There have been many improvements to crop production over the years. Most of these improvements have originated from the farmers themselves. I grew up on a farm observing many of the changes. When I was ten years old, just a kid, I was driving tractor, a John Deere 830 pulling a 14 foot cultivator. My Dad would do the perimeter of field for headlands and around the sloughs; and after doing the strike line, I was put on the open-air tractor to slowly go back and forth until the field was done. I couldn’t get into too much trouble – nothing to hit. Just wide open, back and forth. Oh, it was so boring. And I had plenty of time to think about how this could be done better. I wasn’t the best driver, getting the line crooked, and the overlap was terrible; but I learned quickly that overlapping was much preferred over the deadly sin of missing. I just kept thinking: There must be a better way; I didn’t know what that better way was, but surely there must be.
I didn’t do much until I graduated as an Engineer and worked in Ottawa on new computerized telephone switches. I learned about computers from the ground up and soon learned what computes could and couldn’t do. I was intrigued by how a computer could control equipment. I also became a pilot and learned about auto-pilots. If a plane could be set up to drive automatically from point A to point B; then why couldn’t a tractor be programmed to drive from point A, at one end of the field, to point B, at the other end of the field. I got my chance to tackle this question.
In 1982, I was hired into the Engineering Faculty at the University of Regina. This was my opportunity to work on the problem of driving farm tractors better – without overlap or missing. A tractor with auto-pilot or auto-steering. To do this, we needed to know where the tractor was at all times; we needed a positioning system. There was no GPS, so a positioning system needed to be developed. With the help of a few students, we developed our own positioning system. In 1985 a John Deere 4020 was outfitted with some crude steering wheel controls to drive and work a small field, including turns. We used an Osbourn portable computer to do the calculations of triangulating to our VHF beacons to determine the position of the tractor. CBC recorded the demonstration and it was broadcast in Canada on Country Canada in 1985. This was the debut for auto-steering; we showed that it could be done; but, did farmer’s really want or need it?
Now that I am retired, I decided to put my thoughts and experience down on paper. Taking what I learned as a boy on the farm, hoeing in the garden and driving tractor as a kid; and my experience with being a pilot and as a professor in electronic engineering, I am in a unique position to bring all this together in what I think are some pretty exciting changes that can be achieved in farming, using existing technology. These are my ideas that I have developed throughout the years and as such I am writing this in the first person. This is the first chapter of my story; there are many to follow.