The tractor coughed but didn’t catch, so the old farmer on the ground yelled up to the old farmer behind the wheel. “The black button,” Don Magee said. “You push it in.” And then it roared to life, an ...

Harvesting corn in a $300,000, eight-row combine is a solitary, highly mechanized business. Such was not always the case. Up through the late 1930s, most corn was picked not by machine, but by hand.

LEFT: Corn pickers, which eliminated the need for the crop to be picked by hand, have given way to behemoth combines that can harvest 24 rows at a time. RIGHT: Birkey’s also sells drones that can ...