Changes in Seed Handling Reflect Story of Farming

Maybe some of you still remember the days when farmers saved the best ears of corn to plant as seed the next year. It was open-pollinated corn. Handling seed was simple back then - just a bit labor intensive, all by hand!

I do remember handling bags of seed corn. I thought it was cool when dad finally trusted me to lift and carry a paper bag full of corn seed to a planter box on our old John Deere 494A planter by myself. Those were the days before we were as environmentally aware as we should have been. You did what you always did with empty paper bags, burned them on the end rows of the bug-dust seedbed before you left the field.

When it came to soybeans, those were the days of public varieties. I'm talking the 1960's, when I was a teenager. Some folks backed up to the bin and just scooped beans onto an old flatbed wagon with sides. In some ways, I guess that was handling beans in bulk- a practice ahead of its time!

When dad kept his own seed, at least as far back as I can remember, we filled a wagon with soybeans straight from the combine, then hauled them to a farmer with a professional-looking seed cleaner in his barn. He bagged them in brown paper bags.

All that ended when protected varieties came around. Then we just handled 50-pound bags of soybean seed. I've even heard grown men my age who were farmboys then say that even though their dads were seed dealers, they didn't have forklifts. All the seed corn that came in for neighbors had to be stacked one bag at a time in the barn. Then when the neighbors came to pick it up, the young boys got to help carry it back out a bag at a time.

No-till soybean drills were the craze of the 1990's. With them came bulk seed bags. Most bags hold 2,000 pounds. You either need a forklift or a sturdy tractor and loader with forks to move them and lift them over the wagon or truck. Many of you still use them. Pull a string and let the seed flow out. It was a darn sight better than lifting 50-pound bags by hand, but handling those bags, even with a forklift, can be tricky.

Now farming has changed again. Many folks have gone to split-row planters in 15-inch rows to get better placement of soybean seed. Many also tell seedsmen to deliver seed in big, square, plastic boxes instead of bags. Some boxes hold more than the giant bags. Simply pull a slide to empty them, and you don't have to put any part of your body under the weight of the seed to empty it.

I saw a seed tender on a farm the other day in Ripley County made to haul three boxes at once to the field. They use it for seed corn. You could haul a box of three different hybrids to the field at once.

Some of you even go to the seed plant with a truck and get seed in bulk. If you want, you can get it treated with fungicides and even insecticides. At least one company is actually treating certain varieties and not charging extra this since they want to make sure that variety germinates well.

It's a far cry from the days when 'seed treatment' meant pouring black inoculant powder in each box, and stirring it with a stick. Heck, if we didn't have a stick, even a piece of broken limb from a fence row would do.

How will your grandkids get seed to the field? Have it delivered in hovercrafts? (OK, I've watched too many Orbitz commercials.) Or maybe they'll install air vacuum delivery tubes to key points around the farm. You go there and hook to a central fill on the planter, and seed flows from a central point without you ever touching it.