Alfons has been in use for a few weeks. It is actually called FD20 - Alfons is a robot from the Danish company Farmdroid. He slowly travels on three wheels, day and night, seven days a week. It is almost four meters wide and 1.20 meters high, with large solar panels at the top.
Self-sufficient, solar powered, light
"The machine is self-sufficient and completely solar-powered, which means it is completely environmentally friendly," says Sven Dittmer, employed farmer and manager of Alfons. The low weight also prevents soil compaction, unlike the heavy tractor. The cheerful 29-year-old is clearly taken with the machine. "It can automatically plant the beets, that's what the beets are called," he explains. In addition, she should take care of the soil, especially weed. "We can't use weed killers in organic farming, that's why it's so important."
"We have been making organic food for 24 years," says farm owner Reiner Bohnhorst. He studied organic farming and took over the family business from his father. "Conventionally, I wouldn't have wanted to continue. I never regretted it." Bohnhorst teamed up with a neighbor to create the Oldendorf organic farms with a total of around 380 hectares. Oldendorf II is located in the district of Uelzen, has about 30 inhabitants and is little more than a nice bend in the country road.
Labor-intensive manual work
Mainly potatoes and cereals are grown here, along with peas and beans, and sugar beet for the past three years. And the beet is such a thing. The cultivation is personnel-intensive and hardly worthwhile. For cost reasons, savings have to be made in manual work, and there is also little labor. That's where Alfons comes in. "In the end, he has to do more than half of the manual work alone," Bohnhorst hopes. "That is exactly the little bit that decides about economy or inefficiency."
Meanwhile, Alfons is making his way tirelessly but slowly. "It moves about 750 meters an hour," says Dittmer. "As a robot, he cannot legally do much more without supervision." Alfons is controlled by satellite and GPS. "The machine remembers where each individual seed, i.e. the beet pill, is placed. This means that the robot knows where it can chop weeds with its sharp knives," explains Dittmer. They discovered Alfons, which costs around EUR 75,000, at a trade fair last year, when he was brand new. "I thought: that's exactly what I'm waiting for," says Bohnhorst.
Away from diesel
"22 of the machines are currently in use in Germany," says Christian Andresen, Managing Director of Alfons' sales company in Sprakebüll, Schleswig-Holstein. He is a farmer himself and, with his father, operates solar, wind power and biogas plants. "In ten years, we don't want to consume any more liters of diesel and move completely in the field with renewable energy."
Food supply: Farmer is looking for robots
The use of robots in the fields is still more of a research and niche topic, says Harm Drücker from the Lower Saxony Chamber of Agriculture in Oldenburg: "But it is one with future potential." The biggest shortcoming of the robots: They are too small and too light to do heavy work such as plowing or fertilizing. Chopping, such as weeding, is not a problem. "Mechanical weed control is a field of work that they can do very well," says Drücker.
Stable cell phone coverage
However, the small size of the machines would again be a disadvantage. If you want to work on a field, you either need a lot of time if there is only one robot or many of the devices that work on the areas at the same time. That would be the so-called swarm concept. Then 30 or even 50 robots would have to be brought from field to field and also supplied with energy.
But one thing is indispensable for the use of robots: A stable mobile radio supply also in the fields for data transmission, which often does not exist. "We have the problem across the board in all agricultural regions," says Drücker. The federal government now plans to take a larger package of measures here and invest around 6.1 billion euros over the next few years in building 5G, digitizing and closing dead spots .
Potential for improvement
Alfons is in the probationary period, but there are still initial difficulties. "When sowing, the seed should be pressed more firmly into the soil. He also recently chopped away the young beets," says Dittmer. "If he has problems, he writes an SMS." Alfons also does this at night, he works around the clock and also has lamps. "Then it looks like a UFO," says Dittmer.
"We are not yet satisfied, but I hope that it will get better," says Reiner Bohnhorst and makes an optimistic impression. "That could also be worthwhile for conventional companies," he emphasizes. In August there is a big brainstorming session with the Danes.
