Marsh Farm
Case Study : GPS Guidance
Marsh Farm is a dairy and arable farm on the banks of the river Tamar, owned and run by Malcolm and Jane Best with their son Richard.
The dairy herd comprises 350 Holstein Friesian cows, managed with the help of a herdsman, on about 700 acres of land.
They grow corn, maize and silage that is fed to the dairy herd.
In September 2006, Marsh Farm invested in a broadband connection and a wireless laptop. Jane says “The laptop is in constant use for various tasks including accessing the BCMS website to apply for cattle passports, keeping farm accounts, online banking & research into anything that will help us with our farming. It is a great advantage having a wireless broadband connection as it means it can be used either in the office or at the kitchen table or wherever else is convenient. This makes it so much easier to make using the computer part of our day to day life.’
In April 2007 Richard extended the use of technology into the field by installing a computer in the tractor with GPS positioning and guidance software.
Richard says “I have recently returned from Australia where I spent time working on some very large arable farms Their use of this sort of technology was commonplace and I could see first hand the benefits it could bring to our own farm”
After looking into various packages, Richard chose a solution from Patchworks. This provides a computer display and GPS unit for the tractor and mapping software for the office computer.
‘The tractor display enables a job to be accurately recorded.’ says Richard. ‘Once the width of the unit and the field boundary are set, the system guides the driver at each pass and shows the ground covered including position, speed, area covered and field size.
Richard says ‘ I occasionally help out a local contractor when he is busy. When contracting, it helps to know exactly how much area has been covered, for accurate application and invoicing
‘The guidance system reduces passes and overlapping, repeat application and highlights missed areas. This saves on average 10% overlapping and helps to reduce time and costs in fuel and sprays. Your position can be saved so you can return to a fixed point in the field when reloading is necessary. It also enables work to be carried out day or night and in foggy or misty conditions making work more flexible. The new system has proved to be invaluable to us, really improving efficiency and productivity.’
Richard explains ‘Currently we can transfer saved jobs from the unit to the laptop via a memory stick, we can then print out a report which shows a map of the field and the area covered, plus the job name, date, time, field size and area covered. We can attach this to the agronomist's recommendations to show the work is completed which helps with traceability in a number of ways, for quality assurance and cross compliance.’
It can also be used for mapping and recording of areas such as set aside for Single Farm Payment and can help improve accuracy when recording applications of fertilizers, sprays and muck spreading.
‘We also plan to install mapping and arable recording software onto the farm laptop which will use the information recorded via the tractor display, it will save evening paperwork, which will be a big advantage.’
Richard concludes ‘The information can be analysed on the laptop helping us to plan future jobs and costings. There are a huge number of benefits. Now we really don’t know how we managed without it!’
