John Deere recently announced a “vineyard of the future” project with Sonoma County Winegrowers to deploy technology solutions to help wine grape growers better maximize yield, applications and more.
In this episode of the “Tip of the Iceberg” podcast, Sean Sundberg, business integration manager for John Deere, said the team at John Deere recognized the importance of the multigenerational farms in the region. He said these families wanted to participate in the project to help ensure the vineyard lands continue to stay in farming.
“That’s really what engaged us to say there’s an opportunity here, that we can help,” he said. “The future is now, and those farmers are … looking for technology and embracing technology.”
Sundberg said growers he works with understand how technology can help alleviate the mounting pressures of labor woes, pesticide spray regulations and rising costs of farming. He said farms of the future will likely integrate more electric and battery-powered equipment in the coming years. Automation will play a big part in agriculture equipment, he said, as it supplements the crews working on farms.
“[Automation is] not meant to eliminate all jobs,” he said, noting automation will help growers better deploy existing crews into other jobs on the farm.
The other major component of the future of specialty crop farming is the utilization of data, Sundberg said. Growers will soon be able to understand how applications in each block or section of the vineyard impact quality and yield. He said growers will also be able to understand other factors that go into yield including sunlight, irrigation and soil type to provide a full picture of the growing season and conditions,
“Then you can make real-time decisions that are going to allow you to say if I can do this here, I will get that there, and you’re going to be that much better off as an operation,” he said.
Sundberg also shared how the vineyard of the future trial includes utilizing John Deere’s Smart Apply which detects canopy density to help calculate the necessary spray density to better target applications and avoid overspraying or drift. Sundberg said John Deere will trial Smart Apply in Sonoma County this year on existing sprayers. Initial trials show a lot of promise from a cost savings perspective, but Sundberg said that isn’t the only goal for the growers in the project.
“I think that if you were to ask these growers, they’re going to say [saving] money’s great,” he said. “... but it really goes back to am I being a good steward of the land? Am I being a good steward of the environment? And that’s exactly what this is helping them do.”
Listen to this episode by using the player above or by clicking here.
