CropTecBuzz

New John Deere tractor, sprayer and precision farming technology will be featured at November’s The CropTec Show in Peterborough, with the focus on machine, system and operator connectivity leading to increased efficiency and reduced operating costs.

John Deere’s new 6250R tractor, featuring the award-winning CommandPRO joystick and an AutoPowr transmission, will be operated with a 5200-litre capacity R952i trailed sprayer equipped with the innovative PowrSpray wet system in the event’s outdoor demonstration area. The 6250R develops up to 300hp with Intelligent Power Management and is fitted as standard with JDLink telematics, including remote display access (RDA) and wireless data transfer (WDT) linked to the MyJohnDeere.com website portal.

CommandPRO’s functionality allows the tractor to be controlled from top speed to zero with a simple push or pull of the joystick. Both this and the conventional tractor pedals can be operated at the same time, and there is no need for an external ISOBUS joystick as the driver can also operate the tractor and ISOBUS functions simultaneously.

PowrSpray features a unique dual-circuit design with two solution pumps, each optimised for a specific function. A 1200-litre/min filling pump offers fast fill of the solution tank at low engine speeds, to reduce noise and fuel consumption. Automatic filling shut-off and the ability to rapidly power fill the 400-litre clean water tank are both standard features.

The industry exclusive Active Pause function enables the solution tank to stop filling while still providing clean water under high pressure for rinsing out chemical containers. This means the typical race against the filling solution tank is eliminated, and operators have all the time and clean water they need to complete chemical filling without stress.

A 1000-litre/min spraying pump delivers high output and exceptional spray accuracy. Automatic control of tank agitation and fully automated multi-cycle rinsing and dilution functions are also standard features of PowrSpray.

Indoors at the show, the emphasis will be on John Deere’s latest FarmSight services and support, including features such as RDA, WDT and Service Advisor Remote, which are now widely available from John Deere dealer specialists. All of this technology is designed to increase productivity and reduce cost, especially when paired with other FarmSight systems such as AutoTrac automatic steering and Section Control for sprayers and spreaders.

John Deere sees the future of farming in connectivity, making the most of machine, field and agronomist data in the decision making process. The company is pioneering the use of such data based around MyJohnDeere.com and a range of connected machines and systems.

The Operations Centre in MyJohnDeere.com serves as the central online location for farmers and contractors to connect to their machines and their fields. It also allows a wide range of partners to provide additional support to customers, including implement manufacturers, agricultural input suppliers, software companies and agricultural service providers such as crop advisors and other specialist consultants.

The latest apps make it very easy to keep track of machinery, get advice on seed and fertiliser rates or spray requirements and monitor machine productivity by working together with, and being connected to, the dealer, farm adviser and other suppliers.

For example, the new MyJobConnect service includes a MyJobsManager app for farm or fleet managers and contractors, and a MyJobs app for operators. There is also an additional app in the MyJobConnect Premium service called MyLogistics, which is an intelligent ag navigation app.

Services can be accessed in two ways, either from the office computer or on-the-go using dedicated apps for tablets and smartphones, which allow drivers to view and carry out tasks in real time from their mobile devices.

This latest John Deere connectivity package is designed to free up time for farmers and contractors to focus on their core business, and makes the complete work process including job planning, work orders, data recording, customer invoicing and reporting much easier, faster and more efficient.

CropTec 2017

Join John Deere this November at The CropTec Show.

Registration is free for all those who pre-register before the event.

Opti-cal are pleased to provide cutting edge drone software and hardware solutions. For generations farmers have walked their fields investigating crops manually for signs of stress or disease. This traditional, labour intensive method is time consuming and can be difficult when crop canopies thicken. With the development of UAV technology, this is no longer required!

Using the Parrot Sequoia multispectral sensor capturing multispectral images has never been easier. The Sequoia is revolutionising the sector, offering a comprehensive, adaptable solution that is compatible with all types of drones. With its two sensors, multispectral and sunshine, Sequoia analyses plants' vitality by capturing the amount of light they absorb and reflect. Collecting this data means that farmers can do what's best for their fields.

Implementing DJI Zenmuse XT's thermal capabilities, irrigation and water pooling can be managed more efficiently. Powered by FLIR's industry leading Tau 2 thermal camera, the Inspire XT gives growers a detailed understanding of the state of their lands, giving them fundamental insights that lead to better decision making.

Pix4D’s cutting edge software, multispectral, RGB and thermal images can be converted into accurate reflectance and index maps, like NDVI, and high resolution orthomosaics. Easily integrate drone-based technology into your Ag operations, processing locally when and where you want.

Opti-cal have the knowledge and skills to be able to support your entry into the world of Aerial Survey work. We can advise you on getting the right UAV and sensors for your line of work and provide full training and support when it comes to processing your data into 2D and 3D systems.

Opti-cal Survey Equipment is a well-established industry-leading supplier of land survey and precision measurement technologies. We sell, hire and service new and re-conditioned land survey and laser equipment.

For more information please contact 0330 678 0181 or sales@surveyequipment.com – surveyequipment.com

CropTec 2017

Join Opti-cal this November at The CropTec Show.

Registration is free for all those who pre-register before the event.

Benchmarking, new technology, science and research are key themes running through this year’s CropTec seminar programme, which has been developed specifically to help UK arable farmers to be profitable in the increasingly dynamic, volatile and competitive world of global crop production.

Technical excellence is one of the keys to future-proofing any farm business, the need for which has been exacerbated by Brexit, according to Stephen Howe, The CropTec Show’s development director.

“Growers and their suppliers are, quite rightly, concerned about the run up to the UK leaving the EU in less than two years,” he said. “There are also concerns about the level and form of support payments once we are operating outside of the CAP.

“Whatever the future holds, CropTec’s seminar programme is designed to arm growers with the knowledge they need to make the right technical decisions to drive down production costs while increasing productivity.”

Seminar programme:

The CropTec Show opening presentation by Adama Agricultural Solutions UK Ltd

Opening Address: Understanding your Competitors

A snapshot of cereal and oilseed production costs and some constraints faced by the UK’s main competitors. Discover how benchmarking can help you modify your farming business to make it fit for the future.

Speaker: Jack Watts AHDB, lead analyst, AHDB Cereals and Oilseeds

Crop Breeding Sponsored by Bayer CropScience

Session Chair: Russell McKenzie, Cambridgeshire farmer and Nuffield Scholar

Variety recommendations: where to find the information you need?

How to navigate the minefield that is new variety selection? What are the critical factors? What information is available and where?

Speakers: John Purslow, Farmacy Norfolk (day1); Peter Riley, Farmacy Norfolk (day 2)

Selecting for margin, yield or quality?

Selecting varieties based on financial performance achieved under local conditions.

Jock Willmott, partner, Farming, Strutt & Parker

Breaking down resistance

Why resistance breaks down and how new technologies might provide the answer.

James Brown, project leader Crop Genetics, John Innes Centre

Session chair Russell McKenzie says:

“Selecting a variety of wheat used to be a straightforward process. Pick the highest yielding variety on the list and the rest took care of itself. Nowadays, it is a revolving door process and the speed of replacement is much quicker, but is performance better than before or are we running to stand still?

“This exciting session will explore if there is more to variety selection than the status quo, how to get the best margin and returns for varieties under local conditions and how new technologies can help growers pinpoint and avoid potential weaknesses in new varieties.”

Crop Establishment Sponsored by Horsch

Session Chair: Robert Lockhart, Staffordshire farmer and vice-chairman NFU Combinable Crops Board

Soil Health: The keystone of profitability

Looking after your soil’s health and biology is key to maintaining profitability.

Jacqueline Stroud, soil scientist, Rothamsted Research

What’s the drill for drill selection?

Our independent specialist provides technical answers for specific scenarios.

Philip Wright, Independent Consultant

Containing cultivation costs

Getting crops off to the best possible start while keeping an eye on costs.

Brian Barker, Suffolk arable farmer

Session chair Robert Lockhart says:

“This session highlights the importance of looking after and getting the best from farming’s most basic asset, soil. The higher our expectations of the soil, the more we must put back into it for sustainable production.

“Matching drills and cultivation to our soils, and the constraints they impose with regard to weed control, is difficult, especially as farming operations grow and take in different soils.

“Costs of establishment are always a concern to all. Balancing the theory with on farm practice is down to the skill of the farmer and operator, with an eye to work rates and timely establishment.”

Crop Nutrition Sponsored by Yara

Session Chair: Mark Tucker, head of marketing and agronomy, Yara UK

Nutrient management strategies

Long-term or short-term? Which is the best nutritional strategy?

Natalie Wood, country agronomist, Yara UK

Targeting phosphorus for yield and profit

Guidelines on best farm practice.

Roger Sylvester-Bradley, head of crop performance, ADAS

Measuring, managing and utilising nutritional data

Maximising nutritional value and cost savings from cover crops and organic materials.

Ian Matts, farms director and agronomist, Brixworth Farming

Session chair Mark Tucker says:

“The Crop Nutrition panel will outline and discuss the latest advances in soil fertility and guidelines on the best farm practices in soil management, in particular how to target phosphorus for yield and profit discussing how targeting can help you manage soils at Index 1 rather than Index 2.”

“Visitors to the nutrition seminar can expect to leave with up-to-date knowledge on how they can most effectively use nutrients to boost crop, efficiency, performance and yield, allowing them to assess which is the best nutritional strategy for their business for the long term and short term.”

Crop Protection Sponsored by Belchim Crop Protection

Session Chair: Guy Smith, Essex farmer and NFU vice-president

What’s in the pipeline?

Potential novel solutions for crop protection in the UK.

Emma Hamer, senior plant health adviser, NFU

Application technology

Guidelines on nozzle selection, closed transfer systems and other ways to speed up spraying.

Tom Robinson, independent consultant

Pest and disease forecasting

Benefits of accurate monitoring and forecasting for pests and disease on field scale crops.

Francesca Salinari, R&D projects co-ordinator, Agrii

Session chair Guy Smith says:

“The challenges today's farmers face to produce profitable crops don't seem to diminish – loss of key actives, increasing pest, disease and weed resistance, climate change, political insecurity and burdensome legislation to name but a few.

“It's always good to hear from the experts, and I look forward to finding out more about potential solutions in the pipeline, to help offset our dwindling pesticide armoury.

“We are sure to pick up some valuable tips from the application session, while developments in pest and disease forecasting can only be positive.”

The CropTec Show takes place at the East of England Showground, Peterborough, on Wednesday 29^th and Thursday 30^th November.

The event remains free for farmers and agronomists to attend, provided tickets are booked in advance.

At Sencrop, we are a passionate team dedicated to making a real impact in agriculture.

Sencrop empowers ALL farmers to make the right decisions at the right time to improve their yields, and ultimately their way of life.
Sencrop allows agri-partners (resellers, chemical companies, technical centers, etc.) to spread their services with ultra-local information, and get a closer relationship with the farmers.

Our solution gives farmers the ability to:

View the current conditions of their fields in real time.
Make better agronomic decisions thanks to ultra-local weather information.
Have more interaction with their partners based on streaming data.

Thanks to low-power, long-range networks, and affordable, connected sensors, in-field data streams continuously into the Sencrop cloud platform.
Sencrop has developed a web and mobile-based platform to:

View in-field ag-weather conditions in real time.
Access or push alerts and decision-making tools.
Connect and fuel in any agry-partners services based on in-field data.connected to in-field sensors.

Sencrop is dedicated to bringing valuable precision farming services to farmers everywhere.

Sencrop is compatible with all agronomic Decision support tools and disease models: data integration to cooperatives/merchant’s agronomic models (disease prediction, pest management, stage of plant growth, etc.). We allow agri-partners to spread their services.
Sencrop is a collaborative platform enabling any farmer to share their data/observation with their ag-experts, partners or neighbours.
Low-power, large area network: a young technology but a global trend.

Today, Sencrop is building the largest customer base in Europe with powerful cloud and key partnerships.

Sencrop is particularly adapted to the potato growers and permits to predict the late blight disease, based on agronomic developed by key partners.

Reduce the amount of back and forth trips a farmer make to spray its crops; offset treatments by several days if necessary: local data relayed from the connected ag-weather station in real time are invaluable for deciding how to treat crops when risk factors for disease are present. Late blight growth is stimulated by successive periods of warm weather and high humidity. Water on potato leaves prompts blight zoospores to germinate and causes plants to become infected.

Sencrop enables you to anticipate and program a system of simple alerts. Sencrop can fuel data into any decisionmaking tool that makes it possible to know the risk of the fields being infected by late blight at any time, based on weather forecasts, crop varieties, planting, and sprouting dates, overall health statuses and previous actions taken (treatments and irrigation, etc).

For more information on Sencrop and potato crops, please visit http://www.sencrop.com/en/

CropTec 2017

Join Sencrop this November at The CropTec Show.

Registration is free for all those who pre-register before the event.

The ground-breaking Hands Free Hectare (HFHa), run by Harper Adams University and Precision Decisions, which aimed to be the first in the world to plant, tend and harvest a crop with only autonomous vehicles and drones, has come to an end after a successful harvest.

The Iseki tractor which was used earlier in the project for the spraying, drilling and rolling, was smaller and lighter than most tractors used nowadays. The team’s mentality that smaller is better was carried through to harvest which was completed with a combine harvester designed to harvest trial plots. The team believe that the use of smaller agricultural machines could improve soil and plant health.

Jonathan Gill, researcher at Harper Adams University, said: “There’s been a focus in recent years on making farming more precise, but the larger machines that we’re using are not compatible with this method of working. They’re also so heavy that their damaging farmers’ soils.

“If combines in the future were similar to the size of the combine we used in this project, which was a little Sampo combine with a header unit of only two meters, it would allow more precise yield maps to be created. They would also be much lighter machines.

“The weather can be an issue when farming, and provide only small windows for work to be completed; we’ve experienced it ourselves with this project. Just like anywhere in the UK, we’ve had to adjust our spraying times and harvest times due to the rain. This is part of the reason machines have been getting so much bigger over the years; we need to be able to complete work quickly. We believe the best solution is that in the future, farmers will manage fleets of smaller, autonomous vehicles. These will be able to go out and work in the fields, allowing the farmer to use their time more effectively and economically instead of having to drive up and down the fields.

“But it’s going to take new talent entering the industry to develop the technology. We hope that this project has helped to inspire some people and shown them the range of interesting and innovative jobs that are available now in agriculture.”

Martin Abell, mechatronics researcher for the industry lead, Precision Decisions, said: “This project aimed to prove that there’s no technological reason why a field can’t be farmed without humans working the land directly now and we’ve done that. We set-out to identify the opportunities for farming and to prove that it’s possible to autonomously farm the land, and that’s been the great success of the project.

“We achieved this on an impressively low budget compared to other projects looking at creating autonomous farming vehicles. The whole project cost less than £200k, funded by Precision Decisions and Innovate UK. We used machinery that was readily available for farmers to buy; open source technology; and an autopilot from a drone for the navigation system.”

Jonathan added: “Despite our combine being 25 years old, it performed absolutely wonderfully.

“It’s phenomenal to know that I was part of this world-first project. To know that we’ve actually done it and you can now look out at the field and see it’s all gone. We grew it, nursed it and now we’ve harvested it, completely autonomously. What an achievement.”

“It feels amazing to have finished,” said Martin. “We’ve worked all year for this. At some points it didn’t feel like it was ever going to happen, but we’ve done it.

“Our major challenge leading up to harvest was getting the combine ready. We spent a lot of time practicing; getting our headland turns right and on the day they appeared to be perfect, which was amazing to see.

“The combine drove a lot better than the tractor. We made a bit of a breakthrough with that. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to make the same adaptions to our tractor, so even though we’d practiced a rolling team, as a precaution during the actual trial, we didn't allow the tractor to get too close to the combine to avoid any accidents.

“Throughout the year we’ve been predicting a yield of 5 tonnes. Looking in the trailer, it looks like we’re not quite there. Our agronomist predicted 4.5 tonnes and it looks like he’s on the money.”

The team now plan to make a Hands Free Hectare beer with the spring barley that has been harvested. They also hope to bring the project back by repeating the experiment, but with a winter crop.

Anyone interested in the project and wants to help keep it going for 2018, please get in contact with the Hands Free Hectare team.

CropTec 2017

Join Harper Adams University and Precision Decisions this November at The CropTec Show.

Registration is free for all those who pre-register before the event.

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