FARMING BY SATELLITE  

Back in 1945 when visionary Arthur C. Clarke wrote his revealing article in the British magazine WIRELESS WORLD about his concept of man establishing geo-stationary communications satellites over the equator, no one, especially farmers, ever dreamed that one day they would be farming via instructions from a r elative of the moon -and by moonlight!

It's coming soon to a farm near you. It's all part of the global positioning system (GPS). GPS was developed by the U.S. Dept. of Defense which worked for 15 years and spent $3 billion perfecting the system. Now it is being turned to civilian use by companies as small as Minute Man, a California trucking company that is now dispatching trucks in half the time previously required, to those as large as the Sony Corporation (which released five innovations a day during 1991) who hope to convert GPS potential into another irresistible product. Northwest Airlines, another wide-awake company, saw new opportunities laying dormant within GPS. If GPS can tell you where you are, when you are and where everyone else is, then wouldn't that allow airplanes to take off and land quicker, fly closer, yet with added safety and reduce fuel costs? Every airline could pay for such a system in a year and render commercial and private planes safer and more efficient.

GPS may permit geologists to monitor earthquake precursors ... those small, advanced warnings announcing that a big one is coming. Technically, they could tell you, while in your car in a strange city, where the closest banking machine is that would handle a cash transfer from your account. Or where that building is located that you can't find right now.

Operating high above at an altitude almost half the diameter of the earth (11,000 miles) is a necklace of satellites run by the Defense Department's Navstar Global Positioning System ... a system that proved itself during the Gulf War when soldiers knew within inches exactly where they were in a trackless, landmark free desert.

These satellites contain small atomic clocks that broadcast time, data and other information and tell a computerized receiver exactly where they are and where they are going. Earthbound receivers match their clocks with the satellites and tell, within minute fractions of time and space, exactly where they are by calculating the distance between them and the satellites. Because four such satellites are within line-of-sight range at any one moment, present accuracy is within 35 feet (16 metres). If they can compare to another stationary land-based receiver, the accuracy moves down to inches (centimetres).

Think this won't sell? $100 million have already been sold -- to non-military users -- in 1991. Anticipated sales for 1992: US $600 million. Trimble Navigation, the industry leader featured in a column here a couple of years ago, now has 13 competitors, including Sony who is selling a unit for hikers -- so they won't get lost -- for $1,500.

And farmers? With the appropriate receiver unit on his tractor, Old MacDonald could track its position, verify with another land unit and calculate its location within inches. Yes, even allowing the farmer to furrow strait accurate plough lines even at night! Savings in spreading fertilizer and herbicides more accurately and avoiding overlapping, could save millions a year.

The morale? Many fantastic technological developments are jumping aboard the steam-roller of change. Those who see the possibilities will profit -- like the farmer who maintains lower production costs than his neighbor, because his latest system farms more efficiently.

Those who ignore such developments and continue to do things the same old way? They likely will fall into the techno-peasant class unable to keep up technologically, financially or socially in a rapidly changing world. If you are not aboard the steamroller of change you stand a good chance of becoming part of the road.

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