John Medway was our Guest Speaker today.
Just for a moment I thought that we had unearthed Wagga's first real Luddite. but as the presentation unfolded, I realised that he had been briefed to stir up a few of our members who fly "toy planes"
John works at CSU, and is an agronomist - he is interested in dirt, but more specifically in how much crop product that farmers can grow in their paddocks. He deals with variables such as nutrition, soil moisture, weeds, diseases, Ph balance, late sowing and notes that all these need to be aligned.
In his talk, he developed the idea that technology always seems to almost get there - to the perfect solution from Infra red Imaging, GPS tracking and drone operations. To quote John "Drones are super cool toys", but you need a $20K camera to attach to your $500 drone.
John is still a fan of farmers sending soil samples into a lab to get analysis done - a bit old school, but effective.
Gerry Gerlach had been briefed to move a vote of thanks. At the appropriate time, Gerry admitted his involvement in Drone technology, but still graciously thanked John for his presentation.