Green-crop harvesting can be made more efficient

With a new application of existing technology scientists have shown that the harvesting of green fodder can be made even more efficient, and this is good news for the environment, the climate and the economy.

A new system can make things more rational when several machines need to coordinate their actions.

The large harvester eats its way through a field of golden maize. The tall maize plants disappear into the machine to be spewed out later in a stream of chopped bits. Parallel to the harvester drives a tractor with a wagon to catch the stream. When the wagon is full, it drives away to offload its harvest while another empty wagon takes its place.

In modern agriculture this relay partnership works well. But scientists from the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences at Aarhus University in collaboration with the Alexandra Institute have shown that such processes can be made even more efficient and rational with an innovative utilisation of existing technology. The new method can benefit the environment, the climate and the economy by saving fuel, chemicals, fertilizers and time.

This improvement is all down to managing your resources. Just like the switchboard in a taxi company uses two-way communication to create a strategic overview and rationalise taxi journeys, so agriculture can also benefit from two-way communication.

- We have basically taken some things off the shelf, for example GPS, computers and VDUs, combined them and used smart software to make them talk to each other, explains senior scientist Allan Leck Jensen from the Department of Agroecology and Environment.

Two-way communication is the key

The way the system works is that the information from the tractor can be made accessible to others via the mobile phone network – to people back at the farm, for example.

The system improves the interaction between tractor and harvester. With the two-way communication, the other tractors can keep an eye on both the harvest level in the wagon and whereabouts in the field it is. This information can help ensure that a new tractor with an empty wagon is ready at precisely the right place and time and that it can find its way there along the most rational route.

The system can be used in other ways too. When you use a tractor to apply fertilizer or pesticides, it has to leave the field at intervals for refills. If the tractor is equipped with GPS, it will be able to find its way back to the exact place where it left off.

- The new system can tell you where other machines have been in the field. This means that you can take it in turns to drive without going over the same place twice and wasting time, and thereby save fuel, chemicals and expenditure on manpower, Allan Leck Jensen points out.

The system has been tested both with the harvesting of maize and of grass. In the grass harvest the normal users of the system were involved – both in testing the system and in contributing suggestions for improvements.

- They felt that they were saving time, which we established that you actually do, says Allan Leck Jensen.

The two-way communication system will be suitable for large farms with many farm machines, farms that have a wider geographic spread of fields, for agricultural contractors and for study farms.

The scientists already have some ideas for the further development of the system.

- We would like to link more information to the system. This could be information on which fields have been harvested, whereabouts in the field there are stones or soft ground, or its history of chemical treatment. When the information in one tractor is updated in the field, the other tractors will automatically be able to use this information as well, says Allan Leck Jensen.

The development of the new system is a collaboration with the Alexandra Institute and is financed by NORDUnet.