Danish farmers are carrying heavy financial debt following expensive land investments.

This is reducing their ability to re-invest in their farming operations as banks are virtually closed to new agricultural lending.

The Danish farm economy is further constrained by tightening environmental regulations.

The country’s intensive pig industry is suffering from a lack of investment and there are huge exports of live pigs to Germany and Poland for further rearing and processing as a result.

All in all it’s a more depressed Denmark farming scene than in the past as the barometer of the industry, tractor sales, continued to be slow and declining.

Despite that gloomy picture there were plenty of new ideas floating around at the Danish Agromek Show, which is organised by the Danish farm machinery manufacturers association.

For them, the emphasis is on export growth and the Irish market has traditionally important for Danish manufactured farm machinery.

There were some very novel ideas on show, across tillage and livestock sectors with the range of slurry options always interesting.

New ideas

Here we provide you with a photographic round-up of some of the new ideas seen at Agromek, which might have application on Irish farms.

Another novel idea was the AniMan scarecrow system that is an electronic scarecrow that firstly quickly identifies the type or species of birds attaching a crop and then applies the alarm calls of those birds and animals to frighten them off.

The AniMan system registers sounds and can discover if there are birds present that can potentially be in conflict with farming.

The AniMan system, developed by Wildlife Communication Technologies, then selects the scare method that is most efficient, e.g., it can be the bird’s own alarm call or the scream of a bird of prey.

The technology behind AniMan makes it possible to automatically measure the effect of the sounds applied.

If it is observed that the effect is diminished, the scare sounds can be altered. This system is claimed to avoid the situation where the birds gradually become accustomed to a particular sound.

The system is claimed to be also able to distinguish various species of birds. It is therefore only species that can cause damage to crops that are scared off.

Electricity

The system does not require connection to an electricity network and it has been approved in Danish conditions for outdoor use.

And the AniMan system automatically sends a message to the farmer via internet so that it is possible to constantly control activity and situations out in the fields.

One of the more interesting ones was the slurry acid system, which has been developed by a Danish company based on some Irish research between Teagasc and Queen’s University in Belfast.

The approach has been further developed by the Danish company to good effect using sulphuric acid as an additive to reduce the smell from slurry spreading but more importantly, to enhance the nutrient value of the slurry.