Precision Agriculture Event at Algoma Orchards
Durham Farm Connections, Invest Durham and community partners hosted a Precision agriculture field day for students to understand tools that are helping farmers better manage their operations and become more efficient. New and improved technology supports Durham farmers in improving crop yield, soil, and farm productivity.
The students were in grade 11 or 12 and participated in Environmental Science, Information-Communication-Technology or Trades programs.
This is the second year of the event, and stations will included:
- Soybean planting demonstration
- Fertilizer application demonstration
- GPS Simulator
- Apple Orchard
- Ag Robotics
Kirk Kemp from Algoma Orchards presented the value of using GPS to improve planting productivity. With the new technology, Algoma can plant 20,000 in one day and have almost 2 million trees in the ground.
Kemp noted that the addition of technology on the farm does not eliminate jobs; rather, the Algoma packing plant has two and a half times more people working there because the technology allows the company to take on more work.
Kemp also showed the students an ATV with a small camera mounted on the front that could count all the buds on the apple trees. The farmer would then be able to make decisions on how to manage the trees for optimum crop production based on this information.
The almost one hundred students in attendance had opportunities to experience cutting-edge farm technology and learn how their high school programs can lead to on-farm jobs in precision agriculture.