Are you upset about the unsatisfactory productivity on your farm? Are you looking for better ways to increase profits? If you still manage your farm in traditional ways and cannot find a breakthrough in yield, please read this article because it will help you a lot.
Limitations of Traditional Farming
Although traditional farming has promoted the progress of agriculture, it has some limitations. With the development of our societies, these limitations have become obstacles to improving productivity and profit.1. Affected by Climate Change
It’s difficult for farmers to continue their work during blizzards or under conditions of low visibility, which can affect the harvest.
2. Waste of Seed and Fertilizer
In traditional agriculture, the high precision operation is not easy, and it is difficult to take into account the spraying of pesticides on each field, which can lead to excessive use or leakage.
3. Low Production Efficiency
Farmers in traditional agriculture spend more time harvesting than those in precision farming. Moreover, traditional farming makes it hard for people to avoid repeated cultivation. Sometimes farmers need to double-check to ensure their work, which is time and labor consuming.
4. High Labor Costs
In traditional farming, requirements for personnel operation techniques are high. Thus, costs for skilled tractor drivers can be high. Besides, it takes more than one person to finish farm work during harvest season, which can lead to higher expenditure.
Development of Precision Farming
Precision farming started with the aim to improve farmers’ understanding of soil types, yields, crops, and weather conditions, and to help them make more scientific farm adjustments.
According to a Precision Agriculture Market Report, precision agriculture was valued at USD 6.96 billion in 2021 and is said to keep increasing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.8% from 2022 to 2030. This means that more and more farmers are adopting precision farming technologies. With precision agriculture spreading globally, new technologies such as GNSS, GIS, remote sensing, and VRT are gaining momentum. For instance, the auto steer system, supported by GNSS technology, is crucial to precision agriculture and is one of the key drivers of future farms.
Reduce Farm Costs with Auto Steer System
There is no doubt that GNSS technology and precision agriculture are inseparable. And the well-known auto steer system is using this technology to help farmers achieve high precision operation. Auto steer systems can be installed on tractors or other machinery to guide them along a route planned by the driver, automatically working in the field. Sveaveken has created the F100 Auto Steer System (Hereinafter referred to as Sveaverken F100)with 2.5cm high precision. It meets farmers' operational needs during farming seasons through the best performance and the most suitable price. It also helps farmers to save cost and increase farm profit.
1. Fewer skips and overlaps
Sveaverken F100 will take your land productivity to a brand new level. Firstly, featuring full GNSS RTK capability, it can deliver a high accuracy level of 2.5cm, which enables the tractor to optimize its own farming path and can drive strictly in accordance with the planned guidance line. Secondly, the driver can set the working width according to the field conditions. The Sveaverken F100 will then operate upon it to ensure maximum coverage of the field area. Consequently, it can greatly reduce skips and overlaps, thus maximizing land resource utilization and further improving work efficiency.
2. Lower Fertilizer Waste
Rational fertilization is an important way to achieve high, stable yield and low cost. Sveaverken F100 can minimize fertilizer waste by narrowing land gaps and avoiding overlaps.
"I compared farming with the Sveaverken F100 Auto Steer System and without it. A surprising statistic made me firmly believe that I was right to invest in the F100. My farm is 300 hectares in size. When I sprayed herbicides in the fields with the F100, I found that the 2.5 cm high-precision auto steer system saved me 10% of the land overlaps. This means the system saves $3,000 in herbicide costs by avoiding overlaps. The Sveaverken F100 system's path planning and high accuracy did allow me to save a lot of fertilizer." said Sam, a young customer from Sveaverken.
A survey conducted in North Dakota found that for 34% of the farmland using GNSS technologies, both machines working time and fuel consumption reduced about 6%. Moreover, the 27% that use auto steer systems saw further reductions in machine working hours and fuel consumption by 5.75% and 5.33% respectively. With the auto steer system, 492 gallons of fuel were saved per farm and a monetized time value of $851.27 was saved.
3. Lower Labor Costs
Precision farming places high demands on the driver because it is not easy to drive the tractor in a straight line and control its driving speed. Besides, the traditional harvesting method requires at least one driver for each tractor, while at the same time, a couple of more people will be needed to sort out the harvested crops behind the tractor. Therefore, the costs of manpower will be higher, especially in the harvest season. Sveaverken Auto Steer System can fix this problem. It can truly liberate human hands thanks to its auto steer system. Farmers just need to set the tractor's driving path in advance and can leave the rest of the work to F100. Farmers only need to pay attention to the display control terminal so that they can focus on things that are more important, such as sorting outcrops. Hence, the labor costs can be greatly reduced.
Increase the Farming ROI with Auto Steer System
ROI (Return On Investment) is an important indicator to figure out how much profits farmers earned. There is a simple formula to calculate it:
Net Profit of Investment / Cost of Investment * 100% = ROI.
Farmers' investments in farms mainly consist of costs of fertilizers, fuel, labor, and maintenance of machinery. Thus, to improve ROI, farmers need to reduce costs on these things and meanwhile make their land more productive. Sveaverken F100 will do this trick.
Thanks to its 2.5cm high accuracy and auto path planning, it can reduce costs on these aspects by avoiding skips and overlaps. One of our customer cases is a good example of this.
John Hopper, a Sveaverken customer who owns 182 hectares of farmland in France, shared with us his experience. "I used F100 Auto Steer System in a 500m-long-14-hectares field to manage my corps, and then I realized it reduced 4m overlaps, so less to sow, spray and fertilize compared to previous work. My work has also been a lot easier."
For every hectare of the barley he grew, costs are as follows:
- seeds €100 ,
- spray €185,
- fertilizer €540,
- cultivating/sowing €57.5,
- spraying €12.5,
- fertilizer spreading €12.5.
And the area of avoiding skips and overlaps is 500m * 4m = 2000㎡ = 0.2 ha
The fertilizer and fuel saved in that area are:
€(100+185+540+57.5+12.5+12.5) X 0.2ha = €181.5
All in all, he saved €181.5 on that clot. Let’s assume that if he applies the F100 in his whole field (182ha), how much will he save?
€181.5 * (182/14) ≈ €2360
If using F100 to avoid overlaps on the whole field, John will be able to reduce fertilizer waste and save about €2360 in total.
Conclusion
So, the Sveaverken F100 Auto Steer System is the best choice for you and an investment that can quickly pay off.
