One of Europe’s top agricultural engineering researchers predicts a farming future with soil protection laws, robots that recognize and eliminate weeds and electric drive instead of pto power for farm machinery.
by NORMAN DUNN
Prof. Karlheinz Köller, a precision farming expert from Stuttgart’s Hohenheim University, is convinced that the most important challenge facing farmers is the protection of soil and water, while still producing as much food as possible.
“In fact,” he told an international gathering of farmers this November in Germany, “water is actually disappearing faster than our mineral oil reserves at the moment. We are also losing farming land at alarming rates in some countries.”