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Precision Agriculture Days

08/09/2021

After a canceled event in 2020, visitors were very excited to come to the Precision Agriculture Days at the Practice Center for Precision Agriculture of Van den Borne Potatoes in Reusel (The Netherlands). This event was taking place on 28 and 29 August and there were about 56 companies and institutes present to show the latest developments and techniques on precision agriculture. In the field next to the event location, demonstrations of machinery, drones and sensors used for precision agriculture were given.   

Flyers of the Nutri2Cycle project and the results of one of the Nutri2Cycle solutions were presented in the booth of ZLTO (Southern Agriculture and Horticulture Organization). The study is a collaboration between ZLTO, the University of Ghent, and Wageningen Environmental Research. We analysed the effect of using different bio-based fertilisers on potato growth. The level of refinement differed between the bio-based fertilizers, and therefore the mineralization rate, the nitrogen fertilizer replacement value, and the workability of the fertilizer in the field can differ as well. These three aspects were analyzed in this study.

Another interesting booth that got much attention was the booth of N2Applied, where pig slurry is processed into a Nitrogen Enriched Organic Fertiliser that contains roughly two times as much ammonia-N compared to pig slurry and no longer emits ammonia and methane. Van den Borne Aardappelen is the first farmer in the Netherlands with an operational system of N2Applied. The filtered slurry (solid-liquid separation) is obtained from a neighboring pig farmer. Electricity splits the nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the air and form a NO_x gas, after which this NO_x gas is mixed or absorbed with the filtered slurry. After this step, the fertiliser is ready for application. Whether this fertiliser can be applied to all crops and whether it results in emissions after field application is still analysed.