A group of farmers and equipment manufacturers have joined forces to thank the NHS and farming industry in the largest and most cutting-edge way possible.

Chris Hartley and Lee Clarke at Trimble Agriculture came up with the idea of spraying the messages onto a farmer’s airfield near York.

Using the latest precision technology, they mapped out the 34m-high lettering and uploaded it to the tractor’s management screen, which then linked to the sprayer controls.

“We do this in farming all the time – creating exclusion zones on fields so that we don’t spray unnecessary areas, saving money and benefiting the environment,” explains Mr Hartley.

The sprayer nozzles shut off to create the giant lettering in water – first thanking the NHS and, once dried, a second version thanking farmers for feeding the nation during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We wanted to get together to say thank you to the NHS and to farmers – we had the idea on Tuesday night and by Wednesday our local friends and farming community had made it happen,” says Mr Hartley.

“The results are quite spectacular and could probably have been seen from outer space.”

Further details:

Mr Clarke mapped the airfield boundary and exclusion zones using Trimble Ag software, uploading it to the GFX-750/ NAV-900 controls on a John Deere 6215R tractor, supplied by Poskitt’s carrots and driven by Roger Venton.

The instructions were then fed via ISO bus controls to the Horsch Leeb sprayer, which used automatic section control to shut off the required nozzles to create the lettering.

The airfield was kindly provided by Mr & Mrs Steven Beckett, Rufforth and Steve Butler from Agrovista operated the drone.

• For more information visit agriculture.trimble.com/UK