Schreurs & Sons are a third-generation family farming business. In operation for over 50 years the business grows celery, leeks and baby leaf vegetables for the Australian supermarket chains, fresh wholesale markets and overseas export markets.
With a focus on quality and consistency, Adam wanted to move away from the blanket application of lime and nutrients via increasing the amount of soil mapping to enable variable rate maps for the application.
Broadacre cropping has been reaping the benefits of Precision Agriculture for some time now and it is great that horticulture is catching up and seeing similar benefits.
Precision Agriculture Techniques and Tools
- Initial pilot approach: Variable Rate Mapping
- Grid Soil Sampling for pH and nutrients
- Variable Rate Lime and nutrient Spreading
- Improving areas by 2, 5 or 10% provide a huge improvement on past practices and results.
- Soil improvements through consistency makes the quality of our product better and ultimately improves our profits.
- Precision agriculture in the Horticulture sector is a no-brainer now.
- There is no need to hit and miss anymore through minimum representative field samples. It is just not good enough.
- The money we save on our lime application pays for the sampling.
- Some areas had 1,400 t/hectare and others required none at all, in the same field.
Content Sources and Further Information