On 15 February, Kubota and Tevel received the DLG Agrifuture Concept Winner 2022 award for the jointly developed automated fruit picking system. The award was handed out by the German DLG –Deutsche Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft, during an online session.
Kubota and Tevel have combined their expertise to address the major challenge of labour shortages in fruit harvesting by developing an automated fruit picking system, offering a solution for any farm size through its unique and modular approach. The modular concept of wired fruit-picking drones and flexible logistics solutions allows various configurations for individual farm requirements and enables full compatibility with established harvesting methods.
President and representative director of Kubota Corporation Mr Yuichi Kitao, Mr Yasukazu Kamada, president of Kubota Holdings Europe B.V. and Mr Peter van der Vlugt, managing director of Kubota’s Innovation Center in Europe, attended the online award ceremony.
During the award ceremony Mr Kitao proudly stated: ’“Our vision for 2030 is to be an “Essentials Innovator for Supporting Life”. This DLG Agrifuture Concept Winner 2022 award is an encouragement to continue our investments in sustainable innovations in the fields of food, water, and the environment, looking ahead to the post-Covid-19 society.”
DLG, the German agricultural society (Deutsche Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft) has presented the ‘DLG Agrifuture Concept’ awards for pioneering agricultural machinery work and future visions. Visionary agricultural machinery solutions provide crucial stimuli for the future viability of global crop production. Engineers across the globe are working on technical solutions for the future of agriculture. Not all of their ideas and concepts make it to the finished product stage. Often, technical or legal constraints limit their development to market maturity. Many of these concepts nevertheless have the potential to provide inspiration and to stimulate farmers and engineering colleagues to think in new ways. This award underscores the relevance of this pioneering agricultural machinery work to the future of agriculture in five to 10 years.
“We are particularly proud of our collaboration with Tevel. We partnered with one of the most advanced technology companies in fruit picking. Kubota is committed to help solve fruit growers’ problems in providing security for harvesting timing and quality and to deal with the increasing labour issues that growers are facing nowadays,” says Peter van der Vlugt, general manager of Kubota’s Innovation Centre in Europe.
