Answer is blowin' in the wind

Grain bins, and former grain bins, Buffalo County, NE

We had just spent a week on the road, starting from Des Moines, Iowa, zig-zagging across western Iowa, northwest Missouri, half of Nebraska, northern Kansas and back home again--a route like a lariat trying to catch the wind. The Crop Tech Tour is a free-wheeling, season-long look at how newer production technologies are performing in-season, and in real time, so to speak.

We saw farmers using an array of practices--plant genetics, precision ag, energy and labor savings inventions, and so on. The inventiveness of the American farmer is a boundless topic, one that deserves a year-round tour bus, with a tag-team of journalists. On this trip, it was just my brother and me, wielding video and photo equipment, hoping to capture some bits of what it's like to be farming in this challenging year.

The weather trumped the technology last week. At just about every farm where we stopped, somebody had a story about the tough conditions this spring--hail, high winds, heavy rains, flooding, you name it. Despite all the planning, equipment, and skill used by farmers, it is the weather that has the last word. We all know that. But, every spring is a reminder.

By Kearney, Nebraska, we had endured several big storms and seen pivot irrigation units and grain bins twisted up and pitched across fields like discarded farm toys. Our rental car was pock-marked by hail.

But the worst was yet to come.

On Thursday, we stopped at a Kansas farm that had just been destroyed by a tornado. There, Maureen Pfizenmaier described to us in a video interview how she felt seeing her farm in shambles. All of a sudden, through her amazing composure, it was as if we were seeing through to some larger truth. Some days, we can simply only witness the larger forces at work on the land.

A few hours later, in Manhattan, Kansas, the tour about finished, I walked into a public facility and heard the old Bob Dylan song playing over the PA system--"The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind...."

Indeed that's the theme for the Crop Tech Tour so far this year, at least from my worm's eye view of it. Blowin' in the wind.