructing layer between the soil and the environment.
And this exact layer of obstruction also helps to prevent birds from pecking on your sown grass seeds because they apparently can’t penetrate through the layer.
Hence, while you law down the mulch, make sure it’s made of components that do not allow the birds to peck through it and you will have the most organic solution to your problem.
A Noise Deterrent Will Work Too
Birds are excellent hearers, with the capability of being able to hear frequencies that are even lower than the minimum human range, termed Ultrasonic audible ranges.
And this exact trait of birds can help us get rid of their habit of eating up the grass seeds.
And the best part is how you do not particularly need to use only one sound because there is a wide variety of high pitch sounds that are absolutely unpleasant for birds in low pitch.
And the added advantage is these sounds are also inaudible to human ears and hence, you or your family will not at all be bothered by the nuisance, and yet you will be driving the birds away effortlessly.
Always Having hands-on Extra Seeds and Bird Repellent Seeds
Well, no matter how hard you may try, it’s almost next to impossible that you will be able to protect all the seeds sown from the birds around or on a windy day because some birds are always going to make it through most of your obstructions and wind might simply blow your seeds off.
Hence, the strategy is to always have some extra seeds with yourself.
Preferably, you can have bird repellent grass seeds too that are coated with substances that are unpleasant to birds, to make sure that the birds coming through all your resistance do not find your grass seeds attractive.
A Reflective Scare Tape
We already are quite familiar with the fact that birds hate extra light flashes, which is however not an unusual trait.
This anti-extreme brightness attitude of birds is what we put to use for our advantage, through the instruments like reflective tapes.
You can use these tapes around the places where mainly the grass seeds are planted, to simply keep them away from that area, but not drive them absolutely out of your garden.
You can either stick these on the walls or maybe hang them in the same place to cover a greater area.
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I don’t make a lot of money at work, and I can use any help I can get. Donations would give me money so I can make better videos. I am working with limited tools.
This information is highly suppressed and ignored please share the truth far and wide. Barack Obama is preventing a Free Market while Americans suffer. Mainstream and alternative media is too corrupt they are making too much money to actually care to end cannabis prohibition, they don’t share important information like I shared. Every day people suffer and die because of lack of food or medicine and hemp is the superior food and medicine source safer than drinking water. It took 13 years to end alcohol prohibition help end cannabis prohibition and share the truth.
Cannabis (hemp) fuel is the most cost effective and environmentally friendly energy source. Hemp Fuel can make America, and the world Energy Independent this year in 2012. Hemp Fuel would make poisonous energy sources obsolete, like nuclear, coal, natural gas, petroleum, because hemp is superior. Hemp uses less water no herbicides and no pesticides. The first diesel fuel was made from oil pressed from hemp seeds. It’s non-toxic, a nitrogen fixer, grows well nearly everywhere, a renewable resource, makes food, fuel, paper, rope, medicine, cosmetics, plastic, housing and much more.
Rudolph Diesel who made the diesel engine to run on hemp fuel was found swimming with the fishes! Wide use of Rudolf Diesel’s engine would have made petroleum-based fuel obsolete. The idea was destroyed by marijuana prohibition after Rudolf Diesel’s death.
We need repeal of an unconstitutional law that has filled our prisons with nonviolent cannabis users. The prohibition against marijuana was unconstitutional from its inception. Thomas Jefferson was a hemp farmer. In early Colonial times people could pay their taxes with hemp!
Energy Companies and Corporations have a monopoly because the superior resource is outlawed by corruption. If cannabis prohibition ended so many new businesses and jobs would be created instantly. Everything made from toxic oil today, can be made from non-toxic hemp. Any limits or restrictions on hemp are preventing a free market. Would you want a license to grow vegetables? The idea of having a license for cannabis sounds like the Slave Master telling the slaves how many plants they can grow. Nobody has any right to dictate!
Until the 1930s most paint and varnishes were made with non-toxic hemp oil. Hemp paint provides superior coating because hemp oil soaks into and preserves wood, due to its high resistance to water. Hemp oil is a good base for non-toxic printing inks. Soy is currently made into inks, but soy ink requires more processing and takes longer to dry than hemp oil based inks.
Biodegradable hemp plastics could reduce landfill waste and display unique strength characteristics. Oil based plastics produce biproducts of sulfur and carbon monoxide and do not biodegrade.
The seeds can be pressed and used for diesel. Leaves and stalks can be fermented and used for fuel grade alcohol. Hemp harvests the most ethanol per acre compared to the alternatives, up to 10 times more than corn ethanol. Low THC hemp plants produce less seed and ethanol per acre compared to other strains. Some varieties mature in 60-90 days.
In the 1930′s, hemp was stigmatized in a smear campaign by the petroleum, tobacco, alcohol, pharmaceutical, paper industries to insure against the competition of hemp fuel and safe, non-addicting and biodegradable products. The blind prejudice remains. If we and the other animals on the planet are to survive, we must see through this ignorance and correct the problem. Hemp is practically the best source of creating oxygen and breathing in CO2 creating a sustainable environment.
All newer vehicles can easily be modified to use 85% ethanol. Diesel engines can run on pure pressed hemp seed oil, they already run on other vegetable oil. Wood pellets are now very common, however hemp pellets for stoves and boilers are a much better solution. We can grow hemp locally in virtually any location, and process the hemp locally into fuel pellets.
The eTuber™ sweetpotato can produce 1500-1800 gallons per acre and hemp is superior. (http://www.carenergy.org/CE/crops1.html)
Note that the potatoes on the graph are not the eTuber potato which seems like it is genetically modified and dangerous!
Anyone who does not think there is enough land to grow hemp for fuel and still grow food crops need to take a serious look at all the waste land that can be converted into arable land. Search 6 ways mushrooms can save the world. Hemp would also be a great resource to convert land into arable land good for growing food crops


Words by Carolyn Khor
Turning a notch up from being a landmark for auto, gated banking, F&B and night park shopping on the mainland of Penang, Auto-City has now set its eyes on being an educational hub on innovative green practices.
Groups wanting to learn about sustainable development made their way to Auto-City to see first-hand how Gary Teoh and spouse Bee Lee manage zero-waste on their premises. The model which Auto-City adopts is through its own in-house research, continuous improvement and fine-tuning for better results.
“We have our own team to do continuous research on the methods of composting, wastewater filtration and growing chemical-free and pesticide-free vegetables,” said Gary Teoh, founder and managing director of the Auto-City Group.
At Auto-City, all organic wastes are collected and turned into compost using several rotary machines, designed by Teoh. To produce good quality compost, other machines are used too, like the sorting machine and the drying machine, before the dry compost is ready to be used as fertilisers.
“The rotary machines consume very little electricity even though they are operating between 8 and 12 hours a day,” he said.
At Auto-City, waste water is also recycled through a bio-filtration process where microorganisms are used to neutralise the odour and harmful bacteria before channeling the treated water for use to water plants within the grounds.
Gary and Bee Lee work closely with their green-oriented team comprising of horticulturists and agriculturists. Auto-City now has vegetable plots that produce all sorts of vegetables which are given out to families and friends.
This is an eco-friendly corporate social responsibility project worth emulating.


Veldale Farms Ltd. consists of seven enterprises: dairy, swine, ducks, cash crop, custom work, Dekalb and Quality seed sales, and agronomic services. The dairy division milks purebred and registered Holstein cows and raises all its own replacements. The finishing swine portion is contracted through a local swine farmer. Forages and grains are homegrown and are stored on farm and used for animal feed. Corn, soybeans, wheat, and edible beans make up our cash crop division. A wide variety of custom services are offered along with Dekalb and Quality Seed sales and agronomic services, providing you with a convenient "one stop shop" for all your cash crop needs.
Click on the underlined to learn more about what we can do on your farm!