A visiting Scottish expert says precision agriculture technology and techniques can give cropping farmers carbon emission benefits by significantly reducing their energy use.
Soilessentials Service representative Jim Wilson has been speaking at fieldays in New Zealand organised by the Foundation for Arable Research.
He says there have been rapid developments in precision agriculture, such as tractors that steer themselves. And using that sort of technology to apply fertiliser and spray more efficiently, he says, can bring big savings in energy use and costs.
Mr Wilson says arable farmers in New Zealand have been quick to adopt some aspects of precision agriculture technology.
But he's seen little sign of them taking up techniques such as measuring the variation in a crop while it's growing and adjusting the fertiliser application to even the growth.
