Farmers are being pushed to find an alternative to desiccants to burn down crops, as companies are increasingly leery of herbicides approved close to harvest.
People have been shocking weeds with electricity for 100 years, but the return on the electricity invested and the technology required to do so safely haven’t always worked.
Crop.zone is a German company developing commercial field-size weed shocking implements, especially to desiccate growing crops before they are harvested and to kill cover crops or hay fields. Crop.zone uses a liquid applied just before the crop is shocked in order to increase the efficacy of the process. The company has been testing that unit in the Outlook, Sask. area this summer.
Now the company has created an implement that can fit on a standard sprayer. The sprayer provides the liquid and the boom unit will fit between the rows, giving the unit the potential to control weeds during crop growth. Crop.zone partnered with John Deere to build the new unit and together they were one of the winners of the top concept award at Agritechnica.
The biggest equipment at Agritechnica is for potatoes and sugar beets. It shows how much money is invested in harvesting and processing some types of vegetables. There’s a whole building full of potato equipment at Agritechnica and it’s impressive the technological innovation that’s gone into managing the steps it takes to get vegetables to the market.
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