Optimising Spray Applications

Using INCYT equipment to improve data availability

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Drew Fitzner is a third generation farmer, who grows around 3,200 hectares of crops each year, consisting of a rotation of wheat, barley, canola, peas, lupins and vetch. With a background in electrical engineering, Drew has a natural interest in agtech and how it can help him improve his farming practices: “ Our biggest challenge is spraying. Spray drift has been something that's been brewing for quite a while, particularly with the 2,4-D chemistry going into cotton or other sensitive crops. In response, we’ve been trying to get the best possible data to ensure that we’re doing the best job possible. We want to make sure we are keeping our chemical in our paddocks and that it’s not drifting to other paddocks - but we also need to make sure that we can prove it. There are a lot of regulations around hazardous inversions, so none of this is very straightforward for us.”

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Drew continues: “With INCYT we now have more data to look at so we can work out what’s actually happening on our farm, with a range of sensors deployed from tank level sensors as well as a weather station and inversion tower. So, this doesn’t only help us with making spray timing decisions, but other work on our farm as well - relating to water tanks for example. Having everything on the same dashboard is very handy for me, as it’s very easy to access this information now.

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Recording all this information where it’s needed most is key, says Drew: “One of the things I use the weather station data for is when I log weather for when I'm doing a spray job. At the start of a spray job, I'll take a screenshot of our current weather station and at the end I'll do it again and record that on Agworld, which is what we use for all our crop records. Any application or anything that we do in a paddock gets recorded on Agworld, which is a handy record to have available in combination with the actual local weather. 

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Working with INCYT

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“One of the key things with any technology or any product really is support. If you haven't got support, you can have the best product in the world and people won't use it or it'll get a bad name for it. So support is very, very important, particularly for we're getting into a space where a lot of us farmers can't update or fix things like that. Gone are the days where you could just put a spanner or a hammer on something and you'd be able to fix it. You need more than that. So support's really key, and I've found INCYT really good for that. Being able to contact the team has been very helpful and the responsiveness to specific feedback has been great as well, so that’s been really good from my perspective”, says Drew.

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Drew continues: “ I think what INCYT’s doing really really well, that I'm not seeing anyone else do, is just the simple fact of doing a roadshow, showcasing the products they have got and showing how it works and the applications that there are. All of a sudden when you see solutions like that, you start to think, okay, so I've got these problems. Maybe this is a solution that I can use. I think the fact that INCYT is actually going out to places and showing what they've got, teaming that with a face, putting a face to what the product is, a contact that really does help.”

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The future of agtech for Fitz Farming

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When thinking about the future of agtech on his farm, Drew concludes: “If you can't measure it, you can't manage it, and that's where all this is going. If you've got data and sensors that are measuring stuff, all of a sudden you've got the opportunity to manage what you've got and manage it in a more strategic way. We're all trying to find those 1% increases and they do tally up over time. So yeah, sometimes when you're going into technology, you don't really know whether it's going to solve the problem or not, and sometimes you've got to do trial and error to get to that. But looking at the testimonies of other farmers, looking at what the sensors do and so forth, I think that's where it's going to help you manage what you've measured.”