Lance Sommers, 37, farms 2,000 acres of grain crops and raises 300 head of dairy cows near the Ohio-Indiana border. His grandfather founded Sommers Farms, Inc. after immigrating to the area from Switzerland.
Today, the third-generation farmer manages the operation alongside his father, mother, sister, brother-in-law and nephew — who recently returned to the farm after majoring in ag business at Purdue University.
In 2015, Sommers and his family had an epiphany. Technology, they decided, was going to be the future of farming. Lance immediately dug in, doing research into the technologies that would work for his farm. He decided to add automation and robotics to the dairy side of the business to free up himself and his family members to refocus their efforts on other aspects of the operation. Today, the farm deploys five Lely robotic milking systems, robotic alley scrapers in the barns that run autonomously, and automated cow and calf feeding technologies that ensure his growing herd always has food within reach.
Q: How important is technology to your operation?
A: “You know, I think if you’re not adapting to our current situation and environment, you might not be here in the years to come. So, seeing that technology is readily available to us all and it’s not going anywhere, you either have to adapt or you’re probably going to be left out. By using technology, we get a 10% to 15% increase on our production, and then we are able to be more flexible in our schedule with grain farming and all of the school events and things like that. When we had the dairy, before we brought in all the technology, things were on a much more fixed schedule. Now, we are able to move our schedules around to kind of allow ourselves to have more of a work-life balance. The flexibility that technology gives us has certainly proven to be nice to have.”
Q: As a young farmer, what’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
A: “That would be a quote I heard from a high-yield soybean farmer in Georgia, Randy Dowdy. I met him at an industry event, and he told me ‘what makes a good farmer a great farmer is timing and attention to detail.’ I still think about that, and it turns out he was right.”
Q: Is there a piece of advice that you would offer to a younger row crop or livestock farmer who is just starting to get up and running with their business?
A: “Yeah, I would just say, work hard because hard work will always be important. Be ready to put in the work and the time and then look for opportunities where you can use technology to benefit you. It’s about working smarter not harder. And there’s a point where that needs to be in correlation. You still need to put the time in, but you can also use technology to you and your family’s benefit — to free yourselves up and to be more efficient overall and more productive.
The other piece comes from an ag retail salesperson that we’ve worked with for years. He always used to tell me how important it is to understand that we don’t know what we don’t know yet. So always try to be willing and ready to learn and to try something new. You shouldn’t ever be under the impression that you know it all, because again, we don’t know what we don’t know yet.”
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