Attendees heard from John Westra, the UNL Panhandle Research, Extension and Education Center director as well as a panel assembled by PREC to discuss research and innovations in farming.

During his remarks, Westra introduced the new entomologist on staff, Pin-Chu Lai. Lai is a Cornell graduate who also attended the University of Georgia for her master’s degree and a doctorate in entomology.

She discussed her research background and expressed her excitement to begin working with farmers in the area to improve their pest responses.

“I’m really excited to work with everyone, my colleagues at the university and all the stakeholders,” Lai said, “I hope to build a very strong research and extension program.”

Westra moved on to introduce that afternoon’s panel including Dan Fitts, a Melbeta farmer and storm chaser; Jeremy Becker, of Idem Irrigation; Wei-Zhen Liang, a research assistant professor at UNL and John Thomas, the crops and water extension educator for Box Butte County.

The four panel members began by discussing their area of expertise and some trends or products that excited them.

Fitts told the group about how he had been using a drone for fungicide and insecticide application in his fields. He said he does not think drones will completely replace the use of pivots, but he thinks their use will become more common in the coming years.

“I think that’s something that’s definitely coming,” he said.” We spray whole fields with them. It’s not just spot spraying. We use it across whole fields, and we use it quite efficiently.”

Becker spoke about Idem Irrigation’s Ball Sprinkler Head technology, which was featured in this year’s Farm Bureau Ag Innovation Challenge.

Becker said that the design of the sprinkler head helps to decrease the loss of water and chemicals to wind drift and evaporation because its design creates a stronger flow instead of a mist that is more easily redirected in high winds.

Bell said the product is more environmentally friendly and more efficient for the farmer, decreasing water loss and increasing yield.

“The thing we hang our hat on is water savings, being more efficient with the water, comparing our sprinkler head to some of the others. It’s all about the wind drift and evaporation,” he said.

Liang discussed her research with the university, which she said centers around disease detection for crops and increasing the efficiency of irrigation equipment like pivots.

“The goal of my research is to optimize the irrigation processes and capture the crop health and mitigate weed growth and disease occurrence,” Liang said.

One of the ways she is working to achieve those goals is by developing technology to pair with pivots to keep track of crop health. This included cameras attached to the pivots to take pictures of the crops at pre-determined intervals and sent to a server where it can be accessed by the farmer.

This information can be used to assess canopy cover and can help in disease detection as well. Along with the photos, she said the cameras also record where in the field the images were taken and at what time.

Thomas talked about his experience with on farm research. He said he has focused on narrowing down specific factors that can be altered to increase crop yield.

He brought up one example of how effective GPS guidance systems can be for farmers. He said he was on site with a farmer and they were caught in a dust storm while planting, but thanks to the technology they were able to continue.

“I was with the grower in the planter and we just kept planting, it didn’t matter,” Thomas said. “He just needed to make sure he knew where the end of the field was to get turned around but even that was visible on the GPS guidance.”

During a question and answer portion, the drone technology discussed by Fitts as well as the Idem Irrigation sprinkler heads were hot topics.

One attendee asked Fitts about the effectiveness of spraying with the drone. Fitts said he is happy with the coverage he had been able to achieve, although there are some drawbacks.

He said that those interested in using the equipment would have to obtain their Part 107 license for commercial drone piloting, as well as a Part 137 license for larger drones.

The other drawback he listed was that the techniques were significantly less effective under winds of over 5 miles per hour.

Even with some of the potential drawbacks one attendee, Kendall Busch, was said he was interested in the drone technology.

Busch, who farms dry beans near Mitchell, said that using the technology was “definitely the future.”

Another sentiment he shared exemplified much of the information presented that day, that once these technologies become widely available they will provide a significant opportunity to increase the efficiency of their farms and their crop yield.

“If you don’t move forward,” Busch said, “you don’t move forward.”