Hail hard on Canterbury crops
Crops across a swath of Canterbury’s arable heartland have been damaged or lost to a couple of hailstorms which swept up the South Island’s east coast late last month.
GHM Aerial Ag’s flying wing traverses paddocks on auto-pilot at about 120m altitude taking near infrared pictures of the crop as it goes. “We just set up the GPS waypoints and it flies back and forth,” explained GHM’s Kris McGillivray.
In a maximum flight of 45 minutes it can cover 120ha. Once downloaded and reconciled into a single image of the paddock or farm the pictures can give early warning of sub-optimal crop or pasture growth, often long before a problem becomes obvious to the naked eye, explained McGillivray.
A more down-to-earth tool also displayed at FAR’s South Canterbury trials site was Smart Ag Solutions’ Veris MSP3 which maps soil pH, texture and organic matter content in one pass (Rural News, March 18). “Basically the ‘3’ indicates it’s three machines put into one,” explained Smart Ag’s general manager Seaun Lovell.
During 12m passes across paddocks a detailed picture of one or more of those characters is compiled, allowing growers to fine-tune inputs such as water and fertiliser according to soil-type, and variably apply lime.
“We’re seeing a lot of history showing up on the pH maps, such as where the spreader has done an extra lap round the headland to finish off the load, or where lime was once stored or where fences and treelines have been removed.”
Even the FAR trial site had a pH range of 5.2-6.6 before lime was applied to correct it. “That’s a huge variation in one 6ha paddock,” he pointed out.
