Mike Casey, the chief executive of Rewiring Aotearoa, has already made the switch at his six-hectare cherry orchard in New Zealand.Mike Casey, the chief executive of Rewiring Aotearoa, has already made the switch at his six-hectare cherry orchard in New Zealand.It takes a specialised arsenal of diesel-guzzling machines to grow a crop on Tom Carmody’s broadacre farm near Esperance, 600km south-east of Perth.
“It’s about the economics, not necessarily now, but what are fuel prices going to look like in another 10 years’ time?” he says.Mike Casey, the chief executive of Rewiring Aotearoa, has already made the switch at his six-hectare cherry orchard in New Zealand. He says it’s the world’s first fully-electric farm, saving more than $AU36,000 in fuel annually.
As more electric farm machinery trickles into the market, that economic argument is becoming more persuasive, Casey says. But so far it only extends to vineyards and orchards. After nine years of testing a prototype on-farm, Linttas Electric Company has filed a patent for a semi-electric combine harvester. Kreig says the design will reduce fuel consumption by about one-third and uses a diesel motor that can be replaced by a hydrogen reciprocating engine once they become commercially viable.
But on grain farms such as Wallwork’s and Carmody’s, according to the Australian Farm Institute, emissions from fuel are much higher. Diesel