CU LTIVATION AND TECHNOLOGY NPPL participant Martin de Meijer: previous one. The biggest difference, however, is that the new sprayer can handle the soil task maps and can vary the average dosage according to locations, although with less precision than desired. Participating requires many hours of study As he had decided to go ahead with precision farming, De Meijer also opted for variable potato planting and purchased a suitable Grimme version for this purpose. the task maps of the soil scans. This was all quite challenging, we heard both Michielsen and De Meijer say. Which sprayer are you going to buy? ‘A typical case of choice stress, something many arable farmers have to deal with’, Michielsen experiences as their supervisor. De Meijer would prefer to have one with caps at a distance of 25 centimetres, which can also be opened and closed based on a task map. But this type of sprayer is not yet on the market, at least not in the Netherlands. And is definitely not yet suitable (with task maps) for crops such as potatoes and onions. He would have preferred not to have a very wide sprayer either. In the end, his search, including an application for a provincial POP-3 subsidy and waiting for final approval, did not manage to satisfy his many wishes, he explained. He finally decided on a towed John Deere field crop sprayer with a boom width of 45 metres, like his ‘And then you start working with it. This is also not always so simple’, Michielsen knows from experience and so does De Meijer now as well.’ ‘The connectivity between the equipment isn’t always optimal and the terminology in the instruction manuals isn’t always very clear. It’s often quite a challenge to read the task maps of the soil scan on the sprayer’s computer. It works, in the end, but it takes quite a few hours of study’, says Michielsen. The soil scan showed that the field for testing the variable soil herbicide applications could be roughly divided into three soil categories. So three different dosages of soil herbicide were applied, in terms of product and amount of water. This resulted in an almost uniform weed control over the entire field, a result that De Meijer had never seen before. ’Some weeds did come up later but only on the heaviest parts of the field and, thanks to precision techniques, they were killed with a contact agent’, he told us. Also started with variable planting Because he had already started with precision farming, De Meijer also decided to start planting his potatoes on a variable basis. This also required a new investment because his AVR planting combination, just a year old, was not fully equipped for this. He therefore exchanged it for a four-row Grimme planting machine with appropriate provision for changing the planting distances, including a suitable computer terminal for reading the digital soil maps. Together with Michielsen and CZAV representative Ton van Driessen, supplier of fertilisers and crop protection chemicals, he operated this machine for the first time last spring. A soil map was made of a field intended for the cultivation of Agria and Markies, this was divided into zones. A variation in planting distance of 32 to 37 centimetres in a row was chosen for Markies and 22 to 26 centimetres in a row for Agria, as far as cut seed was concerned. ’I didn’t want to be faced with all kinds of things that don’t work’ Finding a suitable field crop sprayer for precision spraying was not easy, as De Meijer found out at the start of his participation in the NPPL. Potato World 2019 • number 4 21 Pagina 20
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