Although the world’s estimated 8.3 billion people cannot survive without the outputs of farmers, these farmers are under constant political and social pressures to produce sufficient affordable food with ever-fewer resources. Fortunately, major advances are being made with crop protection technologies and practices.
By Lloyd Phillips, senior journalist at African Farming and Landbouweekblad
Managing the pests, diseases and weeds that can cause significant yield losses among the food crops that the world needs to survive is becoming increasingly difficult for many farmers. Despite these and other threats, including climate change impacts, limited arable land and declining profitability, many politicians, environmentalists and sections of the public still expect farmers to continue producing more with fewer resources.
Whereas some sociopolitical demands on farmers, such as for certain extremely toxic crop protection products to be banned, are justified, other demands are sometimes based on unrealistic, populist sentiment. Nevertheless, it is the farmers who still bear the brunt and who must adapt or proverbially die.
Also read: Case IH’s most powerful tractor is a ‘big beast’
Harald Kramer is a specialist adviser for plant protection application technology at the Chamber of Agriculture of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. In light of these challenges and in the buildup to Germany’s world-renowned biennial Agritechnica exhibition in November, he recently highlighted some of the latest remarkable crop protection technologies that are already in use or that are in development.
Kramer explains that these technologies are increasingly aimed at integrating diverse measures to make applications of crop protection products more precise and effective. They also aim to reduce the costs of such applications, enhance the safety and efficiencies of farmers and farmworkers handling and applying these products, achieve optimal yields while reducing potentially negative environmental impacts and, in some cases, eliminate the need for certain chemical products.
“Spot spraying is currently regarded as the logical evolution and offers vast potential for crop protection. Improved forecasting models for spray conditions, closely coupled to the application technology with improved sensors, application maps, artificial intelligence, programmes and nozzle technologies, can also help the agricultural sector to gear up better and more sustainably for the future.”
Modular Technologies for Retrofitting
He points out that for farmers who, for whatever reasons, cannot or do not wish to invest in full new crop protection technologies at present, there are many new standalone technologies that can be retrofitted to a farm’s existing machines and implements at a more affordable cost while still improving these machines’ and implements’ capabilities.
“Non-chemical or mechanical crop protection products like smart hoes and even lasers against weeds are slowly attracting attention in agricultural machinery. These offer the advantage of working even closer to cultivated crops [that are not genetically modified to tolerate certain herbicides].”
Kramer adds that there are also technologies aimed at reducing water requirements during sprays, helping retain even the smallest volumes of crop protection products on the target plant’s surfaces and specifically minimising threats to bees and other beneficial pollinators.
Also read: AI tool helps Africa combat aflatoxin threat in maize
However, although there have been many advancements, there are still challenges that are being tackled by researchers and developers. For example, as much as pulse width modulated nozzles show great promise, there are still refinements required for the likes of these nozzles’ reliability, consistency, cost and theoretical versus practical performance.
On the topic of autonomous crop protection technologies, Kramer says: “Several systems are already on the market for mechanical weed control technology, whereas there are very few spraying robots on fields. The reason for this is that, besides numerous legal obstacles, the monitoring effort required during the application of crop protection products still appears to be a major hurdle to acceptance of spray robots by farmers.
“However, visitors to Agritechnica 2025 will find numerous solutions to marvel at in this area of crop protection technologies too.”
African Farming will be attending Agritechnica 2025. To find out more, visit www.agritechnica.com.
Also read: Exoskeletons could provide much-needed support to agri-workers
