No-nonsense, no-frills news stories from around the world
Every two years, several organisations from Wageningen join forces to organise the Potato Demonstration Day in Westmaas, the Netherlands. Dewulf, the full-liner in agricultural machines, will be in attendance on the 13th of August this year. Highlights will include the first international appearance of Dewulf’s latest flagship, the Enduro 4-row potato harvester. Several other Dewulf machines will also be on display.
Urschel Laboratories, Inc., a global leader in food cutting technology, officially acquired JIFCO Products, Inc. The business has been renamed Urschel South. All previous JIFCO employees are now Urschel employees. JIFCO specializes in CNC machining services to produce top quality, American-made parts. The company is one of the few precision machine shops in the manufacturing prototype industry.
Ten years ago, Greydanus invested in a complete water purifying system for washing potatoes using purified water. As a result, this Dutch potato wholesaler uses much less water. And just as importantly, the potatoes’ quality and storability have improved considerably. The current system still works perfectly well and is entirely up-to-date, thanks to the latest technology provided by VAM WaterTech.
Last month more than 2,700 farmers and growers from across Europe attended GRIMME’s first ever Farm Days event, with six machines taking centre stage at the GRIMME farm in Cappeln Germany. Over four days (21 – 24 June), GRIMME put the spotlight on a new VARITRON 470 self-propelled harvester, the EVO 280 ALL CROP two-row bunker harvester, the SELECT 200 two-row elevator harvester, the PRIOS 440 4-row cup planter and two REXOR self-propelled beet harvesters.
A new, highly effective lure has been developed by International Pheromone Systems (IPS) in the UK that can help farmers to monitor all three types of Agriotes beetles. Agriotes beetles are one of the most economically damaging pests of arable and horticultural crops. Their slow-growing larvae (wire worms) feed on the roots of a variety of root and leafy crops including potatoes. The IPS pheromone trap was found to perform as well as other traps in the field and offers a more robust option for growers.
HarvestEye – a machine-learning driven crop insights tool – is taking to the European stage as it prepares to exhibit at two major potato events, Potatoes in Practice and PotatoEurope. Fitting to both existing harvesting or grading equipment, the technology provides timely insights on root crops as they are lifted – presenting growers with valuable information on the size and count over whole field, which is otherwise absent from conventional sampling.
FreshFry, the makers of plant-powered pods that extend the life of cooking oil, announces today the expansion of its signature ‘FreshFry Pods’ to international markets. FreshFry Pods generates savings to restaurant owners in a multitude of areas including less overall oil usage, reduced build-up of oil in and around fryers, and lower labor costs for maintenance and disposal of oil.
Scientists at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) tested the effectiveness of previously designed equipment, the ‘potato vine crusher’, on reducing common lambs quarter, redroot pigweed, barnyard grass, yellow foxtail and volunteer canola weeds that are found in potato crops. The results of the potato vine crusher’s ability to reduce weed pressure was impressive for Dr. McKenzie-Gopsill and his team at AAFC.
Figuring out how to turn potato waste into compostable cling wrap has helped Julia and Jordy Kay, founders and owners of the Great Wrap company, land $24 million in series A funding to take on the plastic industry. Mrs Kay, an architect, and Mr Kay, who makes natural wines, decided to tackle the plastic waste problem after noticing how much pallet wrap was generated in construction and winemaking.
After a continuous three-year, two-phase project to build a purpose-built manufacturing facility on the edge of the company’s hometown of Spilsby, Tong Engineering officially opened its brand-new doors to visitors on 6th & 7th July in a celebratory Grand Opening event. The two-day opening event marks a key milestone for the vegetable equipment manufacturer, with the new 90,000 ft2 factory now in full operation.
Researchers and developers behind machine-learning driven crop insights tool HarvestEye are taking advantage of the Mediterranean climate’s earlier potato harvesting season – working with growers in Mallorca to conduct field trials of current and future iterations of the technology. HarvestEye is patented technology that fits to existing harvesting or grading equipment, providing timely insights on root crops as they are lifted.
McCain Foods Limited has acquired the predictive crop intelligence portfolio from Resson, an analytics technology firm enhancing farming efficiency, based in Canada’s New Brunswick province. Resson’s vision-intelligence-based technologies leverage field data imagery to enable farmers to make better-informed decisions, leading to improved productivity from every acre of a farm.
Vanmark, an industrial potato and produce processing equipment manufacturer, announced earlier today that its location in Bengaluru, India, has shipped its first three peeler machines to a large customer based in China. The three peeler/scrubber/washer 2020 models, Vanmark’s best-selling models in the U.S., were fully built at the Indian facility. The machines include a new bent sheet metal frame which is more hygienic with an open frame design.
Currently, the traditional way to find out whether or not a potato is good to go to market is basic and old-fashioned – cut it open and look to see if there are defects. A new research project at Lethbridge College aims to use cutting-edge near-infrared (NIR) hyperspectral imaging technology to test potato quality such as internal defects, greening and specific gravity more quickly and efficiently.
In 2021, the GRIMME Group based in Damme in Germany built upon the good year of 2020, despite the Corona pandemic, the shortage of skilled workers and the impact of Brexit. The company says in a press release that its turnover has increased by 9.43% from €509.1 million to €557.1 million in 2021. All manufacturing companies within the Group – GRIMME, SPUDNIK, ASA-LIFT, INTERNORM and RICON – increased their overall turnover.
British potato growers should switch to new Syngenta 3D ninety nozzles to ensure more timely blight applications this season – and achieve the best possible results, advocates the company’s application specialist, Harry Fordham. The 90% drift reduction nozzles create the optimum droplet spectrum for coverage throughout the crop canopy, including lower leaves and stems where micro-climate conditions can be particularly humid and conducive to blight infection.
As supplier of a complete range of agricultural machines for the cultivation of potatoes and root crops, Dewulf will be introducing full ISOBUS on nearly all CP and structural potato planters from the autumn of 2022. The company points out that ISOBUS operation is manufacturer-independent and therefore available both via the tractor and via an additional display in the cabin. This means that joysticks in the tractor can be used to control the planter.
A pair of researchers from University of Idaho’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences are partnering with a Washington company to develop a solar-powered robot that will rove autonomously through farm fields and eradicate weeds. The company behind the project, Aigen, based in Kirkland, Washington, hopes to have a prototype of the robot finished by late this summer. The robot will have wheels and will be roughly the size of a shopping cart, rolling between rows in farm fields before crop canopies close.
Eamonn Cullen, Market Manager Peeling at TOMRA Food, analyzes in this article the market situation and some of the challenges faced by potato processors, such as reducing food waste and energy use in the processing line, and explains how TOMRA Food addresses these issues.
Liwayway Marketing Corporation, with its brand Oishi and more than 100 product varieties, is one of the leading snack companies in Asia. From its humble beginnings of “gawgaw” and coffee 70 years ago, it has taken on bigger and more exciting adventures. In 2021, a first Elea PEF Advantage B1 system has been installed in Liwayway´s potato chips line in close cooperation with Elea’s regional partner for China Beijing Lenno Trade Co., Ltd.
Scotts Precision Manufacturing, one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of vegetable harvesting equipment, takes pride in the launch of its innovative GT 170 Windrower Conversion kit. The kit allows owners of the GRIMME GT 170 trailed harvester to convert seamlessly into a fully functioning windrower without modifications to the host machine.
In the second of two articles, potato storage specialist Adrian Cunnington of Potato Storage Insight (PSI) homes in on how to compile an accurate cost estimate. Ultimately all of those things are dependent on the basic cost of running a storage set-up, Adrian says, and it is important to have a really good grasp of what those costs are. “There is perhaps no time in the history of modern potato storage as we know it when costs have been so pressurised,” he says.
Dewulf presents a couple of innovations for the Structural 4000 within its planting range. This 4-row Miedema Structural belt planter is now available as Smart-Float, previously known for the CP 42 cup planter. This innovation is made possible by an automatic depth control system (Smart-Float). As a second innovation, Dewulf is pleased to announce a portal steering system for the Structural 4000.
Designed to automate the removal of stone, clod and foreign debris from potatoes and help growers cope with labour shortages, demonstrations of the new PRO Sort are now being organised in the UK. GRIMME UK and Haith worked together on its development. As the PRO Sort is a modular unit, it can be used either in the field or on a farm and be easily integrated into a new or existing grading line. At the heart of the PRO Sort is a TOMRA 3A optical sorter.
Greentronics is excited to announce that integration of its RightYield product with John Deere series GS3 and now also GS4 is available. “Greentronics yield monitors are designed for root crop and vegetable harvesters,” says Bill Menkveld of Greentronics Ltd. Growers use yield maps in combination with soil and fertility maps to study and manage variability in their fields and generate report cards on their progress. By applying break-even points, yield maps can indicate areas with profit and loss.
A new $69 million dollar solar farm is taking shape in Summerside, a little city on Prince Edward Island in Canada – population about 15,000 people. The solar farm is reportedly covering 30 hectares, and, by the end of this year, featuring more than 65,000 solar panels. The project is called Sunbank, and the city is banking on it moving them one step closer to energy self-sufficiency.
