Mad Cows & Englishmen

Mar 1, 2001 12:00 PM, Marcia Martinek, Senior Editor

The British may not know where their children are, but they’re pretty sure about their cows.

Ever since September 1998, as a result of the Mad-Cow-Disease outbreak, the British Cattle Movement Service has tracked the whereabouts of every single cow, starting with Eddie, a Limousin bull calf.

Today Eddie’s offspring also are being tracked, but the process is easier for British farmers who have WAP phones.

With the older system, farmers must fill out and mail bar-coded postcards whenever an animal is born, dies, moves, is bought or is sold. Today farmers can use their WAP phones to supply information on cattle movement to Braidgrove.com, which turns the information over to the government.

If American farmers had to report the movement of each cow, few would be using WAP phones, for the mobile W-Internet doesn’t extend into many of the rural areas yet.

The need is there. Between 1997 and 1999, the number of U.S. farms with computer access more than doubled, going from 13% to 29%, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. Of farms with sales of $250,000 or more, 77% had access to a computer in 1999 and 65% were using computers for their farm business.

Yet many American farmers still struggle with slow, dialup Internet connections. DSL and cable modems are few and far between. Satellite-delivered data services are in their infancy. Only a few rural operators now offer fixed-W-Internet connections.

Have Tractor, Can Compute

So what about the vision of a farmer heading out to the fields on his tractor, portable computer at his side, checking real-time weather and commodity prices wirelessly, between rows?

Go to Don O’Neall’s Illinois farm, and that vision becomes reality. His tractor is his office complete with a ruggedized computer that is sunlight readable. He receives data over the area’s CDPD network. “We live and die by weather and markets,” O’Neall explains. “It’s hard to have someone over the phone or radio give you some perspective on the weather, and now we can watch a system develop a state or two away and see its progress.”

As far as markets are concerned, today’s farmer needs a global view. “South America has a big influence on our prices,” O’Neall says. “So do the weather events in China and South Africa. Markets fluctuate daily.”

Several years ago, he decided he needed a truly mobile Internet device. He looked in the marketplace, and found nothing, so O’Neall went ahead and designed one. After refining it for several years on his own farm, he and his son, Andrew, started a business, Linx Systems (www.linxsystems.com), manufacturing and selling versions of their computer and software to others with the same needs.

The computer is easily modified to connect with most of the conventional wireless services as well as spread spectrum, and O’Neall is looking forward to 3G.

The Linx computer, with its color graphics and full-size Web pages, offers much more than an Internet phone, O’Neall says. With an updated version and full product push planned for this spring, he hopes to create some strategic alliances with wireless carriers. “This is a legitimate business application that works wonderfully,” he says. “People don’t ask for it now, because they don’t know it exists, but once we show it, they definitely want it.”

Tractor Repair: The Video

Farmers can find extensive information on the Internet today. And wireless delivery is definitely in the minds of many in the agricultural-information business.

Ron Hagen, WorldAG founder & CEO, is eloquent about the promise of streaming video.

“We will be able to provide streaming video so that (farmers) can take a hand-held out in the field with them and repair their tractor in real time,” Hagen says.

That will include instantly ordering any parts that are needed. Hagen describes WorldAG (www.worldag.net) as a super portal for the agricultural business.

“If you raise barley in Canada, and Libya needs 200,000 tons, you can find one another through our system,” he says. Services will include shipping, bills of lading, and letters of credit — the entire transaction.

Hagen believes broadband and wireless is the future of the agricultural business, a business that today is unappreciated, under-served and misunderstood.

“People in communications don’t necessarily have a farm background, so they still think milk comes from the back of the Safeway,” he says.

Wireless networks and the hardware must come up to speed before wireless becomes a true agricultural tool, he says.

No Holy Grail, Yet

Today Farms.com sends information wirelessly to Palm VIIs and wireless phones, however Robert Sparks, Farms.com CEO, believes this is only a small reflection of what wireless can be.

“This is not the Holy Grail, but it’s easy to do,” says the provider of business-to-business e-commerce solutions for agriculture. “We’re not even trying to make a revenue source of it.”

The wireless service includes futures quotes, a summary of commodities activity, cash grain bids from the previous day and headline agricultural news. Sparks has 150 registered users for the service — about 50 Palms and 100 cell phones — although users are not required to register in order to get the service.

But Sparks sees the best applications somewhere down the road.

“The real vision is when you get connectivity,” he says.

“Get a (wireless) LAN application with a server in the farmhouse with 400K connectivity … that’s when this thing explodes,” he says. “We can tell someone, using phone or e-mail, that his bid or offer is available right now, even if he is on the other side of his property.

“Say you’re a rice farmer with 20 wells on your property that run on diesel,” Sparks speculates. “Each has a 100-gallon tank, and a company comes out once a week to deliver the diesel. If you had a little appliance on the side of each tank, it could send information back to the farmhouse where it is uploaded on the Internet and sent back to the distributor. Then he knows that these three tanks need to be filled tomorrow; these three don’t.”

The Gen X View

On a somewhat smaller scale is WeSellAg.com, a Web site that provides free classified ads for livestock and related equipment in Colorado and Wyoming. Its founder, owner and sole employee is 20-year-old Jeb Wubben, who decided to start the site when his brothers were having trouble coming up with rabbits for a 4H project. It seems the family that raised the winning rabbits didn’t want to sell any to the Wubben boys, so Wubben decided it was time to open up the market.

Initially he charged for the classified ads, but they’re free now, and the site is supported by the sale of banner ads.

He markets the site in a low-tech way, driving his vintage VW bug up and down the Front Range and posting flyers in feed stores. On the way home one day, he literally ran across WAP technology. A giant load of hay had spilled in the middle of the road, and Wubben pulled over to help restack it. Another guy was helping, and he had a WAP phone.

“I started thinking that a lot of people in this part of the country don’t have computers, so maybe they could capitalize on (WAP phones),” Wubben says. “In the middle of plowing a field, they could check the ads. If they were buying something, they could use the phone to check the going rate and have a bargaining point.”

WeSellAg.com now is available on WAP phones (www.wesellag.com/wesellag.wml).

Wubben, who volunteers at the library showing people how to use computers, thinks the agricultural community needs to get up to speed on computing. The big problem?

“The average farmer is 55,” Wubben says. “I respect my elders, but they have the tried-and-true attitude: ‘It worked for my father and his father before him, so why try anything new?’” He pauses a minute.

“They’ll catch up.”