Ashburton A&P Show

Agri Optics showcased their services at the 141^st annual A&P show in Ashburton on the 26^th and 27^th October, to catch up with existing clients and field enquiries from prospective clients. Despite the torrential rain while setting up on the Thursday, the show days themselves were thankfully a great deal better. I thought I’d write a blog about the sort of questions the team were answering as a point of interest to those who weren’t able to make it.

Picture 1: Nick Evans and Lucy Murray on a muddy Friday morning after finishing set up!

The theme of this year’s show was chosen by the President David Butterick and was “Irrigation – the life blood of mid Canterbury” – this is a great fit for Agri Optics’ services and solutions. It was also the topic we fielded most enquiries about!

Picture 2 & 3: The team answering clients enquiries.

There was much interest in EM surveying and how it can be used for variable rate irrigation to make better use of water, as well as a helping make more informed decisions on where to place your moisture probes.  We had people enquire about using their EM maps and VRI to conserve water and use that water elsewhere on the farm with potentially large savings to be made by not having to buy more water shares.

Picture 4 & 5: Areas of most discussion EM surveying and AquaCheck moisture probes!

The main point of discussion however was about moisture probes; from looking at the different options available to the different telemetry types and other sensors that can be added to the systems. From weather stations to milk vat monitoring to comply with the MPI Milk Cooling legislation that came into force in June 2018.

We ran many clients through their AquaCheck graphs and explained what they were seeing, things to avoid like getting spikes going through all the profile layers and how much water to put on and where the moisture trace should be sitting at different times of the year, which was very similar to the workshops we ran a couple of months ago. If you are unsure of what your AquaCheck Web graphs are telling you then please get in touch and we can help run you through the data, or if we are in your area we are happy to come and see you to go through it all. So just get in touch as making informed decisions is of paramount importance.

We will be at the Innovation Vineyard field day in Blenheim, which is run by the Marlborough Grape Growers Cooperative on the 14^th November, the NZ Effluent expo at Mystery Creek on the 27-28 November, and at the FAR Crops event in Chertsey on 5^th December. We look forward to catching up at one of these or other events in the coming months.

Chris Smith

Agri Optics