Tech focus: Electronic aids for farmers

A new grass measurement device allows the farmer to measure grass using a plate meter, and transmit that information via Bluetooth to a mobile phone, where the farmer can calculate grass wedge.

Teagasc at Moorepark is working with a small, innovative company on the device, said Professor Gerry Boyle, Director of Teagasc.

“That is the future direction in this area. My experience from a recent visit to New Zealand is that we are not too far off from being able to apply yield mapping to pastureland, and that has certainly been beneficial in the cereals area.

“It would be hugely beneficial in pasture production because we could reduce, for instance, the cost of fertilisers,” he told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

He said, “We have linked up in a very interesting alliance with the Tyndall National Institute in University College Cork, which is the national micro-electronics institute, and it is producing some fascinating electronic devices, for example, to improve the efficacy of disease management and so forth.

“The developments in this area are amazing. It has come to us and said that it thinks agriculture is ripe for the development of some of these devices and we are working closely with it.”