AGRIBUSINESS
FARMING THE FUTURE Individual farmers could increase their returns by a massive 250 per cent by using innovations that help close the gap between problems, solutions and commercialisation on the land. Words: Ian Lloyd Neubauer
THAT'S THE gospel according to Christine Pitts, managing director of Farmers2Founders, an Australian company that brings together farmers, researchers and manufacturers. “There's a big gap between those who experience the problems in agriculture, those who have the ideas that can solve those problems, and those who can turn those ideas into real, commercial solutions, and it is costing the industry billions,” Christine says. There are however a select group of companies in Australia and abroad that are doing just that and bringing to market innovative new machinery that will make early adopters ask themselves how they ever went without. Here are four of the most innovative new farming machines designed, built and tested on the land to help frontline producers reap more from what they sow.
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ELECTRO-WEEDING Zasso is a Swiss-based company that specialises in non-chemical weed management solutions using advanced power electronics. Originally developed in Brazil, the technology patented under the brand name Electroherb kills unwanted plants by zapping them with an electrical applicator, which causes the plants' cell walls to be destroyed. In Europe and South America, Electroherb has been applied in machinery designed for cropping, vineyards, coffee plantations, fruits orchards, parks and even small handheld devices consumers can use to eradicate weeds in their homes without environmentally harmful herbicides. Electroherb is now being tested for the first time in Australia under a two-year trial conducted by Western Australia's Department of Primary Industries in dryland and irrigated agriculture to identify which native weeds it is best suited to control.
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