HESSLESKEW FARM 51
• DEC / JAN 2024
HESSLESKEW FARM 51
“ But all of this can vary year on year and crop to crop and weather condition to weather condition . Everything has an impact and is unpredictable . This is where I make my point about being humble about what we know and what we can do , because there are so many variables that can come into play , but we definitely have better information about those things and there are still lots of basic things we could do better . Most of all , I think we should really recognise that it ’ s important to do the basics well and that includes continually going back and checking the soils .
“ There are now massive fluctuations in the prices of commodities , of inputs , and of the machinery that we use , and huge variations in the weather . Nothing is simple and anybody who prepared a plan on the back of 2022 ’ s weather when it was dry will have looked at 2023 and wondered how different it could be .
“ I think we all know instinctively at the moment that the climate is very volatile and that it is making farming much more challenging .
Where Andrew tries to help is in providing fellow farmers with the right technology to help face up to the challenges .
“ We are looking to enable people to implement the best new technology in a practical way on farms and because I ’ m a farmer myself I ’ ve a pretty good idea of what farmers want . New technology can save them money by giving extra productivity in the field and improving
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“ The people who operate and work with that technology are becoming increasingly important . Every day we are helping people , talking about their problems . Offering support .
“ While you ’ d expect me to talk about digital technology and what we ’ re doing with drones , mapping , section control and all these things , and I do , but one of the biggest challenges farmers are currently facing in tractors is problems with Adblue , the additive that goes into cars and tractors in order to clean up emissions .
“ Speaking with a lot of big machinery companies they say a lot of their service calls are Adblue related because of a fundamental problem that it tends to crystalise in cold weather or if not stored correctly , and that causes problems within highly accurate sensitive systems .
“ That ’ s where Agritechnica in Hanover is very useful , as there are so many different parts of the show and I came across a product while I was there , that they tell me is a preformulated high quality Adblue that does not crystalise .
Andrew says that precision farming is still something many farmers are moving towards overall but haven ’ t all taken it on fully just yet .
“ There are still many who haven ’ t yet adopted autosteer and therefore haven ’ t
realised the full benefits in terms of working better in poor visibility or when facing any really challenging working conditions .
“ Nobody wants to work extraordinarily long hours but in reality we all know that there are times when we have to push on into the night - and in the past year more than ever . Autosteer allows people to continue to deliver a high accuracy good quality result .
“ The second development group is in application control , the catch-all phrase where we are controlling spreaders , sprayers with automatic shut-off , variable rate . The technology of doing variable rate is well established . The question is how much can we vary it by and where . That ’ s where the challenge is and we have to think quite hard about what we put in and where .
This is where Andrew says it is not a case of using technology and washing your hands of the knowledge of the land .
“ There are those who say the hard work is done in the office which means the technology is then pre-programmed to apply it , but I would suggest the hard work is actually going out and ground-truthing what you have done in the past and what you plan to do in the future .
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