The use of technology should only increase on farms in the Cambria-Somerset region during the next five years.

That is the view of Miguel Saviroff, agriculture financial management educator at the Somerset County Extension Office at 6024 Glades Pike, Somerset, and Brian Kelly, dairy extension educator whose four-county region includes Cambria and Somerset.

Saviroff and Kelly are Pennsylvania State Cooperative Extension employees. Kelly works out of the Blair County Extension Office in Altoona.

“Farmers will be trying to reduce heating, electricity and transportation expenditures because of high oil prices,” Saviroff said.

They will work toward those goals by seeking to adopt technologies that will produce energy from products or byproducts of farming, he said.

He predicted technology being used now to convert manure into electricity will be improved. He envisions new technologies to be developed in the productions of ethanol and bio-fuels.

For instance, he said development of genetically engineered crops that are high yielding and require less processing than corn could be used for ethanol production and oilseeds with more oil content could be used for biodiesel production.

A video teleconference system has been in use for about a year at cooperative extension offices in which the Internet is utilized to deliver various educational programs.

Saviroff predicts this teleconferencing technology will keep improving, which he said should result in better signals and better video reception.

Robotic milking could become more commonplace on some farms, Saviroff predicted.

Instead of a cow being milked manually, she is milked by a robot.

The primary purposes are to increase milk production and reduce labor costs, Saviroff said.

In robotic milking, a cow decides when she needs to be milked and voluntarily goes into the milking stall.

When a cow becomes used to this method, she will be more relaxed and produce a larger amount of milk, Saviroff said.

Kelly sees robotic milking as an option some farmers could consider as they look at the future.

But it’s an expensive option.

One unit that will milk about 50 cows carries a price tag of about $100,000, he said.

On the other hand, he said the device would eliminate the need to have people do the milking two or three times each day.

Computers are playing in-creased roles on many farms, Kelly noted.

He said they are being used in the management and identification of animals, in fertilizer applications and are becoming part of the operations of tractors.

Global positioning systems should become more commonplace, he added.

He said global positioning systems, commonly called GPS, can help farmers improve efficiency.

GPS is a worldwide navigation system formed from a constellation of satellites and their ground stations.

GPS uses these satellites as reference points to calculate positions accurate to a matter of meters.