Focusing on machinery: Industry looks at carbon, farming and computing

Late this summer saw a flurry of marketing activity as the agricultural machinery industry showcased all of its latest products before their appearance was overwhelmed by the tsunami of Agritechnica news.

It was a busy period for the media, with a lot of travel involved and some events being missed due to conflicting dates.

However, from the uproar, several trends emerged that are likely to shape the industry in the long and short term.

Acceptance of organic techniques

As regularly by Agrilandthere is a big move towards mechanized weeding and shallow cultivation, and companies such as Lemken, Pottinger and Kverneland are all buying specialist companies that are mainly developing organic farming machinery.

Over the past year, we have had the opportunity to see several of these tools at work in the field, in conditions that have never been more challenging.

While they functioned as claimed, there is a suspicion that they are instruments that require certain conditions to work well, and that these conditions only exist very occasionally in Ireland.

The cost of these tools is tens of thousands of euros. Justifying these costs requires regular use, which may not be possible during the wet season.

The plough, as all plow makers confidently state, will be with us for a long time yet.

Coating products highlighted by the industry

However, this does not mean that something cannot be learned from the general approach and that they are not all beyond consideration.

Sky’s Methys HDS hybrid disc cultivator, for example, can be useful in establishing and removing cover crops and needing to keep arable fields green.

By treating this part of the growth cycle as an integral part of the rotation, rather than a pesky regulation that must be met, tools of this type may have a place.

Likewise efforts to bring digital technology into daily farming operations.

Cameras and computers designed to identify crop rows and differentiate between plant species are growing at a rapid pace.

Both Kverneland and Pottinger demonstrated systems that guide soil-engaging implements between rows.

However, it was noted that satellite navigation only shows the position of the tractor, which is not accurate for inter-row cultivation due to the small distance of the instrument from the receiver.

None of these ideas for displacing sprayers and herbicides are entirely feasible in large grain fields, but if they do, the age of mechanical weeding will truly be upon us.

Carbon and the environment

It’s not at all clear that machinery manufacturers are entirely on board with the Green Party’s more dire warnings of imminent doom unless we stop farming altogether, which would be even more catastrophic.

In various media meetings, questions were raised on several occasions regarding the dimensions of the problem and the producers’ approach to deal with it, and only one case was answered unambiguously.

A tractor maker that had wowed us with its green credentials was asked whether it still plans to sell more polluting Tier 3 engine models in markets that don’t meet the standards required in the West.

The admirably honest answer was yes, that’s right, which undermines the industry’s efforts to present itself as a paragon of environmental virtue, but the company in question is by no means alone.

Another point that came up was the conflict between feeding a world population of eight billion people, which is being helped by rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, and the damage we believe is being done to the environment.

There was no definitive answer to this, nor what should be considered the optimal atmospheric CO2 level, for which there was no answer at all.

If the agricultural industry is to be forced to make significant changes to its practices in order to reduce CO2 levels, then it would be fair to set a definite target, but this has not been achieved.

The industry is compatible with computing and artificial intelligence

As mentioned above, there is a lot of work being done by the industry on the use of digital technology and artificial intelligence (however AI is defined) in the operation of tractors in this field.

The industry is also eager to tell us about its future plans for the role of digital technology in agriculture in general, plans that are often difficult to fully understand, as they are often presented in the language of software engineers.

However, cutting through the forest of terms, two main fronts appear, the first is increasing automation and the second is collecting and managing data and implementing decisions based on it.

Naturally, the two overlap, and while there’s a lot of dream talk about both, its use in this field is still far behind what we’re currently being told is possible.

Automation with increasing

However, greater automation is taking its toll, as head-end management systems are one obvious application that is readily adopted and embraced by operators.

Specialist crop farmers also take full advantage of the remarkable accuracy of RTK satellite navigation, but apart from fertilizer application, the full benefits have yet to reach everyday farming in Ireland.

Talking about the complete independence of the tractor has subsided to a great extent. It is now being referred to as something that will happen one day, not tomorrow, while any legal hurdles it might face are not considered at all.

There is an understanding that, contrary to the expectations of big technologies, achieving complete tractor independence is an incremental process and will not happen overnight.

The talk among engineers is now about taking steps toward this goal.

Data collection and management is still considered a big part of the future of agriculture, but such is the amount that can be generated, the emphasis is now on what to do with it all.

Machinery companies are rapidly adopting systems that can generate data such as product performance, and are also rapidly developing methods such as part control that can make management decisions based on that data.

Unfortunately, there is still a clear link between the two missing, which is universal and can be accepted and understood by all farmers and operators.

Unfortunately, amid last summer’s flurry of activity there was no indication that this issue was being addressed.