New historic marker in rural DeKalb honors farm innovators

DeKALB – Thirty-two years after an invention born on a DeKalb farmstead was filed for patent, dozens gathered in DeKalb for the dedication of a historic marker honoring the industry-changing invention.

If barbed wire revolutionized agriculture in the 19th century, the innovation created by Steve Faivre and fellow farmer Dave Larson on Faivre’s farm can be credited with propelling farming practices into the data-driven world of the 21st century.

Their invention, a yield monitor, allows farmers to collect digitized geospatial data pertaining to their farm’s inputs and outputs. A yield monitor has become a standard piece of farm equipment over the past 30 years.

Max Armstrong, a Chicago-based agriculture-focused broadcaster, said the yield monitor has allowed famers to continue to grow their farming outputs, much like pesticides and plant genetic knowledge has done for crop yield.

“I think we need to really appreciate and maybe ponder a little bit of what’s to come yet,” Armstrong said. “I think when we think of the advances that have been made in agriculture and how we’ve been able to keep that trend line yield planted, we naturally think of genetics. But more and more, we need to think about everything that has come to pass in terms of that yield monitor, and what it’s allowed us to do on farms all around the world. It’s a magnificent achievement.”

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Steve Faivre, one of the creators of the yield monitor, speaks Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, during the dedication, hosted by the DeKalb Area Agricultural Heritage Association, for the new historical marker at the Faivre farm in DeKalb. The marker celebrates the creation yield monitor, an important innovation in farming. (Mark Busch)

Aside from the commercial success, Faivre and Larson now have a historical marker, paid for by the DeKalb Area Agricultural Heritage Association, to show for the accomplishment.

Speaking to an audience of city and county officials, DeKalb mayoral candidates and area farmers on his family farm, Faivre said he never set out to commercialize his ideas but found it necessary.

“Even with the yield monitor, it was, ‘Can we get this to work to the point that we can install it on our equipment and not have to go through the headache of commercializing it?’” Faivre said. “And as Dave said, things catch up, you find out you actually have to have more money than you feel you can ask your family for, although I think we did. So we had to go to the market to get some of that, and as Dave said, it has been quite a ride.”

Before they officially invented the yield monitor, Larson and Faivre began selling AGMAPP, the first computerized field-mapping software, in 1988, according to the DeKalb Area Agricultural Heritage Association.

A couple of years after going to market with AGMAPP, they developed their first yield monitor concept. The plans used metal stripes on a strain gauge to measure the amount of grain moving through a combine. The pair then consulted the founder of Dawn Equipment company, Jim Basset, on the project.

Jim Basset’s son, Joe Basset, spoke for him at the memorial dedication and recanted memories of his father, Faivre and Larson seeking to file their refined yield monitor design with a patent attorney in Chicago.

“This patent attorney was in a high floor of what is now the Ogilvie Transportation Center, where you’d take the Metra trains, and sitting on the desk and kind of sitting there with my father, and there was a Dawn yield monitor on one side and then there was an Ag Leader yield monitor on the other side,” Joe Basset said. “And [I] even [remember] remarking to my father that the kind of mechanics of the Ag Leader yield monitor would yield less resolution in the sensor, and how that was even apparent as a 14-year-old.”

The success of the yield monitor that Faivre, Larson and Basset invented has led to the continued improvement of yield maps used by farmers throughout the world. The men may not have found their way to commercialization if it wasn’t for Armstrong, who helped them go from farmstead inventors to agricultural entrepreneurs.

Larson said Armstrong helped them reshape how they brought their products to market after a business connection brought them together.

“We sat down with Max, and what we realized pretty quickly was what we had was pretty cool, but we didn’t have a clue how to market anything,” Larson said. “So Max came in and not only convinced us to move further, move beyond just our own farms, but to actually look at where we might be able to commercialize this.”

From barbed wire to a yield monitor, multiple contributions to modern agriculture have been invented in DeKalb County. Now anyone interested can learn about both innovations near where they were invented.

The marker honoring the invention of the yield monitor has a home on the Faivre family farm on the south side of Fairview Drive near Nelson Road in DeKalb.

Faivre said some of the county’s residents contributed to their success.

“The community we’ve been raised in is a lot of what supports this,” Faivre said. “And I remember there was a lot of people who kind of doubted what we were doing and said, ‘You guys are nuts. Why would you want to do that?’ But there was a lot of people that were enthused about it and were very supportive.”