10/02/16 Highlighting excellence in UK agriculture

The Awards, which included an arable and a machinery category, were created by Farmers Guide to specifically highlight excellence within the industry during 2015; and were presented to ADAMA UK for its WaterAware App and Vaderstad for its SeedEye automated seed calibration system.

Farmers Guide arable editor, Dominic Kilburn, presented the Arable category award to ADAMA marketing manager Alison Bosher for the company’s WaterAware App – a device to help farmers, agronomists and sprayer operators prevent key pesticides entering and polluting water supplies.

Designed as a decision support tool, and in collaboration with Farming Online’s Peter Griffiths, the App alerts the user to the potential risk of pollution due to the current and forecast weather and soil conditions and provides operators with a simple ‘Yes/No’ guide with regard to the timing of an application.

Dominic said that he had been impressed with the company’s WaterAware initiative, first launched in 2014, and that the WaterAware App was the “icing on the cake” for an initiative designed to support sustainable crop protection solutions which are coming under increasing pressure from the Water Framework Directive. 

The WaterAware App, in my mind, is a further example of ADAMA's broader commitment to product stewardship and promoting the responsible use of current chemistry,” he commented. “And, if it can play even a small part in an overall strategy in reducing exceedances of pesticides in water, and helps maintain key OSR herbicides such as metazachlor, carbetamide and propyzamide in the farmer’s crop protection armoury now, and in the future, then it will have been a success.”