The National Ploughing Association (NPA) Innovation Arena is the perfect place to launch new innovations and again this year Irish Farmers Journal readers can vote for their favourite innovation in the People’s Choice category.

The NPA Innovation Arena puts inventions from Ireland on show to the world and helps establish their success by introducing them to the marketplace and facilitating networking that will help them take steps towards achieving commercial success.

This is the third year of the People’s Choice award and we are offering Irish Farmers Journal readers the chance to vote for their favourite innovation.

You can vote for your favourite innovation here: www.farmersjournal.ie/peoplesaward

Entrants - part one

Acidose 1

The Acidose 1 is an innovative device that regulates water pH for a poultry house.

It has been designed in accordance with a new acidic dosing method, which has been implemented to reduce the need for antibiotics in poultry farming.

The reduction of antibiotics in poultry farming has been shown to have positive effects on consumer health.

The objective of the Acidose 1 is to reduce the antibiotic use in poultry farming significantly, while increasing farming efficiency, which will benefit both the poultry farmer and the processing company.

Agrify Solutions Ltd

The founders of Agrify Solutions Ltd come from a mixed background, ranging from the agri-sector to enterprise computing to IOT with experience, having worked for multinationals based in Ireland, in bringing products to market both at an EU and worldwide basis.

CEO Liam O'Keeffe is an experienced dairy farmer, with additional training in bovine pregnancy scanning and artificial insemination.

Liam is a tradesman and is a fully qualified fitter.

Liam has taken a keen interest in farm safety since his serious farm accident in 2007 and has been involved in various national farm safety initiatives.

Agrispread International

Agri-Spread International introduces automatic GPS section control on its precision range of trailed spreaders.

The Co Mayo-based manufacturer has developed a purpose-built precision application technology system called section control, which is a method of accurately controlling the even distribution and precise application rates of fertiliser.

By reducing fertiliser overlap and any gaps in the areas applied, exact amounts of fertiliser can be uniformly applied.

This results in reduced input costs, increase in yields, minimising crop damage and environmental impact.

Agri-Spread is the first company in Ireland and the UK to design and manufacture GPS section control spreaders for fertiliser and lime and/or bulk products.

AgroCycle Marketplace

AgroCycle is a UCD-led EU-China research programme focusing on recycling and reuse of agri-food waste, including using these wastes to replace plastic with bio-degradable material.

The company will display biocomposite cups made from potato pulp and biocomposite drinking straws made from rice husks, as well as Ireland’s first ever fatberg (a very valuable, albeit disgusting, waste from our sewers).

It will also launch the AgroCycle Kids educational video and its big hit ‘KID RAPPERS’ will perform live; and AgroCycle Marketplace, a web-based platform for trading agri-food waste to add value within the circular-economy.

Alchemy Utilities Thermophilic Digester

The Alchemy Thermophilic Digester (TD) is a revolutionary biogas system that uses a next-generation dry digestion process, improving the energy efficiency typically associated with traditional anaerobic digestion (AD) systems.

The system is a modular and scalable solution for efficient conversion of organic wastes into biogas and high-quality dry pelletised fertilisers.

The Alchemy TD system is able to run on a wide range of organic feedstocks including 100% chicken litter.

The Alchemy TD produces 100kW of electricity and 100kW of heat through a CHP engine specifically designed to run on the biogas produced by the plant.

Anuland

Anuland is a startup agricultural technology company operating in rural Co Limerick.

It is developing a new farm management package that delivers data from soil in near-real time.

It operates across a single platform, utilising IoT technology and machine learning to measure soil attributes, combining them with other data to return key in-field knowledge to the farmer.

This knowledge focuses on soil and crop health and fertility, allowing a farmer to know his soil and crop better.

With this knowledge, the farmer is able to make better-informed farm management decisions, improving his on-farm efficiency.

Applied Concepts

Applied Concepts is launching a new PTO-powered screw air compressor, which can be mounted and powered by either the front or rear PTO shaft capable of 300+ CFM.

With its patent pending vario air-end technology, this compressor is the first in the world that can be mounted on either PTO with such a high compressed air output.

Blue Bull Machinery

Blue Bull Machinery manufactures a range of feeding and grassland machinery.

It has brought numerous new products to market, which help the farmer save money, time and labour.

It invented The Easy Arm – ring-feeder lifter which lifts a ring feeder up and lowers it over a bale, helping to prevent back injury and livestock attack.

The new model, called The Easy Arm Auto, will cut and retain the plastic, eliminating the need for the farmer to get out of the cab of the tractor, helping to reduce farm accidents during feeding time.

C&F Green Energy

C&F Green Energy has employed the latest wind energy technologies, innovations and manufacturing expertise to build the ultimate machine to harness the energy of the wind – a permanent magnet, direct drive wind turbine with megawatt-inspired active pitch and yaw control – giving C&F the highest output and most efficient machines in their class.

C&F Green Energy is the global leader in small- and medium-sized wind turbines.

Designed and manufactured in Athenry, Co Galway, C&F Green Energy offers a range of wind turbines from 11kW to 250kW in output and has installed 1,700 machines worldwide, with 60 million operational hours across the fleet.

Clare Engineering Slurry Gas Buster

The company has designed an extraction system that will disperse the potentially fatal gases in farm manur,e which are generated when a farmer is mixing or agitating slurry.

One of the gases produced during agitating is hydrogen sulphide, a clear gas that is heavier than air, which tends to stay low to the ground in the absence of air movement.

Exposure to this gas causes confusion, disorientation, rapid collapse and fatality where the concentration rises above 700ppm.

This extraction system will disperse the air in the slatted shed and replace it with clean safe air, reducing the risk of accidental death.