So he would have to overlap a foot or so, so he was actually only covering 19 feet,” said Lamb in an interview. That small amount of overlap on each pass around the field looms large as overall energy use from Canadian agriculture grows along with average farm size but energy efficiency improves as well. Canadian agricultural energy demand increased from roughly 200 petajoules (about 55 million megawatt-hours) in 1990 to 300 PJ in 2016, but the amount of energy consumed per inflation-adjusted dollar of agricultural output fell 17 per cent, according to a recent National Energy Board analysis of federal statistics. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW“This is a pretty common trend within the broader energy system as a whole,” said Matthew Hansen, a technical specialist on the energy outlook team for the NEB. Technology advances are increasingly important as farmers focus on ways to save time, money and energy, Clarke said.

Source: thestar June 23, 2019 14:06 UTC