In the heart of California’s Sacramento Valley, Blake Harlan sits at his desk. It’s early March. He is talking on his iPhone and trying to wrap up some business in his office, which he built next to a 1900s-era house that has been in his family for generations. Life is about to get busy for this grain, nut and fruit producer. Soon, tomatoes will come off the vine, picked by a harvesting machine that has been decades in the making.

“The settlers came to this farm, and we’ve been here ever since,” Harlan says. “Back then, there was more livestock. In the 1900s, they started growing into more grains.”

In 1932, the Harlan family started growing processing tomatoes in Yolo County, located just west of Sacramento. They’ve been in the business ever since. Fully 96% of all the processing tomatoes grown in the U.S. come from California, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports. In 2015, the state produced nearly 15 million tons of processing tomatoes valued at roughly $1.39 billion, the Agricultural Resource Marketing Center notes.

Technology has transformed the tomato business, and the Harlans have been on the forefront since the late 1960s. As early adopters, they’ve helped pave the way for a multibillion-dollar industry.

“Harvester prototypes first came to the market in the early ’60s, and by the ’70s, mechanical harvesting was the norm,” he says. “I have very vague memories of hand-picking, but I have very vivid memories of the early machines. My father has been very active in developing harvesting equipment and electronic sorting.”

A culture of innovation and experimentation has thrived on the Harlan farm, thanks in part to his Dad, Bernell, whom Harlan credits for his willingness to try new tech.

“I’ve been lucky to have been raised in a very active shop where a lot of ideas were coming around,” he acknowledges. “We’ve had a lot of ideas that worked and as many or more that haven’t worked.”

Revolutionary Change. When tomato harvesters first became mechanized, they ran on gas motors with low horsepower and crude hydraulic systems. Over time, the hydraulics became more complex, but they still weren’t very labor-efficient: Five machines, each with 12 people sorting tomatoes, struggled to get in six truckloads per day. Today, one machine running two shifts, each with two sorters, can pick 50 loads a day, Harlan says. A single load can be picked and sorted in 20 minutes. The family started playing with electronic sorting in the early 1970s. Early prototypes used air compressors, then water pressure, to blow fruit off the machine.

Harvesting isn’t the only aspect of the farm that technology has revolutionized. GPS and irrigation systems also have been game-changers. Harlan started using GPS around 2001. At the time, few other farmers in California had adopted the tool.

“A neighbor told me he would never consider it until it was cheaper,” Harlan recalls. “Those systems haven’t gotten significantly cheaper.”

The Harlan family used that first tractor-guidance system for a period of two years. It’s a decision Harlan clearly does not regret.

“We had two years of gains that didn’t cost us any more than being out on the front end of things,” he says. “In that case, I wasn’t really out any extra money because the bigger companies that came around later offered trade-in incentives.”

Risks And Rewards. The biggest challenge of being an early adopter of technology is deciding which tools and resources have potential and which don’t, Harlan says.

“If you consider yourself a fairly early adopter of technology, you have to weigh the cost and benefits,” he points out. “Is this something that will break your bank if it fails? If the answer is yes, you better think twice about it.”

On his farm, the ability to work in a straight line and recreate that line every year proved critical because of another new technology making its way to the field: drip irrigation. Early on, clunky guidance systems really only worked well on tracked tractors, so Harlan set out on a mission to transform the process that would water his biggest crop.

“Early adopters can sometimes be on the wrong side,” he says. “There’s a lot of risk being an early adopter in both technology that fails or with companies that fail.”

For that reason, and in light of the low cost of irrigation water at the time, Harlan’s family declined to install drip-irrigation technology the first time a salesman came to the farm. Even after they had agreed to have a drip system installed, his father wasn’t impressed.

“We were 10 years ahead of most people in drip irrigation, but we put it in the field and nothing changed,” Bernell says. “We put it in on our prime ground, and the yield advantage isn’t as high with it on prime ground. It was also very expensive then, so the cost benefit wasn’t there.”

Today, variable-rate motors drive the pumps, and improved systems have made it feasible to irrigate all of the Harlans’ tomatoes, corn and sunflowers, about 5,000 acres in total, with permanent drip systems buried in the ground. Because of their soil type, they must use traditional tillage practices even in drip-irrigated fields. That’s where GPS comes into play. The drip is laid down with 60" spacing straight down the row. That row is marked using GPS. Then, all initial field work is performed with GPS. From there, the farm works in a row-cropping system: Tractors follow the furrows, meaning not every tractor on the farm needs guidance capabilities. Solar panels installed in 2015 at the farm’s headquarters offset 50% of the power used to pump water to fields.

“We use half as much fuel per acre as we did 20 years ago, but our electricity use has skyrocketed [because of the drip],” he says. “[In the past,] we could open the head gate with no energy cost.”

Tech Triage. Although water technology has come a long way from the simple days of flood and furrow irrigation, Harlan says it’s also the No. 1 part of their operation where more innovation is essential.

“The technologies we have the greatest need for are those that make our irrigation systems more efficient: water monitoring, the ability to tie water monitoring and field information that can be monitored by myself or, more importantly, by a labor force,” Harlan explains.

Water is a constant battle for farmers in California, whether they are plagued by drought or challenged by regulations from legislators. “Operating in California has its downfalls,” Harlan says, “but the weather, climate and soils give us opportunities that we wouldn’t have other places.”

Access to new technologies keeps the business exciting, he says, but information overload is an issue.

“You have to decide what has the most value. Does watching your tractors have as much impact as watching your soil moisture?” he asks. “You have to triage the technology that’s out there and weigh what’s most important to you.”

Although Harlan considers himself lucky to live in a time of technological innovation, he says his grandfather’s era represents the most astounding period in the agricultural history of the U.S. “When [my grandpa] was in college, he had professors that told him the machinery revolution would never come to be,” he points out. “Obviously, they were wrong. If you look at the production of agriculture, I have no doubt we’re the most efficient in the world. We continue to sell these low-value commodity crops and eke out a profit, which is pretty amazing.”

Photos by Bill Payne