By Alex McCuaig

Precision agriculture revolutionizing industry

Jul 20, 2020 | 5:40 PM

MEDICINE HAT, ALTA. – The concept of precision agriculture is revolutionizing farming by utilizing pinpoint GPS technology once reserved to put a cruise missile in a window to make sure a wheat row is not more than a centimetre off a straight line.

Prior to farm implement manufactures being able to patch into GPS, seeding, spraying and harvesting were all done by eye — which led to vehicles going over the same area twice. But the growing integration of GPS technology into machinery has reduced or eliminated that issue.

The newest agricultural technology ensures, “the farmer gets the most profit per acre, per square foot, per inch” said Western Tractor sales manager Troy Abrele.

If a corn stalk looks out of place, Abrele says a phone app can track down information from seeding to find out what went wrong regarding the planting in a field with thousands of seedlings. And in an industry which struggles to find labour, the technology is allowing farmers to do more with less.

It’s a technology Adrian Hochstetler, Western Tractor precision farming specialist, says has evolved from having a line of light a combine or tractor driver would try to steer to follow to, “now you just click a button, auto-track a straight line within an inch.”

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This can lead to double-digit efficiencies when it comes to planting, spraying and harvesting by ensuring no overlap from one pass to another.

But the technology has become even more sophisticated by being able to integrate a crop’s historical data to be able to automatically identify specific areas within a field that may not need fertilizer from those that do and alter its application without manual inputs from the vehicle’s operator.

It’s a technology which Cypress County farmer Brad Betcker says was beyond his wildest dreams growing up in the sector, but one he fully embraces now that he runs his own operation.

“It’s going faster because you are not overlapping, that’s number one,” Betcker said of the efficiencies of the technology. “Number two is the savings on chemicals – you’re saving one or two per cent on your chemical use and fertilizer use … same with seed.”

Hochstetler says his favourite part of precision agriculture is dealing with people like Betcker, “and seeing how it benefits their farm and farming operation. Logistic-wise for managing their people and trace-ability for knowing what they put down in the ground and what they harvested.”

The next generation of advancements are coming and will benefit from the new 5G networks currently being developed in Canada, said Hochstetler, which will potentially allow for sensors to identify individual weeds for pesticide use rather than spraying a whole field.