26 June 2019: The Pesticides Risk Reduction Seminar provided a good opportunity for experts in OECD governments and stakeholders to share their knowledge, experience and possible concerns in the area of Evolving Digital and Mechanical Technologies for Pesticides and Pest Management.

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Spot Farming – Giving sustainable
intensification a face
Jens Karl Wegener, Dieter von Hörsten, Lisa-Marie Urso, Till-Fabian Minßen und Cord-
Christian Gaus
34th OECD Working Group on Pesticides, 26th June 2019, Paris, France
Institute for Application Techniques in Plant Protection , Messeweg 11/12, 38104 Braunschweig, Germany

2. www.julius-kuehn.de
Project
With autonomous agricultural machinery towards new cropping
systems
11.09.2013 2
Plant
production
Economics Techniques
Duration: 01.03.2015 – 31.10.2017, funded by BMEL and BÖLN
Derivation of different scenarios for
future agricultural sytems and their
economical, technical and
agricultural assessment with the
aim demonstrating future action
alternatives:
- Scenario with large-size
machinery
- Scenario with small-size
machinery

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Agriculture is facing enormous challenges in future:
• growth of population
• degradation of arable land
• climate change
• shortage of resources
• …
These problems have to be solved in a socially acceptable way – which
becomes more and more difficult.
3
Challenges in agriculture

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Within public discussions agriculture…
• contaminates our drinking water (nitrates in ground water bodies)
• is poisoning our food and feed (pesticides residues)
• totures livestock animals (initiative for animal welfare, piglet castration)
• ruins our health (green gene technology)
• devastates our landscape ( corn deserts, monoculture, structural
changes)
• makes us scarry in road traffic (bigger, faster and wider machinery)
• increases energy costs by participating in energy production (solar
energy, wind energy, biogas)
• is subsidized by society (EU subsidies)
• And produces a lot of greenhouse gases, suffering from climate change
at same time
4
Problems of agriculture
Proceeding this way is no future strategy!

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What do we want?
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Goal: sustainable intensification = increasing output and decreasing input
Question: How to reach the goal?
Wolters et al. (2014)
Aim:
Enhancing ecosystem services:
- increasing biodiversity
- linking existing habitates
- leisure activities in „unspoiled nature“
Increasing public acceptance for agriculture
Ressourceneinsatz (inkl. Umweltgüter)
Innovation B
Innovation A
Status quo
1
2342050
2010
Ertrag
Yield
Use of resources (incl. environmental goods)

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Change of perspective necessary?
6
In order to increase the yield fundamental requirements of
crops have to be satisfied,…
…cultivated plants have to fit to the location…
… and functional elements of
landscape have to protect the
cultivated plants!

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Ideal cropping system – single plant
level
7
Fulfillment of basic needs of cultivated
plants:
• Sufficient light
• Sufficient space (above and beneath
ground level) and little competition
• Sufficient and just in time water supply
• Sufficient soil quality, soil properties and
soil fauna
• Sufficient and just in time nutrient supply
• Healthy crop rotations
• In case of need plant protection

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Ideal cropping system – field level
8
Requirements and restrictions on field level:
• General reduction of utilization of agrochemicals
• Avoidance of spreading agrochemicals towards non-target areas
• Increased soil protection by avoiding heavy loaded (multiple-) crossings,
in particular with high wheel loads
• Better consideration of climatic conditions (e.g. wind, rain, solar
irradiation) and temporally depending natural phenomena (e.g. bee
activities)

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Ideal cropping system – landscape level
9
Requirements and restrictions on landscape level:
• Development of structures, being harmonized to natural geografic and climatic
circumstances and protecting against wind and soil erosion as well as
agrochemical transfer to non-target areas against the background of climate
change.
• Establishment of refuges and buffer zones leading towards a interconnection of
habitats in order to increase biodiversity and ecosystem services within
agricultural landscapes.
• Positive impact on the landscape (by smaller structures?!)
An ideal cropping system combines all requirements and restrictions on
plant, field and landscape level.

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How to reach?
10
In order to increase yield and regain social acceptance for agricultural production
four aims are of importance:
1. Optimal allocation of cultivated crops to locations
• E.g. potato, vegetable or vine growing => crops defines the suitable
cropping location
2. Optimal spatial and temporal utilization of natural resources
• Prolonging of growing season (e.g. sugar beets)
• Combination of crop varieties: Heights, stand density, leaf orientation,
phenology…
• Combination of different cultivated crops
3. Efficient use of agrochemicals
• Site specific or even plant specific treatment
• Plant protection and fertilization according to temporal and local need
4. Strengthening of functional elements within the landscape
• Ditches, hedges and flowering elements
• Significantly smaller structures as customary today

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Spot Farming: A possible solution?
11
- Agricultural fields are often heterogeneous (e.g. soil type, yield, water supply,
altitude profile, geografic orientation, potential of erosion etc.)
- Consideration of local small specific differences via superimposition of
information
- Definition of „spots“ being homogeneous to the greatest possible extent which
are cultivated independently from each other
Aerial image Yield map Soil map Homogeneous
spots
Different crop
rotations
Source: Wegener et al. 2019

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Optimization of crop spacing
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• Maximum spacing and irradiation on single plant level via uniform seed pattern
• Reduction of seeds and seed dressing needed
• Phytosanitary advantages due to thinner seed patterns and better
competitiveness of cultivated crops
• Reduction of plant protection products
• Cultivation in different directions possible
Requires georeferenced
seeding technology with
high precision concerning
seed deposition, also in
relation to the depth.
Triangular seeding Row seed pattern

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New aims for plant breeding
13
• Today: Genetic resources are invested into tolerance and resistance against
plant diseases => normally: decreasing yield
• If a new cropping system is strengthening natural defence mechanism of
cultivated crops and at same time lowers phytosanitary pressure, then genetic
resources can be shifted towards yield.
• Cultivated plants in a triangular seeding pattern must have different
characteristics, but we do not know them yet => research needed in order to
define new breeding aims

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Precise Fertilization & Plant Protection
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• Aim: plant specific treatment
• Demand-driven treatment over the whole vegetation period (depending on
cultivated plants and their specific needs)
• Early identification of plant diseases and pests (e.g. constant monitoring and
utilization of indicator plants)
• Targeted deposition of fertilizer in order to be absorbed completly by cultivated
plants (preventing surface discharge and deposition into ground water bodies)
Requires high definition information as
well as techniques for precise deposition
of fertilizer above and underneath
ground level respectively for the precise
application of plant protection products.

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Precise Fertilization & Plant Protection
15
• Aim: plant specific treatment
• Demand-driven treatment over the whole vegetation period (depending on
cultivated plants and their specific needs)
• Early identification of plant diseases and pests (e.g. constant monitoring and
utilization of indicator plants)
• Targeted deposition of fertilizer in order to be completly absorbed by cultivated
plants (preventing surface discharge and deposition into ground water bodies)
Requires high definition information as
well as techniques for precise deposition
of fertilizer above and underneath
ground level respectively for the precise
application of plant protection products.

16. www.julius-kuehn.de
Precise Fertilization & Plant Protection
16
• Aim: plant specific treatment
• Demand-driven treatment over the whole vegetation period (depending on
cultivated plants and their specific needs)
• Early identification of plant diseases and pests (e.g. constant monitoring and
utilization of indicator plants)
• Targeted deposition of fertilizer in order to be completly absorbed by cultivated
plants (preventing surface discharge and deposition into ground water bodies)
Requires high definition information as
well as techniques for precise deposition
of fertilizer above and underneath
ground level respectively for the precise
application of plant protection products.

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How to cultivate such cropping
systems?
17
• The pictured cropping system – being plant and not technology driven – cannot
be cultivated with todays machinery.
• Small, autonomous robots, working in swarms, performing different processes
while coordinating themselves could be the process technology of the future.
• Deficient performance capability of small machinery can be compensated by
number of robots, permanent operational readiness, larger processing windows
and locally optimized allocation of crops as well as locally optimized field
management.
• Todays processes being managed by large-sized machinery (e.g. harvest) can
be managed by small-sized machinery if combined processes (e.g. combined
harvester = cutting, collecting, flailing, chopping, spreading) are dissolved again.

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AussaatDüngung
Pflanzenschutz
AussaatDüngung
Ernte Feldtransport
Bodenbearbeitung
Plant Protect
Fertil
Har
prote
Fer
Treatment till
20 cm soil depths
Precise deposition of
150-200 seeds/m²
Fertilization of single
plants
Application of PPP to
single plants
Processing and transport of ca.
20 t of plants per hectar
A process chain with small
autonomous robots!
Harvest
Plant protection
Fertilization Seeding
Tillage
Infieldtransport

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What are the big challenges?
- Optimized machinery concept and modularity
- Operation under practical conditions
- Autonomy of working process
- Safety of autonomous machinery
- Energy supply and information infrastructure
A process chain with small
autonomous robots!
AussaatDüngung
Pflanzenschutz
AussaatDüngung
Ernte Feldtransport
Bodenbearbeitung
Plant Protection
Fertilization
Harvest F
Fertilization
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Harvest Infieldtransport
Plant
Protection Tillage
SeedingFertilization

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Tillage and
seeding
Harvest and
logistics
Fertilization Plant
Protection
Mechanical
weeding
Robots
per
150 ha
1
Harvest: 1
Logistics: 1
30 - 50 3 - 15 64
Competitiveness of autonomous small
scale machinery – Scenario 150 ha wheat
20
Number of robots necessary is depending on area efficiency and provided field
working days :

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Tillage and
seeding
Harvest and
logistics
Fertilization Plant
Protection
Mechanical
weeding
Costs per
robot [€]
23.000 Harvest: 17.200
Logistics: 12.000
1.000 1.200 900
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Costs are depending on machinery concepts:
Competitiveness of autonomous small
scale machinery – costs estimation

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Tillage and
seeding
Harvest and
logistics
Fertilization Plant
protection
Mechanical
weeding
Scenario [€] 26 52 20 - 34 3 - 15 .40
Today [€] 28 ; 36 107 25 7 55
(KTBL 2017) 22
Operating costs are derivated from numbers and costs per robot:
Rough estimation, feasibility in practice has to be proved.
Wheat is comparatively challenging!
Competitiveness of autonomous small
scale machinery – costs estimation

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• With new plant production systems a sustainable intensification with regard to
socially demanded aspects is possible in principle.
• Therefore, autonomous robots are needed, whose operational costs could be
basically comparable to todays machinery.
• All agricultural processes could be managed with autonomous robots in
principle, too.
• Such autonomous robots are developed actually in a number of projects in
science and industrial companies.
• Autonomous robots have different advantages:
• Robots can replace labor which is not available any more
• They have lower risks in relation to machine breakdown
• They allows new plant cropping systems
• With expert robot systems farmers can increase the number of crops
in their rotation and can focus on local markets (where possible)
• Small and low costs concepts can strengthening in particular small
farmers
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Conclusion

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Journal für Kulturpflanzen
Bd. 71 Nr. 4 (2019): Thematic heft „New Cropping Systems“
https://ojs.openagrar.de/index.php/Kulturpflanzenjournal/issue/view/2035
From the content:
Wegener, J.-K.; Urso, L.-M.; von Hörsten, D.;
Hegewald, H.; Minßen, T.-F.; Schattenberg, J.;
Gaus, C.-C.; Witte, T.d.; Nieberg, H.; Isermeyer, F.;
Frerichs, L.; Backhaus, G.F. (2019):
Spot farming – an alternative for future plant
production. Journal für Kulturpflanzen 71(4): 70-89.
ISSN 1867-0911, DOI: 10.5073/JfK.2019.04.02

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Institute for Application Techniques in Plant Protection
Messeweg 11/12, 38104 Braunschweig
www.julius-kuehn.de
at@julius-kuehn.de
Thank you for your attention!