Three innovations to watch in forage production

The Sollio Agriculture team is always monitoring the latest developments in dairy production. Every year, experts review studies and talk with researchers around the world to learn about the latest trends. They convey this knowledge to agri-advisors, who then pass it on to you and others on the ground. In this article, we present the 2021 trends in forage production.

Although innovation has, historically, taken a backseat in the forage crop sector, a number of promising technologies are now appearing on the market. “Several companies have gone beyond offering increasingly effective seed catalogues and have begun developing precision tools to help forage crop farmers increase profits”, according to our experts.

Infrared technology

When you use a handheld infrared device on food such as silage, it provides extensive information about its nutritional content in a matter of seconds. With this kind of tool, you can determine the exact percentage of protein, fibre, dry matter and other nutritional elements present in feed.

This is one the major technological advances that is going to allow us work more efficiently. Currently, they have to travel to the farm, take a sample, send it to a lab and wait a few days to get the results via email. With this technology, agri-advisors could perform their analyses and offer recommendations on site at the farm.

Wireless temperature probes

The temperature probes manufactured by the American company Haytech or the Québec-owned Novations AGL allow alerts to be sent directly to your smartphone when the temperature of hay bales in storage rises past a given threshold. The experts at Sollio Agriculture see these technologies as important innovations with the potential to save barns and even lives.

Processing in the field

Several companies that manufacture agricultural equipment, including the German company Krone, are working on a new baler model that can compress forage into cubes during harvest. The machines are not yet fully optimized but the end result will certainly represent a major technological advance.