Today we continued to pursue our amplify the lessons we heard about last week regarding conventional farming and precision agriculture by visiting what has been deemed the “big and bad” Monsanto. Prior to this visit, I only knew of the horrors of Monsanto. However our tour today of the Monsanto Company, at its Learning  Center in Huxley provided  me with new and surprisingly positive insights about Monsanto and its products. With all negatives aside, Monsanto is a company that offers subsidies and services to lower income farmers. Well known, among all other services, is Monsanto’s production of herbicide and pesticide-coated seeds. These seeds protect against some of the common extrinsic factors of nature such as insects and weeds that may negatively alter crop yields. The tour even featured a live robotic seed chipper system, showing how corn seeds are chipped and used for biological alteration. This alteration system begins with testing the DNA of one seed chip and using the DNA of another crop to increase the probability of greater crop yield. Genetic alteration, in this aspect, is justifiable. However, it may acquire unethical uses of genetic modification in the future.

Aside from genetically modified seeds, we were shown features of the precision technology constructed to aid farmers in all natural situations. All of these technologies are made to simply be added to a farmer’s tractor with result to increasing crop yields and to achieve the maximum benefits from farming labor. Other technologies provided area-precise seed planting which would prevent seeds from being too close or too far apart from each other. There was even a device that could measure the depth into which a seed may be planted, providing appropriate allocation of seed to soil.

Seeing all this technological innovation, I could only think of one thing. That is how extensive a career farming really is. Notwithstanding that pest and weeds can singularly eliminate all crops in a field, the even greater issue is that the act of planting seeds itself has its own difficulties. To receive the maximum usage of cropland, farmers have to take into consideration the planting of neat and straight rows while preventing seed proximity to close or far from each other. If seeds are too close, the crops will choke each other, causing poor crop yields. If seed are too far, then the farmer has wasted areas in which he or she could’ve had more yields. A second problem is planting depth. Seeds have different yields based on how far down they are planted into the soil. A seed planted too low or too high can cause low yields or, in worse case scenarios even no crop growth at all. The third but greatest issue aligns with location of seeds. Not all soil is the same. Some areas have better soil than that of other areas. A farmer has to know what section of his or her cropland promotes the best yields for the crops he or she is seeking to plant and which section promotes the best yields for other crops.

With all said, farming is a tough and extensive career. Consequently all services that work to aid farmers in their efforts should be considered both for their pros and cons.