PHOTO: PETER ROEK
PHOTO: HENK RISWICK
PHOTO: PETER ROEK
Van den Borne Aardappelen, Reusel, The Netherlands, 600 ha
NETHERLANDS Reusel
Jacob van den Borne (38) and his brother Jan farm a little over 600 ha growing 500 ha ware potatoes, 70 ha sugar beets, 20 ha barley and 20 ha wheat. Besides, they do contract work in maize. They started with precision farming technology in 2006 although their father al- ready was a forerunner. He learned that ‘the keep it simple’ strategy also works in precision farming. His main tip for farmers starting with precision farming is to start with mapping the yield potential of their fields. Right now, he would advise to use biomass maps from satel- lite imagery.
growers. The farm’s machinery and washing and storage facilities are centred around the potato growing business.
Section control to start with It was 2006 when Jacob and Jan took over the family farm as the third generation. Their fa- ther Louis and their grandfather were already very precise farmers, using notebooks (paper), Müller chip cards since the late nineties and as a prototype Grimme yield mapping system since 2000! However, it was the takeover by Ja- cob and Jan that boosted the adoption of pre- cision farming technology. Interestingly, Jacob distinguishes precision technology from preci- sion farming. “I consider the machines and ap- paratus precision technology. Add the factor time to them and that is what I consider precision farming.” Just as many European arable farmers, Jacob’s first step in precision farming technology was gps section control on the sprayer. This was bought back in 2007 after seeing a 45 meter, six section sprayer at a big Dutch arable farm oper- ated by an LH 5000 controller. Jacob’s sprayer, a trailed Dammann sprayer, had a 33 metre boom and 11 sections of each 3 meters wide. This re- sulted in the reduction of unintentional overlap from 13% to 1%. He got in touch with German autosteering company Reichhardt through Dammann. “In 2007, they were already capable of doing multilines, contrary to all main autos- teer technology manufacturers”, says Jacob.
€ 6 million program Jacob bought six Trimble GreenSeeker crop
sensors in 2008 that were fitted to the 33 me- ter wide spray boom for variable rate (VRA) liq- uid nitrogen topdressing according to the Rob- in Hood strategy: high biomass means low nitrogen fertilisation and low biomass means high nitrogen fertilisation. “The challenge for using these sensors in potatoes proved to be twofold. On the one hand, the calibration curves that translate the biomass reflection measurements into NDVI-indices and research were based on cereals, wheat mainly, and it did not work properly in potatoes. On the oth- er hand, the NDVI-index saturated at a certain moment (not a big issue in later cereal crops stages) which meant I could no longer rely on
them in a closed potato crop as of leaf area in- dices (LAI) of 2.3 whereas potatoes typically have LAI’s of 3.0 to 6.0. My theory was that the sensors should be able to notice differences in the crop three weeks earlier than the human eye, but that did not prove to be the case. They did work well for VRA haulm killing though.” Jacob explains how an industry and govern- ment funded € 6 million programme helped him access specific machinery and tools and to accelerate the adoption of precision farming technology, starting in 2009. “This so-called Programma Precisie Landbouw (PPL, precision farming programme) enabled farmers who in- vested in technology for Controlled Traffic
The first Dammann tandem axle sprayer back in 2008. Equipped with Isobus, 11 sections and 6 GreenSeeker crop sensors at a demonstration organised at the farm.
▶ FUTURE FARMING | 27 August 2019 11
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