Beyond completion

Fine weather in early October was a long-awaited gift for Kursk farmers. At long last some of them could start the belated seeding of winter crops, whereas others got an opportunity to attend the Field Day arranged in Konyshevsky district by AgroCentreLiski, a partner of Agropromkomplektatsiya-Kursk LLC.

Here the farmers familiarised themselves with modern, world-class farm equipment, which, they believe, makes it easier to resist the disagreeable surprises of Mother Nature.

“We do our best to be as close to our customers as possible,” says Aleksandr Logvinov, director of the Kursk branch. “The Field Day is another opportunity of meeting with partners, discussing the current situation in farming, building plans for the future. The most important thing, however, is to show the new generation equipment at work.”

The Kursk branch presented over 15 items of self-propelled and mounted equipment, the bulk of which had arrived straight from the fields of Agropromkomplektatsiya-Kursk. The agrarian holding orientates itself very well on the farm equipment market.

“We have worked on the Kursk soil for over 5 years,” says Iosif Bres, the agrarian holding’s director for crop production. “In two years, we have increased the area from 3,500 to 32,000 hectares. Today, more than 30% of the agricultural equipment on our farms comes from AgroCentre. What matters to us more than anything is the well established servicing. Their engineers come at the first call. As spare parts go, they always set realistic delivery dates and never fail us.”

On the field, the guests watched a variety of Challenger machines, from wheeled and tracked tractors to seeding and tilling complexes and sprayers supplied by the AGCO Corporation from the US. The reliable, wide-grip Amity Single Disc pneumatic seeder with an inter-row space of 15 cm and a 10 t bin is ideally suited for large areas.

Many farmers saw for the first time the excellent work of the Kverneland PN 100 swivel plough in linkage with Challenger MT685D (300 hp) tractor. Fitted with a strip-type mouldboard, the plough is particularly effective in operation on wet black earth soils.

After an impressive demonstration, the Kursk farmers came to the conclusion that such equipment affords the best chance of successful competition in conditions created by WTO. As Valery Globin, director for production of the Russky Yachmen LLC aptly pointed out, this is expressly the type of intense farming in which progress is assured not by increasing the surface areas but by the use of innovative technologies.