Farm GPS costs under attack

A claim that agricultural machinery manufacturers were overcharging farmers for global positioning technology was made yesterday by one of the driving forces behind the ground breaking project that used robots to grow grain.

Kit Franklin, from Harper Adams College, told a conference in Carnoustie that machinery manufacturers were making too much money from GPS systems attached to tractors and combines.

He and his team who set out to prove that it was now possibletotakeacropright through from seed to harvest without being in the fieldhadusedmuchcheaper systems.

While there was an assumption that the main reason behind the Hands Free Hectare project was to cut labour costs, Franklin told delegates the driving force was the need to address soil compaction problems caused by bigger and bigger tractors.

It was these larger vehicles that were responsible for reduced workforces on farms, he said, adding that they were also responsible for the problems now being faced with damage to soil structure. “Eighty per cent of the work these big units do, is repairing damage caused by them.”

The project had set out withtheaimofusingsmaller vehicles which apart from their reduced weight could also increase the level of precision in applying seed, fertiliser and spray. “Very large machinery with wide booms or big headers do not give precision” he pointed out.

While the pilot project only operated with a single tractor unit, he predicted that it would be possible to use “swarms” of smaller tractors under the control of an operator.