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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.

ALWAYS exercise best practice when applying clethodim, is the message for growers hoping to effectively tackle black-grass in oilseed rape crops this coming season.

Using the correct water rate, applying with a water conditioner and ensuring the blackgrass is actively growing, are just some of the factors that contribute to optimum control.

Due to the need to drill oilseed rape early, implementing the highly-endorsed stale seedbed control method is not an option, making the efficacy of blackgrass herbicides such as clethodim, even more crucial.

Arysta LifeScience Product Development & Technical Manager for UK & Ireland, Don Pendergrast said: “Oilseed rape needs a warm soil to encourage correct establishment, which gives the crop a head-start against migrating pests such as cabbage stem flea beetle.

“This means that delaying drilling to allow grass weeds to chit is not an option. Instead, using chemistry such as clethodim correctly, as part of a wider black-grass programme, offers consistent and better control.

“Apply clethodim at a steady speed through medium to fine droplets with the correct water rate of 200l/ha – this is essential for good weed coverage. Because clethodim is formulated with adjuvant technology, using additional adjuvants is not recommended, but we do however, recommend the use of a water conditioner, particularly in hard water areas.

“Unlike many black-grass control products, it’s important to avoid spraying too early. Growers should aim to target the plant when it has three leaves, to improve the uptake of the chemistry.”

Launched four years ago by Arysta LifeScience, Centurion Max is a leading 120g/l clethodim-based product, active on black-grass.

Following feedback from users and trials at Arysta LifeScience, changes to the stewardship have been made to enhance the use-ability of the product. This includes reducing the no-spray window from 14-days to 10-days prior to applying Centurion Max.

Post application, a 14-day no-spray period is in place for herbicides and fungicides, and a 7-day period for nutritional products and insecticides.

Mr Pendergrast added: “Following detailed trials work, we are pleased to be able to adjust the stewardship of Centurion Max in recognition of the importance of nutritional products in crop establishment.

“We will continue to research clethodim so that we can give users improved flexibility, without compromising on crop safety.”

For more information, visit www.arystalifescience.co.uk or e-mail ukenquiries@arysta.com

CropTec 2017

Join Arysta LifeScience this November at The CropTec Show.

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

Many years of experience in the field have allowed Cimbria SEA colour sorting machines to play a leading role into the optical electronic sorting industry. Our strong market position is the result of over 40 years of know-how in development and production of optical electronic color sorting equipment. This enables us to offer the most innovative and flexible sorting solutions based on a technical experience and a strong concept.

The latest sorting machines introduced to the market by Cimbria are the “Chromex” and “True” optical sorters, equipped with high-resolution full-color RGB trichromatic cameras which, combined with HIS software system, allow a near human eye vision color sorting technology. The Chromex system is also equipped with a shape-sizing function integrated into the system, to sort out elements according to their geometric characteristics.

LED lighting and back-ground systems, exclusively designed for our sorting machines, allow the most precise focusing of the beam on the inspection line.

Program settings and adjustments are performed through a user-friendly software, which allows the real image setting directly on the sorter touch-screen, to establish the defective elements to sort out.

All Cimbria sorters are available from 1 to 7 chutes, to satisfy any production capacity.

Our machines perfectly suit the needs of modern food and non-food processing systems that demand the optical sorters ability to detect and reject products having a similar color but with different shades.

Some typical examples for which the highest sorting accuracy is required are removal of Ergot from Cereals, Wheat from Barley, removal of discoloured Beans to name but a few.

Cimbria SEA Colour Sorting machines represents state-of-the-art optical sorting technology which is able to match the increasingly stringent requirements of food commodities industry, ensuring that safety and purity requirements are met.

For more information please contact Cimbria on 01757 706387 or visit www.cimbria.com

CropTec 2017

Join Cimbria this November at The CropTec Show.

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

A new control system designed to provide reliable drying of grain and other combinable crops with minimal manual intervention will be launched at the CropTech event by Kentra, one of the UK’s leading crop dryer manufacturers.

The Dryer Master DM510 control unit and software can be retrofitted to most continuous flow crop dryers or embedded into the control panel of a new Kentra dryer. Both installations use a pair of moisture sensors – one at the intake, one at the discharge point – to calculate and automatically adjust how long grain needs to spend passing through the dryer to achieve the target moisture level set by the operator.

Barry Higginbottom, Kentra managing director, says: “This proven technology from Canada can save valuable time otherwise spent monitoring and managing a dryer manually and can bring about significant savings in terms of energy use and unnecessary weight loss resulting from over-drying.”

The Dryer Master system comprises a highly accurate moisture sensor installed in the conveyor line taking grain from the dryer and an inlet sensor usually fitted at the top of a continuous flow dryer that detects changes in the moisture content of incoming grain. The control software uses the readings from these sensors to calculate the residence time needed to hit an average target moisture and adjust the discharge rate accordingly.

“The ability to predict when, say, wetter incoming grain will fill the dryer takes all the guesswork out of managing the system and results in more accurate and consistent drying,” says Mr Higginbottom.

“

With manual monitoring and control, you’re always working behind the curve, altering settings after the event – when the combine opens up in damper crop around a field boundary, for example, or as crops lose moisture after a dewy morning,” he adds. “With intake moisture sensing and predictive software, grain drying becomes more accurate and consistent.”

Both sensors automatically compensate for grain temperature to ensure accurate readings and calibrating the post-drying sensor involves nothing more than pressing a ‘calibrate’ button on the control panel, putting a couple of samples through a moisture meter and entering the readings.

“We don’t advocate a ‘set and forget’ approach; it’s good practice to have someone supervising the drying operation and we recommend repeating the sensor calibration two or three times a day as a check,” says Barry Higginbottom. “But the accuracy of this automated control system will give the store supervisor confidence to attend to other aspects of harvest management without neglecting the dryer.”

Significant cost saving is the other potential attraction of the system, he adds: “Manual grain dryer management involves responding to samples taken after the grain has been dried and to avoid being caught out there is a tendency to err on the side of caution, which often results in a lot of grain being dried beyond the optimum.”

That is costly in energy – bearing in mind it takes more energy to move grain from 14% to 13% mc than from 15-14% – and also in weight loss.

“Assuming a grain price of £100/tonne, a farm drying 20,000 tonnes of grain has only to save 1% moisture in over-drying to regain £20,000 in lost revenue,” Mr Higginbottom points out. “A farm drying 4-5000 tonnes of grain a year would recoup the £10,000-£12,000 all-in purchase of a Dryer Master system in three years – a bigger operator even sooner – while also saving time and hassle at harvest.”

The Dryer Master display provides a quick view of drying status and settings, a manual option for operators who prefer to make their own discharge rate decisions, a number of alarm alerts and a print-out for records. Where Internet access is available, the display is duplicated on a web browser accessible on a farm office computer or remotely via a smart phone or other mobile device.

CropTec 2016

Make sure to visit Kentra stand M19 at this year's event, taking place on the 29th & 30th November at the east of England Showground, Peterborough.

We also have over 140 exhibitors at the event displaying the latest science and technology across the trade stands, while CropTec’s well established seminars and hubs will feature the latest thinking on a range of key arable topics delivered by leading specialists.

The event is free to attend for those visitors that pre-book their tickets. ALL visitors will be charged £15 on the day.

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