Internship experiences Jens Apers

In the mechanization lessons, precision agriculture was briefly discussed, using images from Van Den Borne. Soon I came to the website of the company and found it the ideal opportunity to do an internship there for 3 months. My interests in arable farming and technology have been around since childhood, making this company the ideal combination. The arable farming company Van Den Borne Potatoes is an innovative and progressive company. It is the frontrunner in precision farming techniques. You will see the novelties that are still in the research phase and you will get to know new contacts that may be interesting for later.

During the internship period, I scanned 700 hectares with the Dualem soil conductivity sensor, both for Van Den Borne itself and for third parties. That way I got to know different parts of the Netherlands and Belgium. When scanning for third parties, I came into contact with various people (seed potato growers, tree growers, test field employees about sowing potatoes, ...) which made it very interesting to hear their vision and application around precision agriculture. After the soil scanning I started working with the Fritzmeier bottom drill. This combination of scanning and taking soil samples gave me more insight into the soil differences and made it possible to create an answer to my bachelor's test: The correlation between soil conductivity and nutrient content of the soil. These activities were supplemented by tasks such as wood trimming and
chopping, help with washing and loading potatoes, applying seed potatoes during planting. In the winter period I was also allowed to join a company visit to AVR, Agristo, a meeting around irrigation and follow a phytocourse at Syngenta.

I would like to thank the Van Den Borne family and all employees for the opportunities they offer for an instructive internship, their openness and knowledge sharing. In
I would especially like to thank Louis Philippe (test worker) for guiding the internship. Due to the greater distance between my home base and the company, I made use of the accommodation option, which I really liked. With the knowledge gained during the internship, I want to see in the future whether it is economically interesting to apply these techniques to my parents' company.