Al Myers

Who He Is

Al Myers grew up on a crop-and-livestock farm in Watseka, Illinois, where a high school agriculture teacher noticed his knack for machines and suggested he pursue engineering. He earned engineering degrees from the University of Illinois and spent years designing hydraulic systems for an aerospace and equipment company before striking out on his own. In his spare time, he worked on an idea that didn’t exist yet: a sensor that could measure how much grain a combine was harvesting as it moved, so a farmer could see which parts of a field produced well and which didn’t. He bolted a crude prototype onto his father’s combine in the fall of 1986, then spent six years refining it with the help of just three farmers who tested it. In June 1992, he launched the Yield Monitor 2000 through his new company, Ag Leader Technology, working alone from home at first. He hoped to sell 30 or 40 units that first year and sold 10.

Why He Matters

The yield monitor made precision agriculture practical because it gave farmers the first detailed, foot-by-foot record of what their fields actually produced. Once that data could be combined with GPS positions, the yield map was born, and yield maps became the starting point for almost every decision a precision agriculture technician makes today. One of Myers’s earliest customers used the monitor to discover a pest problem in his soil that would have been invisible without it, exactly the kind of hidden pattern the technology is meant to find. Within a few years, a major equipment manufacturer was installing his system at the factory, and the company he started alone grew into a global business. His story shows that some of the most important tools in a field are built by one person who noticed a problem, tested a fix on a family farm, and kept going after a disappointing first year.