A biodegradable soil film designed by Samco to allow farmers to plant field crops early without the risk of frost scooped the top award handed out at the Enterprise Ireland innovation Arena at the National Ploughing Championships 2024.
The design came after Samco was approached by potato growers in Italy who had witnessed the company’s film technologies designed for maize.
The winner beat off competition from Dairymaster’s DairyVue 360 digital farm management platform tailored for herringbone parlours, as well as Mastek’s Flexi Shoe applicator aimed at providing an alternative low emissions slurry spreading option to the dribble bar for difficult land types.
Samco managing director Robert Shine stated that the Limerick company launched the winning product after four years spent upscaling and with its design also seeking to improve the retention of moisture on film-covered areas.
“We started to realise that customers were coming to us with situations that want us to fix a remedy of them. One of them was the issue of early planting potatoes,” Shine commented to the judging panel on Tuesday.
“Our customers wanted to try and get early to market. We had that situation with sweetcorn where we used the film to ensure the crop for the first market, ie premium price, and so on.
“All of that led us into the project that you see here now and a challenge that we faced on this project was the use of fleece and this is a common situation across Europe and across the world where they lay woven polyethylene over the crop, but one of the disadvantages is that it releases moisture, it doesn’t contain moisture.
“What we found was, that by using the degradable film, which is fully compostable now, having this increased ground temperature and retained moisture, allowing to plant earlier without the risk of frost.”
Samco pitches the product as avoiding many of the disposal, maintenance and labour requirements associated with the polyethylene fleeces already on the market.
Other winners
Ballinasloe-based Easyfix came out on top in the Innovation Arena’s green impact category for a slurry treatment system that works by delivering a low electrical current to stimulate the growth of bacteria in slurry storage facilities to reduce greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions, as well as eliminating the need for agitation.
Ronan Boyle of Easyfix gives an overview of the company's slurry treatment system at the Innovation Arena on Tuesday. / Donal O'Leary
Easyfix's Ronan Boyle told the arena that the company had invested big in the idea to ensure it had the equipment needed to accurately monitor methane and ammonia emissions from treated slurry.
The best startup award went to BovinePlus - a real-time performance monitoring tool for cattle which can accurately weigh them as they press their two front feet on to a water trough.
CEO and founder of Reap Interactive, the company behind the weight monitoring tool, is Kieran Supple, who stated that work is under way to bring cattle weight and conformation monitoring to the product.
Reap Interactive CEO and co-founder Kieran Supple explains the thinking behind the BovinePlus performance monitoring tool. / Donal O'Leary
BovinePlus aims to allow farmers to base cattle management and health decisions on individual animals’ performance, rather than herd averages which can mask variability within the herd.
A biodegradable soil film designed by Samco to allow farmers to plant field crops early without the risk of frost scooped the top award handed out at the Enterprise Ireland innovation Arena at the National Ploughing Championships 2024.
The design came after Samco was approached by potato growers in Italy who had witnessed the company’s film technologies designed for maize.
The winner beat off competition from Dairymaster’s DairyVue 360 digital farm management platform tailored for herringbone parlours, as well as Mastek’s Flexi Shoe applicator aimed at providing an alternative low emissions slurry spreading option to the dribble bar for difficult land types.
Samco managing director Robert Shine stated that the Limerick company launched the winning product after four years spent upscaling and with its design also seeking to improve the retention of moisture on film-covered areas.
“We started to realise that customers were coming to us with situations that want us to fix a remedy of them. One of them was the issue of early planting potatoes,” Shine commented to the judging panel on Tuesday.
“Our customers wanted to try and get early to market. We had that situation with sweetcorn where we used the film to ensure the crop for the first market, ie premium price, and so on.
“All of that led us into the project that you see here now and a challenge that we faced on this project was the use of fleece and this is a common situation across Europe and across the world where they lay woven polyethylene over the crop, but one of the disadvantages is that it releases moisture, it doesn’t contain moisture.
“What we found was, that by using the degradable film, which is fully compostable now, having this increased ground temperature and retained moisture, allowing to plant earlier without the risk of frost.”
Samco pitches the product as avoiding many of the disposal, maintenance and labour requirements associated with the polyethylene fleeces already on the market.
Other winners
Ballinasloe-based Easyfix came out on top in the Innovation Arena’s green impact category for a slurry treatment system that works by delivering a low electrical current to stimulate the growth of bacteria in slurry storage facilities to reduce greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions, as well as eliminating the need for agitation.
Ronan Boyle of Easyfix gives an overview of the company's slurry treatment system at the Innovation Arena on Tuesday. / Donal O'Leary
Easyfix's Ronan Boyle told the arena that the company had invested big in the idea to ensure it had the equipment needed to accurately monitor methane and ammonia emissions from treated slurry.
The best startup award went to BovinePlus - a real-time performance monitoring tool for cattle which can accurately weigh them as they press their two front feet on to a water trough.
CEO and founder of Reap Interactive, the company behind the weight monitoring tool, is Kieran Supple, who stated that work is under way to bring cattle weight and conformation monitoring to the product.
Reap Interactive CEO and co-founder Kieran Supple explains the thinking behind the BovinePlus performance monitoring tool. / Donal O'Leary
BovinePlus aims to allow farmers to base cattle management and health decisions on individual animals’ performance, rather than herd averages which can mask variability within the herd.
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