12/29/08 Getting Ready for the 2009 Orchard

Getting Ready for the 2009 Orchard. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. So all the fruit has been picked and is now in someone else's hands. You have a little time before you really need to start making preparations for the 2009 season. Now is a good time to look over your operation and decide if you need to make any changes or upgrade equipment. Barry Nelson with John Deere has something you might be interested in. NELSON: Last February we introduced a new lineup of orchard vineyard tractors. Very specialized tractors because they're narrower or they're shorter so you can go under the branches of the trees or you can go down that narrow vineyard row. John Deere has been trying to reconfigure their old products before creating these new tractors. Nelson says they have been keeping up with the changes in the tree fruit business. NELSON: Actually one of the first totally automated tractors we've ever designed just as a prototype was an orchard tractor because you can program how that tractor went through a field. Maybe it would spray. You didn't even need to have an operator. So you see how that technology could improve in the future. Currently the cost and safety issues makes that kind of tractor unfeasible at present but Nelson says that will change. NELSON: We do have the technology today but we've got to bring the cost down and make it affordable for that producer to use. Right now we have basically from 60 to 120 horsepower models that they can take a look at. They need to work with their local dealer because we can really configure these to exactly the specifications they need. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.