Reported by Donna Wilson, STATEWIDE Correspondent

[Offscreen voice] Farmers in Nebraska are very progressive in adopting those technologies that will pay for their operations.

[Donna Wilson, Statewide Correspondent] Gone are the days of the horse and plow. Gone are the days of the ride on the tractor. Now the ride is inside. These are traded in for another "T" word -- technology.

[Steve Nelson] "I think that farmers now -- they used to be able to spend a lot of time in the field and improve themselves, do better. We spend that time in the office."

It's a changed land from the one four generations of Nelsons would farm. Steve Nelson is the fifth. He's already in his 20th year of farming.

[Nelson] "A global positioning system uses satellites to determine where you're at, latitude and longitude. It's just -- I guess if that's simple, that's as simple as it is."

To the rest of us it might not be that simple. Steve has incorporated the sky into his farming duties. What's the big deal about that? In the sky are satellites which determine three-dimensional positioning of the land helping adjust his farming to match the land to within inches. It's called precision farming. He's found that the farming age and new age do mix, and even though the average age of the family farmer in Nebraska is increasing, farmers here still seek out new, more efficient ways of farming.

[Dr. Bill Miller] "Farmers in any state, even though they're getting older, carefully evaluate new technologies. The only exception to that is if I was going to retire next year, I might not put a lot of money in a new technology that had a payoff over ten years, because I wouldn't get the benefits from it."

Twenty years under his belt and Nelson doesn't plan to stop farming any time soon.

[Nelson, pointing to the electronic box on his combine] "This is showing the yield per acre and the moisture as it comes into the bin."

He's used a yield monitoring device for two years.

[Nelson] "The amount of equipment that we bought has been cost effective now from the information that I've gathered on yields. An advantage of this kind of technology -- and it sort of leads us to think about the future and it's how we treat the environment. This kind of equipment will allow us to minimize the amount of nutrients, pesticides that we use and still have economical production."

Loy Dean Rush will mark 50 years of farming next year. His farm is four times the size it was back then.

[Loy Dean Rush] "Well, you didn't have the technology that you have today to figure out stuff. You more or less experimented, I guess, then and somewhat you still do, but you have a lot more technology of what to do and how to do it and the machinery is so much better and more expensive, too."

Rush realizes the family farm may be looking more and more to the mainframe, but the framework of the farm is still surrounded by Mother Nature.

[Rush] "We've had floods. Last year it was so wet we couldn't get in the fields to get the crop planted and it was late and a lot of it was drowned out. Now this year it was dry early, and so far we've been pretty lucky, but you get 15 miles west of us, and a lot of them got wiped out with hail again so this is something that we fight every year. You just don't get away from it. You worry about it also."

[Donna] So, ultimately technology may not make that much of a difference?

[Rush] "Not when it comes to that, no. Because you may be able -- in a good year, technology may help you quite a bit, but with the weather and all that, technology doesn't help you much."

The forces of nature can be controlled only so much. Another consideration with new technologies is a learning curve which looks to be at least five years. Dr. Miller recently conducted a survey of Nebraska farmers -- 7% are like Steve Nelson and use yield monitoring devices now; 16% use another approved technology, variable rate applicators. In five years about one third plan to use monitors and one half will master variable rate application.

In Norfolk a mid-summer day's debut. An upstart company called APEIS, Animal Permanent Electronic Identification System, is showing off its cattle tracking device.

[Audience member at presentation for APEIS] "Is it your vision that the keeper of this data would be a private enterprise or a public enterprise?"

The chip, implanted in a cow's ear, is smaller than a bean.

[Van Niedig] "It could have literally caused pseudorabies not to be a household word in agriculture as it is today."

In time it may replace another form of identification.

[Donna] Is this going to replace the brand?

[Van Niedig] "The hot iron brand is going to be replaced. I don't like that idea. I'm not advocating that idea and I don't want that to happen. But if the writing's on the wall, it's going to happen. Everybody knows it."

Replaced with what, though?

[Van Niedig] "Replaced with this [microchip] probably. Replaced with something."

A bold statement. A cattleman himself, Van Niedig says the federal government makes snails look fast. But even the government is giving the nod to the tracking chip.

[Dr. Jim Davis, USDA] "It's going to work because it is needed. As we look to the future of livestock identification and the advent of what we're seeing in today's agricultural markets, we're seeing an increased need for international localization of marketing our agricultural products. Livestock identification plays an integral role in that series of events."

For 12 years Van Niedig labored over the idea of using a chip which had already been invented. He wanted to use it to compile information on livestock in a large database. He says England's Mad Cow Disease could have been prevented with proper tracking.

[Van Niedig] "If an animal in Europe is born today and it's microchipped and it's entered into a central repository -- a central data repository and all of that animal's offspring and the offspring from that and so on and so forth, if they're all identified and maintained in some type of a format to where information travels from one owner to another and that is all collated and controlled, then perhaps ten years from now, this won't happen again."

Beyond catastrophic events, tracking, some say, may just make your meat better.

[Davis] "This will give us the ability to key in tenderness and other common traits that we want in our product. If you want lean meat, you can utilize identification to decide what breeds and what varieties of livestock you want to use for your production."

[Van Niedig] "I am responsible for that product. Whether I want to be or not, I am liable for the product that I produce. If I'm going to be liable, then I want some information that I can use to say that my product is better than yours."

It hasn't been all good for getting APEIS started. They're in the midst of a 12-year-long beginning. Technology is still hard to get up and running.

[Van Niedig] "We never wake up in the morning without knowing full well that by that night it will all be over -- it could all be over. We are totally and completely an uncollateralized company. We're all venture money driven. If people stop putting money in, we're out of business."

As for the sharing of the technology...

[Van Niedig] "Since new technology is only new for so long, out of time is also a consideration but the Van Niedigs of the world still see a lot of support."

[Larry Uecker] "No matter which side you're on, if you're in the cow/calf business, backgrounding cattle or feeding cattle, selling purebred livestock, bulls or heifers, it's just a good way to keep track of everything."

European officials recently sponsored Niedig in a trip there. He'll be pushing the tracking database again abroad in just a few weeks. Reporting for Statewide, I'm Donna Wilson.