Janelle Rudolph
A Saskatchewan organic producer reports stronger plant outcome using a precision agriculture robot for seeding.
For organic, horticulture, and small-scale farmers a new toy is available and making waves.
Stefan Graner, an organic farmer near Paddockwood, Sask. has been utilizing FarmDroid, an autonomous seeding and weeding robot, for four years. Its efficiency and accuracy have proven to have strong economic benefits for him.
At between $150,000 to $180,000 they’re not cheap investments, even with federal funding available. But for Graner’s operation, the technology has been such a great addition that he now has three of the robots.
Graner and his wife made the switch to organic farming in 2018, after beginning their farm in the 1990s.
“We’re relatively small-scale,” he shared at the Saskatchewan Organics field day on July 31.
“I probably do a total of 750 acres myself. Of that, some is in cover crops, and maybe four to 500 or 450 are in crop this year.”
Typically, Graner seeds a crop for two years and follows with two to three years of cover crops. But the field he showed off at the field day had been cropped for four years, starting with mustard, then hemp, oats, and now black lentils.
The lentils were seeded by the FarmDroid, and have been weeded by it too. The robot has had its work cut out for it, though, as Graner shared there’s been plenty of volunteer oats in the crop and alfalfa — which was his cover crop from five years ago.