Weeding the way forward…
Mechanical technology could provide the answer as farmers face a future of reduced herbicide use, and Garford’s camera-guided Robocrop Weeder is proving a big hit on one potato farm in Meath
With increased restrictions on pesticide and herbicide applications, farmers are having to find new ways of keeping crops free from weeds and disease.
This has led to a rise in smart farm technology.
One method that is becoming more and more popular is mechanical weeding.
The Garford Robocrop In-Row Weeder uses live image analysis to locate individual plants and mechanically remove weeds from the inter-row and within the crop row between the plant.
Meade Potato Company recently bought one for their farm in Lobinstown, near Navan, Co Meath.
“It’s a camera-guided hoe,” says farm manager Conor O’Malley. “There is a camera mounted on the front which picks up the rows of crop and it steers the machine as it drives along the field, keeping it hoeing within the rows of the crop.
“The tractor and the operator are driving the machine up and down the bed of vegetables but the machine is working itself over and back within the bed to adjust to the rows. It’s an expensive machine, it cost around €30,000.
“They cater to a lot of different things if needs be. They provide the technology and the toolbar and then it’s up to you to decide what you want to do with it.
“Every machine is tailored to each customer. We can use this on our beds of carrots where there are three rows, and you can adjust it to work with onions, where are four rows.
“It’s set up to work for standard 1.8-metre beds of vegetables, but the camera can be adjusted to work for 3-4 rows. Pretty much everything on the machine is adjustable.”
The new machine is proving its worth with Meade’s organic crops
previously they used an ordinary hoe, which caused some damage to the beds.
“With the ordinary hoe, it was up to the operator to drop it in the bed and work away, so there would be times when you would catch some of the crops you didn’t intend to catch and take them out,” says Conor.
“The beauty of the Garford is that when it is adjusting itself you can weed right up to the crop within a few millimetres of the rows of carrots or onions without disturbing them. So all we are left with is whatever weeds that might be growing within the row. This will greatly reduce the manual labour involved in picking weeds by hand.”
The Garford is proving its worth on the conventional side of the farm as well.
“We bought it predominantly for the organic side but it is helping us on the conventional end of things by helping us to reduce our reliance on pesticides and other chemicals,” says Conor.
“With more and more products being taken off the market, we’ll be using it a lot more in the future.
“We’re hoping that it will enable us to save money on sprays but because we’re so early in our first season with it, it’s hard to say how much.
“Hopefully, it will save us from spreading herbicides on the
Smart move: Hi-tech:
The Garford Robocrop In-Row Weeder being used by Meade Potato Company in Meath conventional crops later in the year when there would be concerns over things such as residues.”
Given the recently ended drought, the purchase of the Garford has been timely.
“Some of the early season preemergent sprays on the crops didn’t work as well as we’d have liked because conditions were so dry,” says Conor. “They need a bit of moisture for them to work at their optimal level. We didn’t have any rain for about three months so it has been a particularly welcome addition.”
The Garford’s use is not restricted to weeding.
“The tech on the Garford is a toolbar that could be put to use in other ways,” says Conor. “It could be used for inter-row band spraying, where you are only spraying between the rows of crops in the bed. You can spec it with whatever you want on it.
“We’ve done 30 acres of onions on it so far, which took over two and a half days, but that was our first day out so we lost a bit of time with trial and error.
“We’re happy with the work it’s doing and believe it will help cut down on our herbicide use and manual labour.”