Harvesting Technology : Agriculture: A handful of growers are experimenting with computers to monitor crops.

David Koontz settled into a stuffed leather chair in his Somis-area living room, swung a computer terminal over his lap and scanned his crop.

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The screen flashed icons and measurements taken from sensors planted in Koontz’s 30-acre avocado grove. Soil moisture levels looked good, maybe a little wet. Koontz didn’t mind.

“I’ve been concerned about this hot weather, whether we were going to get Santa Anas, so I’m tickled to death,” he said.

Koontz, trained as an engineer, is one of a handful of farmers experimenting with what may be agriculture’s future: using computers to monitor crops, control irrigation and cut water bills. The technology has been available for years. But farmers have been slow to use it.

“For many of the growers, nothing beats walking through the orchard, taking a shovel, digging down and seeing how moist the soil is,” said Willard Thompson of the Southern California Agricultural Water Team.

The promise such technology holds, of using precisely the amount of water a crop needs, could be an immense benefit to farmers in an area as dependent on imported water as dry Southern California, farmers agree.

“When the Santa Anas are blowing, we know we need more [water], but no one’s really sure how much more unless they have a system like this,” said Bob Tobias, a Ventura farmer and operations manager of Mission Produce.

Tobias is considering adopting the computer farming approach.

“We’ll never want to let the computer do it totally, because there’s nothing better than a farmer out there walking around, checking how dry things are,” he said. “But as a tool, it’s an excellent tool.”

Several companies have tried to market these systems, with varying success. San Diego-based Sensing & Control Inc. was formed last year to market systems that can link instruments monitoring wind speed, temperature, soil moisture and other factors.

The systems, accessible through a personal computer running Windows, can also control irrigation equipment. Company President Alan B. Walters said farmers have been slow to warm to the system. He is convinced, however, that farmers will eventually realize the benefits.

“This is an idea whose time has come,” he said. “A good number of people are beginning to recognize it.”

Koontz’s system is his own creation. A former engineer with Hughes Aircraft Co., Koontz banded together with five other engineers to design the AgriMate system he uses.

They formed their own company to market AgriMate but dissolved it last year due in part to slow sales.

Thompson isn’t surprised.

“We’ve seen these companies come and go, and their technologies are pretty darned good,” he said. “The problem is the uptake on the part of the farmer tends to be a little bit slow, picking up on computer applications.”

Even if Koontz’s business venture has folded, his farm is thriving on the new technology.

The different screens he pulls up on his aging Apple computer show him how much water his irrigation system pumped the previous night, and let him check the operations of the tanks and valves in the system.

The computer system not only allows Koontz to check growing conditions. It adjusts the irrigation system to deliver the precise amount of water Koontz’s avocados need.

“I spent years running around at night and days, trying to figure how much to irrigate, and now it’s automatic,” he said.

One screen shows a red face wearing a burglar’s mask and warns that a soil-moisture monitor has been stolen. Actually, Koontz removed it for repair.

Eight of the monitors, called tensiometers, are planted in different parts of the orchard. Wired into the computer system, their use has cut Koontz’s water bills from about $1,900 each month to between $600 and $800.

The system has also taught him that different parts of the orchard, on a steep hillside facing South Mountain, need different amounts of water. Under his old irrigation methods, he said, some of the trees simply didn’t get enough.

“It was amazing to see the vitality of the trees after we started,” he said. “They were just being starved of water.”