HORTICULTURE producers will have the ability to manage their farms on a plant-by-plant basis according to a major machinery brand.
John Deere Australia and New Zealand precision agriculture manager Benji Blevin spoke at Hort Connections 2021 in Brisbane last month, outlining a vision of the technology-driven, automated and connected fleet of farm equipment that will drive the future of horticulture.
Mr Blevin broke down the key technologies which would propel rapid advancement into five categories:
- connectivity
- sensors
- data
- artificial intelligence
- robotics.
He said the next wave of technology will allow farmers to drive down much deeper into their farm data.
As horticulture has long struggled with the cost of labour, and more recently just sourcing workers since the pandemic travel restrictions, technology has often been held up as a means of helping solve the problems.
Mr Blevin said the agriculture sector was in the midst of a paradigm shift away from bigger and stronger machines to smarter, easier-to-use and technologically-advanced equipment, which will lead to productivity gains and be at the heart of the long-term sustainability of the industry.
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"This transition is well underway, as many growers are already using their technology and farm data to make management decisions that are yielding positive economic and environmental outcomes," Mr Blevin said.
"Excitingly, there is still room for growth and with further adoption of precision agriculture technology, farmers will have increasingly seamless and more precise control of their data and equipment."
The precise refinement of input costs on a detailed level will be able to be monitored against plant performance, according to Mr Blevin.
"It also means the environmental footprint of agriculture can be significantly reduced as less chemicals are being applied on farms," he said.
He took the opportunity to show off John Deere's Machine Sync, a system that allows harvesting equipment to control the speed of its chaser bin, as an example of technology well positioned for adoption within the sector.
This not only assists farmers to guard against spray drift but also helps reduce overall chemical use, which of course has cost saving and sustainability benefits, while also maintaining optimal spray coverage and droplet size.
- Benji Blevin, precision agriculture manager, John Deere Australia and New Zealand
"Machine Sync brings powerful efficiency gains as the chaser bin is working at the optimal location and speed in relation to the harvester, which reduces the potential for crop loss and enables the harvester to operate at maximum capacity while unloading, improving harvesting efficiency," he said.
"Working alongside this, there is also the Controlled Traffic Farming (CTF) feature which allows equipment operating under Machine Sync to stay on the CTF track when unloading.
"This helps prevent soil compaction and reduces the possibility of human error."
The Smart-Apply Intelligent Spray Control System, which is an add-on kit for air-blast sprayers, is also an application supporting horticulture producers to make the step change.
Using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensing the Smart-Apply system helps ensure only the canopy is sprayed and automatically adjusts spray volume based on the plant's density and canopy per nozzle zone.
"This not only assists farmers to guard against spray drift but also helps reduce overall chemical use, which of course has cost saving and sustainability benefits, while also maintaining optimal spray coverage and droplet size," he said.
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