Not bigger, but better. Van den Borne brothers from Reusel in the Netherlands manage to harvest considerably more from their land by using precision farming and big data. Horticulture in general could learn a thing or two from the things they are doing. According to Jacob van den Borne, you should listen to nature if you want to increase your yield.
Jacob and Jan van den Borne own an arable farm in Reusel, the Netherlands, close to the Belgian border. They grow 500 hectares of potatoes, 50 hectares of sugar beet, and some corn. Their ground is divided over 140 plots, located in between the villages. Urban farming avant la lettre.
When the brothers took over the company from their father in 2006, it wasn’t possible to expand. ’If we wanted to increase production then we had to increase the yield per hectare,’ Jacob van den Borne explained. ‘Not bigger, but better.’ That’s how he came to precision farming.
What exactly is precision farming?
Precision farming is taking the right measures in the cultivation process in the right place and at the right time. There is no precision farming without ’big data’; don’t manage according to gut feeling, but on the basis of facts and figures. Firstly, the two brothers mapped out all their land in detail, which brought in their first profit. „The GPS always shows the shortest route between the plots and the routes that we should take while working on the plots, which are often oddly shaped fields. Overlap initially averaged at 13% and has now been reduced to 1% after we started using big data. We recouped the investment in two to three years by saving on water, fertilisers, pesticides, and diesel.”
Sensors, satellites, and drones
In order to determine the crop’s growth, Jacob van den Borne makes use of sensors, satellites, and drones; these measure the Leaf Area Index (LAI), a biomass measurement. Six sensors have been mounted on a spraying boom and monitor 6 of 44 rows. „That gives us a good idea, but it also means that 38 rows are not monitored”, the farmer continues. To get a complete picture, he asks the European Space Agency (ESA) for recent satellite photos, which provide a coarse image with a distinguishing capacity of 10 x 10 metres. The third step is what Van den Borne calls his new hobby: scanning with the use of a drone, which can distinguish areas as small as 2 x 2 cm. The three measuring methods combined give a precise image. All data is stored in the programme Cloudfarm, which deletes sensor mistakes and wrong measurements, after which the data is classified. „By using this data, I can take particular measures. On growth day X, I need biomass Y. Which fields are lagging behind in growth compared to the yield expectations?”
It isn’t the case that Van den Borne only keeps an eye on the crops from his computer screen. „Data is not worth much without feedback. I often go to the field to take samples. I’ve also created some trial fields on which I use different methods and measure their effect on the yield.” During the harvest, the farmer can also weigh the yield of each 10 m2 plot. And he measures the quality and size of the potatoes too and compares these results with the expected yield.
Yield potential
In Van den Borne’s opinion, ’yield potential’ is key. „The yield potential can vary widely, even within one plot. I take this into account whenever I fertilise or irrigate. It’s a misconception that the yield should be the same everywhere. It takes a lot of effort to achieve a slight yield increase in a bad area, while the same efforts can make a huge increase in a good area. So I only choose to take cultivation measures at places where they can achieve a sufficient yield.” He shows me a map where the LAI is marked in green and the less vegetated areas are yellow. What will the future look like? „Some colleagues say it will be green everywhere. I don’t agree. It should be greener overall. If you want high yields, you have to listen to nature.”
Compensating for spray paths
Some aerial photographs show straight lines, where the crops don’t grow that well. „Nature never works in straight lines. If you see straight lines in a data set, then you know that they were not produced by nature. In this case, the lines are due to soil compaction by operating vehicles. That’s why we have worked out some algorithms to drive as efficiently as possible.” We drive along spray paths when we spray the potatoes, which take up about 5.5% of the total area. At 400 hectares, this means 22 hectares without a crop. „That’s a pretty big area”, the farmer states. „However, measurements show that the plants beside the paths grow much faster due to the increased light. So, we decided to plant them closer together along the paths, which has completely compensated for the loss in yield.”
Dry and wet areas
The most important raw material for growth is water, Jacob van den Borne explains. To measure the moisture content of the soil, he has been using a sledge with sensors, measuring the soil conductivity at four depths. He is using these soil measurements to adjust the planting distance. The yield potential is the highest in a wet area during a dry season, and the opposite is true in a wet season. By the way, this knowledge is not always useful, because the weather is not predictable. Van den Borne is surprised that colleagues often irrigate dry areas more. „That doesn’t make sense. Those areas are dry because they don’t hold the water. The more you irrigate, the more you wash out the water and the fertilisers. The secret is to irrigate more often using less water.”
Jacob van den Borne is on a mission to convince his colleagues about using precision farming. He gives lectures throughout the Netherlands every week, which take a lot of his time. He is now working on opening a centre for precision farming, so everyone who is interested can come to Reusel. Precision farming needs a considerable investment. It can be cost-effective for a farm of 500 hectares, but for an outdoor floricultural company, it is less likely to be profitable. „In that case, contractural work might be the solution,” the farmer suggests. He acquired a second soil scanner, which is also used byother companies.
Significant yield increase
The farmer has done well out of precision farming. „The more you measure, the more mistakes you discover, and you can tackle them one by one. That’s how we have increased the yield from 46 to 55 tonnes per hectare in the past eight years. The financial profit has increased by 1% each year. In the meantime, we continuously check whether we can improve anything.” <
Jacob van den Borne showing the system he is using to collect his field data while driving.
Several sensors collect the crop data. These show the differences in colour per plot. A colour represents, for example, the amount of biomass.
