While it is easy to list the various introductions and changes to the Kverneland range that the company unveiled at a press event ahead of Agritechnica, there also appears to be an underlying shift in direction for the company which is likely to inform its decisions over the next few years.

Over the last decade or so, there has been a tremendous push by manufactures to embrace digital technology and offer it as a solution for everything, but that energy has - to a certain extent - run into the sands of disinterest of the farming customer.

Rather than farms becoming all high-tech and connected as envisaged by most manufacturers, European farmers, ever wary of sharp-suited salesmen, have cherry-picked from the plethora of digital offerings and decided for themselves what suits.

Some, but not all, manufacturers have picked up on this and are now focussing their efforts on what is in demand rather than throwing chips at everything, and Kverneland is one of that number.

There were two machines at the launch upon which new digital technology had been bestowed, and some new hardware to go with them, while artificial intelligence (AI) was hardly mentioned at all.

This is a dramatic shift from days of yore when the press would have been bombarded with all the impressive details of data generation, telemetry, prescription maps, and so on.

The two items Kverneland had chosen to showcase its digital technology on represented the two areas in which it has been more enthusiastically taken up by farmers - baling and spraying.

The first is the new Densus balers, machines which are designed with tractor implement management (TIM) as part of their operation from the start.

Kverneland's parent company, Kubota, pioneered TIM for baling and now there is a growing realisation within the industry that it made the right decision, for baling lends itself particularly well to semi-automation in the field.

These latest models boast auto feed control, which relies on a hydraulic pivoting drawbar powered by TIM-controlled valves.

These automatically shift the baler to the left or right, as directed by sensors mounted in the chamber which detect the shape of the bale as it forms.

Another new TIM feature is auto blockage control, which monitors crop flow and is said to react faster than a human to stop the tractor and power take-off (PTO) during blockages.

This is followed by a semi-automatic process that eases the unblocking of the baler should too much material be ingested.

These balers represent the field of electronics that ease the life of the operator so that not only productivity can be increased but also less-experienced staff can undertake baling, thus widening the pool of operators capable of doing the job.

At the other end of the the electronics scale, Kverneland has added weed recognition and elimination to its iX sprayers along with pulse width modulation (PMW) and the comparatively mundane closed transfer system (CTS).

The company claims that its DAT Ecopatch vision system identifies weed patches and spot sprays green-on-brown and green-on-green in real time.

At the presentation in The Netherlands, it was stated that it the system could even identify grass weeds within cereals, which in itself is a huge step forward, although the growth stage this could be done at was not discussed.

Weed identification systems are complex and the analysis of crops to pick out weeds instantly takes some powerful computing. However, once again, it was not clear whether it does this by comparison to surrounding plants or works on a 'look up' database system.

The iX-Pulse PMW package ensures constant rate and droplet size across the width of the boom, irrespective of forward speed or turning angle.

Ensuring this degree of uniformity is the the sort of advance that should be brought to the attention of farming critics, who are generally beset by the notion that chemicals are dumped on crops willy-nilly by careless farmers.

The CTS allows chemicals to be introduced to the sprayer tank with no risk of the operator being exposed to them or their spilling on the ground. Such an apparatus will doubtless become universal on new sprayers.

Yet weed control need not be all about high-tech solutions; herbicide resistance and fears of tighter legislation are issues that also need to be addressed.

Is mechanical weeding the answer? Kverneland, amongst others, certainly believe that this method has a part to play and are continuing to invest in implement development.

The latest 12m Arcadia is described as a 'precision harrow', not because of the accuracy of its running between rows, but because the pressure each tine applies to the soil can be adjusted to a fine degree.

Its angle of attack, or aggression, is also adjustable, and between these two parameters the company claims that most situations can be catered for.

On the flat polder clay, the Arcadia appeared to work well, breaking the crust, and disturbing any weed seedlings present.

Yet the impression remains that the method is very time sensitive and suited to more level fields. It is also slow, around walking pace, hence the increasing width of these machines.

However, what is appreciated on the continent is the aforementioned disruption of the surface crust, which leads to better water absorption, a critical factor in climates drier than Ireland's, so yield enhancement may be due to more than just the removal of weeds.

In keeping with the idea that complicated machines need to be kept simple to operate, the latest ROC merger, the RS 920, has all the sophistication and solid build quality of its stablemates yet control is entirely through an ISOBUS screen.

The two belts can be moved to either side, run in either direction, and one can even be run on its own with its partner held aloft.

This flexibility allows it to rake in a crop to form a swath in the centre or to either side, or simply to merge, move, or flip a swath - be it forage or straw - without picking up residues or stones from the soil surface.

Meanwhile, there are two new ISOBUS terminals, the Tellus 1200, and the Tellus 700.

These are proclaimed to be the latest word in precision agriculture, yet Kverneland did not make a great fuss of them this time round, in the past much time and energy would have been devoted to their presentation.

The application of digital technology to farming is starting to mature.

Rather than the whole of agriculture succumbing to electronics and software, farmers are choosing the systems that are of immediate use and it is these that will enjoy success rather than a software engineer's random notions on how farms should be run.