Long-time LandWISE member, Andy Lysaght is featuring on Rural Delivery with his mechanical weeder for squash and other crops.

Agricultural contractor Andy Lysaght has invented a machine to weed squash and similar crops mechanically.  Client Gareth Holder, who was paying significant amounts of money for hand weeding of his squash crops, encouraged him to design something mechanical.  About a week later Andy came back to Gareth, and said: “Come and play with this.”

Andy has won two major national awards with his Andweeder; the Ravensdown Innovation Award at the National Horticultural Field Day in Hastings, and the Launch NZ Innovation Award at National Fieldays.

Judges said the Andweeder is a step change for the industry, converting an intensive manual process to an automated precision one.

A comparative 10ha weeding trial between the Andweeder and human weeders saw the three-row machine take 6 hours 45 minutes, compared with 125 hours by hand.

Andy says: “We are doing our best to get away from chemicals.  We can’t keep doing what we are doing and the rest of the world doesn’t want it either.”

To see Andy on TV, watch Rural Delivery Series 11, Episode 4 on 28 March 2015. First screening, Rural Delivery on TV One, Saturday at 7.00am.  Repeats on TV One Sunday at 6.00am and Heartland channel Sunday at 6:30pm, Monday at 12.30am, 12.30pm and 6.30pm