How Ag Tech Makes a Difference For Mississippi Farmers

At a business meeting an hour from his farm, Lyle Hubbard’s phone alerted him to a real-time ventilation issue in one of his poultry houses.

A few clicks later, he turned on a different set of fans using his smartphone, allowing his broilers to stay safe and comfortable in their smart house environment.

“With the technology that we have and with our energy-saving plans, I think we’re growing a lot better bird and doing a lot better job maintaining the environment on these farms,” Hubbard says.

He owns and operates Jaynesville Farm, a poultry and cattle operation in Jefferson Davis County in southern Mississippi.

“Back when I started, I had a pager, and if I had an alarm go off, I wasn’t sure what that alarm was for,” he says. “Now, we have a communication package so that if anything goes wrong at the farm – the temperature gets too low or water pressure too high – I get an alarm on my smartphone. It will even tell me when a feed bin runs out of feed.”

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Enhancing Capabilities

Just as technology has changed modern domestic life, advancements have positively impacted efficiency on the farm. Farmers today manage and micromanage everything from soil to animal health and general farm operations, whether communicating with suppliers or remotely monitoring and controlling poultry houses. Hubbard never expected to monitor water usage, feed consumption and house temperature from a smartphone when he entered the poultry business 15 years ago – but he feels technology improves, not removes, the human element.

“We walk the barn looking at our birds five to seven times a day,” says Hubbard, a member of the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation Board of Directors and president of the Jefferson Davis County Farm Bureau. “Visually looking to make sure everything is right is key to growing a good chicken. But the technology gives us more of a tool to micromanage what we’re doing and helps us do a better job.”

The system further communicates with the feed mill, keeping the supplier informed of the farm’s feed use. The information helps the mill manage deliveries for the 480,000 broilers that he annually raises on contract for Wayne Farms.

In recent years, Hubbard has focused on energy savings, switching to LED lights and more efficient fans and pumps.

“Right now, we’re working hard to lower our footprint on the farm with energy conservation and with the technology being able to pinpoint it accurately,” he says.

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Improving Efficiency

Grain farmer Jimmy Sneed says technology has made his farm more efficient today than ever.

“One of the biggest improvements on the farm is the sheer efficiency, and technology is at the center of all of that,” says Sneed, who operates Clifton Farms, growing soybeans, corn and wheat in the hills of DeSoto County in northwest Mississippi, not far from the Delta.

Combines today harvest three times as much as the machines did when Sneed started farming in 1976. High-tech components of the farm’s sprayer control nozzles individually and automatically sense boom height and drive hands-free with satellite guidance. He can check the radar and track rain on his smartphone. Even the simple ability to text a photo of a damaged part to the local equipment dealership for replacement brings time-saving value.

“There are certainly environmental benefits and economic benefits to technology,” says Sneed, a member of the Tate County Farm Bureau. “When you start talking about the economic benefits, sometimes it’s hard to look past that initial cost of investment, but all of that builds into your economies and allows you to be more efficient. Sometimes, that’s doing more with less. Sometimes, that is more efficient, like with the application of herbicides and being able to be really precise on your rates and not putting out more than you need.”

GPS-navigated tractors drive the lengths of fields hands-free, reducing fatigue and allowing the operator to focus on the intricacies of the fieldwork in progress. A drone gives Sneed a glimpse of crops far from roads and field entrances, and weather forecasting from several apps on his phone supports farm management decisions.

A yield monitor in the combine collects harvest data and generates maps of production variations within a field. Another computer display in the planter tractor controls downforce pressure, a feature that ensures seeds are planted at proper depths for more consistent emergence and improved production potential.

“For me, the technology is exciting, and so are all the opportunities that lie there to help us solve some of the challenges in front of us,” Sneed says. “I continue to learn and to try to be better every day.”

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