The Secret of Kuban Harvest

Agricultural producers of Tyumen region have visited Druzhba farm, one of the leading regional agricultural enterprises. This is one of few enterprises in the region that manages to grow yields similar to Kuban area. The Tyumen office of AgroCentreZakharovo together with hosts shared its secrets of such successful crop farming with fellow farmers of the region.

They started with winter wheat test plots where different crop protection chemical combinations were applied. They continued with plots sown with corn for silage. The sowing quality depended on the machinery from AgroCentre.

‘A producer is very rarely fully satisfied with a piece of farm machinery,’ says Ivan Shishkanov, Director of Druzhba farm. ‘ The Vaderstad Rapid 8m pneumatic drill is one of such machines. It is flawless and reliable. We have sown over 5 thousand ha already and we have not had any negative response yet. It prepares the soil perfectly well, it allows any sowing technology. The drilling system is highly efficient. We sow different crops: at the speed of 15 km/h - for seeds, at the speed of up to 22 km/h - for sale . The seedlings are perfectly even and they emerged one week earlier than the seedlings sown by other equipment.’

According to Alexey Kirsanov, a regional representative of the Service Department, the Rapid RDA 800С fully prepares and levels the field for seeding. And Russian agricultural producers recognized the Rapid drill as the best drill in 2012 for a reason.

‘Currently, more than 1,500 Rapid seeders are running in Russian fields,’ says Alexey Kirsanov. ‘By the way, the first seeder bought by our farm in Penza region is still operating despite the fact that this unit has seeded 85 thousand ha.’

The Rapid drilling unit was presented to the agricultural producers together with Challenger 875C caterpillar tractor (570 hp).

‘Caterpillar is the best option for perfect ground contact, smooth running and less soil pressure,‘ says Artyom Ozhogin, Director of Tyumen branch office of AgroCentreZakharovo. ‘It runs perfectly on waterlogged soil even fitted with heavy wide-cut implements, it allows enter the fields earlier and “present” the crops with more moisture.’

The agricultural producers mobbed the next masterpiece manufactured by Vaderstad – the Tempo 8-row planter that entered the local market four years ago. Their interest is quite understandable. It is different from other types of precision seed drills due to its type of seed placement. Seeds do not fall in the row randomly but they are ‘shot’ from the coulter. It allows to plant at 20 km/h, which is 2.5 times faster than ordinary row crop planters are.

‘In five years all row crop planter manufacturers will offer machines with this type of seed placement and our models are already working,’ says Artyom Ozhogin. ‘We get a good feedback and agricultural producers get a good harvest. We have been actively introducing them to Tempo: we organize multi-day test-drive in order to give them the possibility to try the machine, estimate its capacity and setting operations.

Tempo is versatile – it works perfectly well on cultivated, waterlogged soils and stubble. Another feature is an individual electric system independent from the tractor.

A lot of guests were interested in Challenger SpraCoupe 4660, a compact spraying system (boom width – 24.4m, tank capacity - 1514l). Due to its compact size, the machine does not put any significant pressure on the soil. It is perfectly fit for high-speed spraying at small rates of fertilizer. More and more agricultural producers choose this way of spraying because more chemical stays on the plant surface and less gets on the soil.