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Digital farming

Bayer CropScience President Liam Condon told those attending the Future of Farming Dialog this week that digital farming will drive agricultural productivity in the future.   A live demonstration of Bayer’s Field Manager program was showcased at Laacher Hof, a 6-centuries old former monastery set on a 300 acre farm near Monheim, Germany.

With optimizing crop protection as the goal, Roslyn Chua Senior Commercialization Manager in Digital Farming at Bayer said the program uses imagery to profile a field and analyze areas with weed escapes, allowing the farmer to spray only those areas where a herbicide treatment is needed.

The program also allows farmers to access the status of their fields at any time, to receive field specific crop protection timing and to download field-zone specific variable application maps.  This is done by combining imaging technology, agricultural data and the farmer’s own notes and observations.

Chua tells Brownfield the Field Manager program is designed specifically to optimize herbicide and fungicide applications.

Testing is still underway with the fungicide focused on winter wheat and canola in Canada and Europe, and in herbicide optimization mainly in soy in Brazil.  She said they really need one more season to confirm a return on investment.

Tests are underway in the U.S. in corn.

Chua said Bayer also has an app for that. . .for scouting that is. WEEDSCOUT scouting mobile application is designed to sense weeds, diseases, pests, and in some crops also yield and nutrition. WEEDSCOUT will be launched in Europe in November and is set to be launched in the United States in January of 2018.

Chua said Bayer’s future pipeline is geared to what they do best, which is their competence in crop protection and optimizing that in each field for every farmer.

Conversation with Roslyn Chua: