Drones, robots, and super sperm – the future of farming | DW Documentary (Farming documentary)

the digital revolution is already in full swing here in the fields of northern Germany a thermometer transmits data from the asparagus crop sending out signals from in here it's the first smartphone assisted harvest that asparagus farmer Heine bottles has ever done to get an idea of when we can actually start harvesting what makes the optimal cow for modern dairy farming that's what breeder consultant Johanna Schendel wants to find out by seeking out super sperm that can optimize the udders for modern milking machines but how does it work [Music] what we are doing here has nothing to do with traditional nature which many people might like to imagine corn has a new enemy it's small but not to be underestimated it can destroy entire crops could a drone help to keep it at bay Bernd Maya hope so [Music] could digital technology outperform nature [Music] [Music] [Music] it's late spring and an experiment is about to begin Bernd Meyer is an amateur drone pilot and he works for a cooperative and seed breeders that's carrying out a test also a specialist in digitalized crop cultivation farmer Bernd minor hired him he wants to stop a pest known as a corn borer from destroying his crops the corn borer has migrated to northern Germany because of climate change its larvae eat into the stalks which makes them Bend and they can no longer be harvested minor worries he'll lose up to 30% of his harvest he wants to eradicate the corn borer without chemicals we need a way to fight it off and I'm sure that at some point politicians will ban chemical methods of killing the corn borer like they have with many other makes sense or not so we should try something new Bernd Maia plans to fly a drone over his fields easier said than done the problem is those turbines over there because I'm flying through a gap of 10 meters and the system isn't so accurate that I can get right in the middle with 5 metres on each side this is pest control 4.0 never before attempted here in northern Germany the next step is programming the flight route here I can mark out where the field is it's a flight map for the drone so I mark it and then lay the flight map on top so far minor has been trying to fight off the pests on foot now they're attempting to attack it from the air the drone will scatter a biological pesticide without chemicals everything can be programmed precisely like the flight duration direction speed and the altitude of the drone he's nervous the experiment could still fail this is completely new territory for me and aberrant Meier will come to fly twice at intervals of 10 or 14 days if we have an easterly wind one time and a westerly wind the other no idea what's going to happen when does oh honey it requires a lot of trust and this whole thing isn't cheap the farmer is paying the co-operative 16 thousand euros he doesn't get any kind of subsidy this dairy farm in the state of mecklenburg-vorpommern has 500 cows [Music] breeding consultant johanna Schendel has just started work today is inspection day almost straightaway Johanna can identify the cows with poor genetic traits 35 dairy farms in the region rely on her expertise to put it very simply I'm optimizing the cow that's it in a nutshell so if a cow has knock-knees I need to find her a bull with very parallel legs so that the cow's daughter also has parallel legs North German dairy farms compete on the world market so they need cows that work as efficiently as possible with their milk machines it's 28 year-old johannes job to find them she works for in de Allianz the largest cattle breeding company in the state of mecklenburg-vorpommern Johanna is looking for deficiencies in the animals to make sure they're not passed on she checks 50 cows an hour I start with the utter has top priority then I look at the legs whether the pelvis is in the correct position and if the shoulders are broad basically whether she's on the big side or if she's a more slender animal with the utters I check that the teats sit correctly or if they're too close together too far apart too short or whether they're nice and tight the animals bodies become statistics of how well they'll fit the machines I have all the cows listed on my phone abbreviated by traits like size milk character body depth strength public inclination pelvic spread angle of hind legs hoof angle and so on look they're curious 274 I don't need you who are you 226 you can come if the other isn't shaped correctly then it won't milk the milk er then has to think about how to attach the equipment and if it hangs too low they might not be able to get underneath it and then sadly the cow has to leave even though she's otherwise healthy it's Amazon's vitex undeserving if you can't milk her then she has to go we want to avoid that kind of situation muscles I'll go in this case means slaughtered every cow has a chip that sends data to the herd managers computer milking takes place three times a day with the cows working in shifts to keep up with rock-bottom milk prices of 30 cents a liter the machines have to work at maximum efficiency a turnstile recognizes every cow by its chip 500 cows follow each other through here pass one single milker one cow produces 32 liters of milk a day the system calculates the rotation speed of the rotary milking parlor based on the milk flow and the milk quantity of the previous day the cows are usually milked out of one rotation and if not the system automatically reduces the speed the computer transmits the milk yield in real time herd manager Stephan gabbert spends more time here than in the barn it's hard to do this without the technology because the numbers say much more than anything else I can work much better with real numbers than just looking into a crystal ball [Music] Stephan's herd management system can help him to predict the perfect cow though by ancestry health and milk composition even the cud-chewing time and the corresponding feed rations are monitored digitally everything is carefully thought through other games we've prepared for power cats we have backup storage that can keep the computers alive for three hours but after those three hours we'd be going back to the old rustic days of farming just us and the cows a single milk herb would have to empty the udders of 500 cows by hand this is Venice north in the state of Lower Saxony it's early April and asparagus farmer Heine bartels is on his way to the field for the second time today [Music] he could actually observe his field from the comfort of his own home via smartphone looking for my thermometer he always hides the 400 euro device somewhere different to stop thieves wrong direction that's down there there it is customers are already putting pressure on him pockets yeah not possible right now yeah let's do that buy another customer yeah restaurants supermarkets and farms are all waiting for highness asparagus it's actually a very inconspicuous thermometer then he's in here sending out signals Musti it doesn't make the asparagus grow any faster but it does give us an indication of when it might come oh there's the damn phone again every hour an app sends him for temperature readings from the asparagus crop from the crown to the tip the app uses these readings to calculate the optimal time to start harvesting the technology makes it quite easy to check and get an overview of what's going on with the crop I am hoping to get an indication of when we can actually start and I'm also hoping to get an overview of the temperature if it gets too hot the asparagus starts to get this blossom coming out the top then we'll turn the sheeting over a friend recommended it nothing here yes at least nothing on the surface the asparagus isn't growing as it should the vom gets warm enough my glasses have steamed up I'll dig around in a few spots I mean to see if I can see anything I can feel that the ground is nice and warm it's coming here it is missing something it's still 10 centimeters from the surface that's about 4 or 5 days from Target there's been too much rain in recent weeks the Sun just came back out today the app was right that there's nothing there yet but I thought it was worth looking anyway I was getting nervous over the next 10 weeks Hina needs to make enough turnover to keep his farm going throughout the year st. John's Day marks the end of the season for us it's June 24th anything we get after that any way we can make money is a gift people want produce and you can't meet the demand that's very unfortunate a farmer could an app now help boost his yield that's nothing I can do in another field the asparagus needs to be planted for next year but the machine can't get deep enough the grounds too hard and stony asparagus crowns should go 20 centimeters deep into the ground these ones have to come out and they also want to lay a heating hose to go under the plants it's not easy the plants need to be in right position and O's needs to be in the right position underneath them if they don't work together we have a problem and we spend the next eight years trying to fix it the plant stays in the soil for eight or maybe even 10 years so it's better to try and fix the problem rather than getting angry about it for 10 years you can get worked up about it but that doesn't get you anywhere you just get on with just want to go over to make sure I can get the machine going recommending damn it's bad here too cuz of the stones Heine hired the tractor and driver for 75 euros an hour planter yen's Houma has a tight schedule the next farm is already waiting Hina sends what's known as a grubber out onto the field it's supposed to loosen the soil perfect it's completely different isn't it my ruler yeah yes perfect the high-tech tractor drives across the field independently at 0.2 kilometers an hour for satellites keep it on the right track by a cellphone reception with a real-time positioning program accurate to 2 centimeters it's a really convenient working soft because no one can drive as precisely as this system accurate almost to the centimeter for hours on end [Music] the GPS tracker costs 200,000 euros they've had to plant the asparagus late this year they plant eight asparagus crowns per meter that's the only way the field makes a profit the heating hoses are also laid down in the soil heat from heiner's own biogas plant should help his future asparagus to grow no matter the weather when we started growing asparagus my parents used to lay down tape and every 30 centimeters there was a clothes peg where an asparagus plant had to go that's how we started so I think we made a lot of progress to the way we are now pest control has also come a long way in southern lower saxony near iron bec a biological pesticide has been developed to fight off the corn borer this is where burnt meyers experiment begins he'll put the substance into the drone and scatter it onto the fields flying drones used to be a hobby now it's his job so here it is you can put nearly 500 poles in it's completely new to me I've never done this before I just used to take photos and make films now a drone has to drop something I have to know exactly when I'm allowed to do it and that's what I don't know hoping to learn something yet we'll see I'm excited what's all my my dingus fun this is where the anti corn borer remedy is produced it's designed to eradicate the newly-arrived pests without chemicals we're not allowed to show how the product is made because it's patented the family-run business uses an old natural remedy the Newman wasp enemy of the corn borer it's less than half a millimeter long he is a housefly for comparison the Newman wasp lays its eggs in the eggs of the corn borer and destroys its offspring to create the pesticide viet newman wasps are packed in paper balls and thrown across the cornfield the wasps crawl then out and go in search of the corn borers eggs burned is going to learn all about this during a two-hour long training session at the company things suddenly get very technical each Neumann wasps are called trichogramma and laying eggs is called parasitizing and there's something burnt Maya hadn't considered the corn borer takes four to nine days to develop meaning you have only that long for the trichogramma to parasitize the egg a short window as the manhatta often quotes the side fence star just four to nine days what I'm father nothing really and by this point the true ground I can't do anything newly found respect for the whole thing I'll have to make sure I keep to that timeframe a light trap should tell burned when the corn borer has arrived will he and his drone be able to manage 200 hectares of corn in just four days back in mecklenburg-vorpommern johanna is suggesting bulls that her manager stephan might like to use to breed what you want to use sex semen again sexed semen means only female calves he's quite big enough there isn't he use on the bigger side wait I have another one its daughter proven and has very good functional characteristics and it makes little cows with nice others sperm selection is not allowed for humans but here it plays a big role stephan chooses sperm from the bulls Bonham and sinclair hoping it will make him the perfect dairy cows if can snapped rulers I can discuss it with Jeff on and show them on the computer what we have in mind I can try to prepare it with everything I have available in the end though its nature in what actually comes out you can never predict 100% back in the cornfield Bernd is checking the wasps sometimes you see them flying but I don't see any now Bern has found a neighboring field with electricity to use for his light trap has it attracted any pests yes is flying here one corn borer on the screen right on the trap because of the hot may the corn borer is here ten days earlier than expected there's another one so the corn borer is here it's definitely arrived in we have the pictures here matches one two one and she lays the eggs so Maya has a maximum of nine days left it's time to scatter the paper balls a more welcomed arrival than the corn borer asparagus albeit 10 days later than hoped Hina will get the most money from the first spears he harvest the crops twice a day the app tells you when the harvest time begins and it actually worked he's just as thrilled with this piece of machinery called Asperger's spin in English when minimum wage was introduced and pay increased he replaced some of the harvest assistance with these machines it lifts the covers and transports the Spears one machine costs around five thousand euros but Heine makes that much from two harvests definitely gives us more umph people can pick faster but for me it's not about being able to pick faster but about making my pickers work easier for me as we could do more and we can save on people in fact we have saved on people there's a robot you can get now the travels across the field in a natural 24-hour cycle we still got problems with stone so robots don't really like bumping into stones either but they could be a solution at some point when wage costs really get too high but the manufacturer of the harvest robot has discontinued its development too much technology would be required to replace a human being Highness harvester assistance come from Poland there are two dozen of them the one who picks the least isn't allowed back again it's fierce competition Heiner is constantly trying to reduce his staff costs gamma d.min the floor minimum-wage meant I had to pay more so we tried to mechanize more like in the sorting plant and in the field we're basically trying to do more with fewer people and that's where the path is clearly heading of course it would be nice if you got decent money for decent products then this whole thing wouldn't be such a headache but that's something that's not going to change because the customer doesn't want to pay more than 12 euros a kilo of asparagus the sorting machine scans a thousand Spears a minute and sorts them into four quality levels based on length and thickness that would take two assistance hours the sorting machine cost Heiner 70,000 euros this asparagus peeling machine is a new addition to highness operation 80% of customers want their asparagus peeled nowadays - old peeling machine had reached its limits this one cost from 98 thousand euros but it saves in five or six people breeding consultant Johanna is on her way home and she's taken her work with her today [Music] Johanna now uses her data to try and meet the demands of the herd manager the search for the perfect partner continues in her pairing plan she checks which bulls match best with which cows she can rule out inbreeding she wants to compensate for deficiencies and boost their healthy traits of the animals this is a plutonium it's pure optimization I'd compare it with farming machines or smartphones they're constantly being upgraded smartphones even if I don't no one wants to use farm equipment that's 50 years old what we're doing with the cows is no different only their natural we're taking a living being and optimizing it naturally to see that's really all my dog to me again the flight route is set I hope it works oh why would it there why would it work the laptop won't send the flight map to the drone I'll try with the cable so laptop on the field wonderful so that was for was USB ok ok works very nice all are lift that's all we gonna need to try different cable this must be the fourth one I've used normally works really quickly it's just stopped I don't have any more USB cables what should I do now I can't do anything about it the winds picking up to the devices still can't interact with each other noise gets really annoying the corn borer won't wait for burned I have no idea the drone has to cover an area the size of 22 football fields today to keep to the schedule it back now finally it's connected but the screens off because the computers dead the first of nine days already half gone will burned failed his first assignment the Mecklenburg Lake District is where the company Johanna works for is based here at number one Bullen burg in the town of Valdez it's home to 120 of the most valuable bulls for breeding in northern Germany including Sinclair and Bonham these are literally cash cows or at least cash Bulls their semen is the most important product of Rinda aliens the company sells 1 million portions of sperm a year worldwide and there he is Bonham is three and a half years old worth half a million euros and dangerous bulls are unpredictable and can kill three times a week seaman collector Tony Heine takes bonham to the collection room as our the artificial vagina is warm to 42 degrees Celsius and I'm also filling it with 42 degrees water that's the ideal temperature to collect semen from an experienced old bonham has never seen a cow before his libido comes from a pommel horse that looks like a cow from behind the bonnet was trained to be led by his nose his most sensitive area he couldn't be controlled with human strength alone the sperm collector gives Bonhams sperm straight to the lab next door there are 2.7 milliliters of ejaculate the sperm is tested immediately for density and activity at least 70% of the sperm must be moving forwards in a targeted manner [Music] the green paths confirmed that Bonhams sperm is at 90% and there are 421 portions of this one ejaculation on a good day he can make a thousand the sperm is thinned down with chickens egg whites and separated into portions the sperm ordered by herd managers Stefan is sent to another company where it's sexed meaning it's separated into male and female sperm one portion of Bonhams sperm currently costs 20 euros Johanna will take 70 portions to Stefan Bulls can live up to 20 years they're sexually mature after about a year Bonham Sun Brosnan will provide the latest new improved generation of sperm for these animals it's all about how well they can perform Bonhams genetics are categorized into hereditary traits like how well his daughters would adapt to the milking machines humans are designing animals to fit machinery the genetic material can be ordered from a catalogue [Music] back in lower saxony venice tov is slowly waking up but the Bartels family farm is already in full gear the asparagus season is the most important time of the year for Heine he sells it directly with no middleman the market stalls on the streets and the supermarket shelves have to be stopped all before opening time the family farm is now being run by the fourth-generation bartels senior is in charge of supplying restaurants in Hamburg hina has to deliver his product for the same price regardless of his yield yes asparagus we harvest the harder it's going to be to keep harvest costs under control and if we get bad weather the product should actually be more expensive if only we could actually do that unfortunately demand for asparagus stays the same come rain or shine it's just before 7 a.m. hina has come to a supermarket in nearby hit field to deliver the first asparagus of the season he wants to do it in person hina values personal contact with the staff there's bad news the price has been reduced by a euro right there on the spot I wouldn't have gone lower but we were under pressure from the neighbor I want to believe it this week go back to it next week Hina has delivered his first asparagus the first he's harvested with help from an app we marked where their signature sell online before Johanna can deliver the order of bull sperm she has to fill tanks with liquid nitrogen to freeze it at minus 196 degrees Celsius it should have an unlimited shelf life I'm looking for kiner's number 33 I can't find it that's 46 what's going on here oh there's 33 70 portions are going to herd manager Stefan Johanna handles them as carefully as possible there are no cabs in there just money we're not a fertility clinic or anything I don't want to think about how expensive it is I was once transporting three portions of a very rare Bulls sperm one portion cost 120 euros you just think about that what if I drop them 120 euros times 3 down the drain you can't think about it I've never thought about it before definitely thought nothing I saw a little bit like that whether or not all these little tubes will produce carbs no one knows yet not even Johanna can deliver guaranteed success not yet anyway it's a hundred kilometer drive to the cow shed Johanna spends most of her working day in the car someone once said to me here comes Johanna again in her spur mobile people say all kinds of silly things but I can laugh about it myself back at Stefan's farm inseminator Roland Henoch is looking for cows to inseminate the cows sensors also capture their movements so he can tell which ones are rutting they become very active which shows they're ready for insemination today is the optimal time for cow number 311 sperm ready let's go the inseminate er feels through the intestine to see if the uterus is in the correct position in a certain way it is a bit like playing God playing God in a small defined area she's rutting well we can inseminate her not every insemination works it often takes several attempts using up several portions of sperm oh it's in the correct position now I can release it comes up so that's it designing cars to fit machines does that ever attract criticism I personally haven't encountered many critical opinions the only thing you hear from time to time is that it's a shame for the cows because they don't get to have any fun with the Bulls anymore that's how it is we've completely intervened as humans and we breed animals the way we need them that's just how it is letting a bull inseminate a cow causes stress and the more stress the less milk so even a high-performing cow will never meet a bull the milk market dictates the lives of these animals genes selection is used to increase profit that's how our agricultural system works the debate about whether or not these animals still live in a species appropriate way has only really just begun [Music] four weeks later the good news officially arrives kal 311 is pregnant she'll only start being milked industrially once her carp has its own calf so your Hana will have to wait three years before she sees if her work was a success she sees no limits to progress if I stay as pragmatic as I am now then I think the vision will be to become even more efficient I think we still have a long way to go down below who big Papa and burnt Maya after a quick trip to the power outlet in the farmer's office he's having another go at putting the flight route on the drone look at that that's now it's working now we want to scatter the little insects little lucky balls balls containing the Neumann wasps the natural enemy of the corn borer now we really can't let it get damaged in any way that would be utterly catastrophic especially if there was a mistake you couldn't fix right away do you feed on it like the one becalmed let's just hope it doesn't happen yes we go taking off [Music] his method works the drone is flying the flight route automatically what would have taken a person hours this drone can do in just a few minutes without chemicals and without damaging the plants this is fighting nature with nature it works really well [Music] bernd has selected the ball to drop and has mounted it on the drone the balls are falling just as calculated the if Neumann wasps should crawl out of the balls in the next few days and stop the corn borer from spreading further fourth fantastic perfect everything's easy in the end [Music] violence is relevant in the future it's likely that more and more farms will employ specialists like burned he's managed to stick to his schedule in the end in fact he only needed seven of the nine days wonderful even farmers are paving the way for digitalization in the workplace as long as the technology works the drone is the future probably trying this a year too early but we'll already know how it's done next year so that's good sadly neither the corn borer nor the ik Neumann wasp one this time drought it destroyed most of this year's harvest you can have all the drones robots and super sperm in the world but Mother Nature always has the final say but for how much longer

Channel: DW Documentary

Views: 347,567

Rating: 4.8032603 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, farming, agriculture, farm, field, future, drones, crop, precision agriculture, food, cows, breeding, smart farming, digital revolution, organic agriculture, sustainable agriculture, smart dairy farming, environmental protection, digital technology, technology, digital life, digitalization, digitization environmental protection, DW, DW Documentary, Deutsche Welle, the future of farming, farming in the future, farming with drones, farming documentary, driverless tractors

Id: qwNVNE83Udo

Length: 42min 26sec (2546 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 07 2019