Technological ensemble

Over 150 farmers from the Penza oblast arrived for a seminar on new methods in crop farming. This time, the farmers were shown not only the traditional sown fields with demonstration crops. AgroCentreZakharovo demonstrated to them 25 advanced farming machines.

The seminar took place at the Dimitrov Limited Partnership, an AgroCentreZakharovo customer, where some of the farm equipment demonstrated at the event is already in operation. One such machine is the Challenger Single Disc 9850-60 pneumatic seeder with a grip width of 18.3 m.

“The seeder has demonstrated a fine job in no-till technology. It’s also well suited for use in the minimum tilling and traditional methods,” says Aleksey Porokhin, senior sales manager of the Penza branch of AgroCentreZakharovo. “Unlike rival models, the Single Disc has no gauge wheel next to the disc. The raised soil gets straight under the press wheel and covers the furrow. In other seeders, the wheels running next to the disc squeeze the crop residues into the seeding bed which has an adverse impact on the seeding.”

Together with the seeder, the Challenger MT 865C (510 hp) tractor was presented. This is one of the most powerful caterpillar tractors in the world. Despite such power, the tractor does not compact the soil. Its impact on the ground is several times less than that of wheeled counterparts. And its slipping is 15 to 20% smaller.

Many participants of the seminar showed interest in the Massey Ferguson straw walker grain combines, both Activa and Beta models. These are famous the world over for their productivity, high threshing quality and low losses. Now the machines are manufactured in Russia as well.

The farmers spotted a maize field with crops in neat rows, as if sown with the help of a ruler. This “wall of maize” is created by the Tempo F8 precision seeder from Vaderstad. The farmers saw it in operation, too. The machine rushed over the field at 15 km per hour, an untypically high speed for an inter-row seeder. The farmers involuntarily dashed to the field to check the embedding precision. The seeder did a fine job! The between-seeds space was regularly equal.

“The demonstration arranged by AgroCentreZakharovo livened up our seminar,” said Pyotr Stepanyuk, the Dimitrov Limited Partnership Director General. “Such an ‘ensemble’ of demonstration of fields tilled using modern technologies and advanced equipment seems to me quite logical since these things can’t function without one another.”