| SUBSCRIBE MARKETS WEATHER LINKS HOME |
|
Do we really need high-speed sowing?It may be all very well for the record books, and in areas where the "weather window" is small. But what about operator comfort? And how come we managed without in earlier days?by NORMAN DUNNIn the fall of 2002, I found myself reporting a record-breaking attempt in eastern Germany by three operators on a pair of 410-horsepower Claas Challenger crawlers plus a Fendt Vario tractor. The aim was to till and sow 1,000 acres of wheat in just 24 hours.This was an amazing operation with 10-metre-wide stubble cultivators followed by a 12-metre seed drill with 5,000 litre hopper, the tractor and drill reaching 15 m.p.h. on level stretches. Despite one of the crawlers bedding itself down in a wet hole for about an hour, the team nearly hit the target with an end result of 937 acres sown. All this was very exciting. But I remember thinking at the time that fuelling the huge tractors (3,700 litres of diesel were needed to keep them all at full power during the 24 hours) and paying the drivers and seven-man back-up team employed in tasks such as beating out bent tines and coulters, driving seed and filling the drill hopper, must have created an eye-watering cost per acre. Despite the questionable economics of circus operations like this, the eastern German 1,000-acre target seemed to capture the imagination of European farm advisory companies, as well as machinery PR firms and the like. Come next seeding time, there was a barrage of similar world-record attempts. These were mostly held in eastern Europe where the open farm landscape can allow a drilling rig to blast on for half an hour before having to slow down and turn at a fence or open drainage ditch. Last year, the world record mentioned above was broken on a White Russian farm and other teams from Hungary to the Ukraine also had a go at getting their respective names in the record book. But even back in usually conservative Britain, there were fields full of dust and black diesel smoke as high flyers did their best to notch up the greatest energy costs in crop establishment, although of course that aspect of the exercise was hardly ever mentioned. One of the country's largest farm management and advisory companies held a national high-speed wheat drilling trial. But this was made more interesting for those that prefer working across the fields at sensible speeds by incorporating a comparison of different cultivations and drill speeds for crop establishment. Winter wheat was drilled at three m.p.h., nine m.p.h. as well as at the magical 15 m.p.h. Each drilling speed was applied on three different cultivation systems: ploughed land, low-till stubble (i.e. a few passes with rigid tine/disc cultivators) and direct drilling. Not only crop emergence results but also final yields had the traditionalists grinding their teeth. Even the first results saw conservatives on the edges of their seats because crop emergence was later and more uneven on the carefully ploughed land, whatever the drilling speed. The worst blow for the traditionalists came at harvest time when it became clear that there were no significant differences in yield between the different systems, with direct drilling at the highest speed as good as any. Of course, the message here is certainly a useful one for practical farming. If you are unfortunate enough to be cropping in areas like Scotland or Norway, where the "weather window" for drilling into a reasonable seedbed seems to get smaller every year, then the faster you get the job done the better. And if decent results are possible with high-speed direct drilling, then this must be the option to use. But wait a minute! What about operator comfort? I'm sure most of you reading this article will have already muttered to yourselves: "How the heck do the drivers stay on their tractors at 15 m.p.h.?" This is the catch, of course. Such high speed promotions are obviously planned by "management advisers" or PR "executives" that have never had to sit on a bucking tractor at all, and certainly not for ten hours at a stretch. Front axle suspension and driver seats with pneumatic suspension have certainly helped to soften the hardest thumps nowadays. But such marathons must be very far from a picnic for those at the wheel full-time. This all means that these high-speed operations will probably remain as annual spectacles to gain publicity on selected occasions (and reasonably flat fields). Let me leave you with a question to ponder on this subject. Why was it that in the days of 50-60-hp tractors, three-furrow plows and 24-row drills crops were still put into the ground in good time? Roughly the same manpower was involved in many cases and the whole operation generally took place without the hectic stress and rushing around that seems to be obligatory during the "busy times" on many farms nowadays.
Certainly 40 years ago on the farming operations I helped with, drilling was (mostly) finished in at least the targeted month -- and we still seemed to have time to go to the local football match every Saturday afternoon! BF Norman Dunn writes about European agriculture from Germany.
|