Technology helps farmers speed through planting

CHICAGO (Reuters) - New technologies such as global positioning systems are providing a glimmer of hope for U.S. farmers seeking to get their corn planted by the end of the month after this year's severe delays due to soggy field conditions, farmers said.

Large corn planters and computer systems on tractors allow for faster seeding and let farmers spend more hours in the field.

"It used to be when it got dark, you could not see where the rows were supposed to go," said Daryl Haack, a farmer in northwest Iowa. "With the monitors we have today, they are guys that will plant 24 hours a day if the ground is fit."

The changes in technology allowed farmers to plant much faster than they did even five to 10 years ago, said Haack, who seeded 435 acres of corn in about five days this year.

Rainy weather throughout the spring has caused many farmers to fall far behind their ideal planting schedule for corn, which typically must be seeded by the middle of May. Farmers who plant corn too late in the season risk severe yield loss if scorching summer temperatures arrive when the crop is still in a vulnerable stage.

The U.S. Agriculture Department said earlier in the week that 27 percent of corn acres had been planted as of May 4, well below the five-year average for early May of 59 percent. A year ago, corn planting was 47 percent complete.

SIZE KEY TO SPEEDING UP PLANTING PACE

Increased equipment size has been a key to speeding up the pace of planting. Many farmers now use planters that can seed up to 24 rows of corn at a time.

"They cover so much ground in a day that you give us a couple weeks of good planting weather and we can have almost half the crop in the ground," said Robert Nielsen, extension agronomist at Purdue University in Indiana.

A year ago, nearly 70 percent of U.S. corn acres were seeded in a three-week time frame.

In addition to the size of the planters, satellite technology allows farmers to see exactly where they are in the fields so they can plant well after darkness has fallen.

Global positioning systems also provide farmers with exact calculations about altitude and topography so they will be able to avoid low spots in their fields, allowing them to plant before conditions are completely dry.

So far this year, farmers have been spending long hours in the fields during the breaks between the storm systems.

"We started early in the morning and usually worked until 9 o'clock at night," said Andrew Goleman, a farmer in central Illinois. "Most guys around here are to the point where that is what they were doing. They know that they have to get it in (whenever they can) with these off-and-on rains that we have been getting."

(Reporting by Mark Weinraub, editing by Matthew Lewis)

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