Sowing with pleasure

It is an open secret that the quality of harvest largely depends on the quality of sowing. Currently, Vaderstad seed drills are the leaders in terms of both sowing speed and quality.

Muchkap-Niva farming enterprise has been operating in Muchkapski village, Tambov oblast for 14 years. The total farmland of the enterprise is around 20 thousand ha, of which 15 thousand ha is arable land. The farm was founded on the basis of five bankrupt collective farms. The company started operating from scratch, coping with significant losses: there was barely enough money to buy fuel and seeds. With time, the situation has changed. Due to hard work and love of land, the owners managed to achieve success and build a strong and prosperous enterprise where the employees work in two shifts and receive a competitive salary. Today, the farmers grow sunflower, maize for grain, malting barley, peas and spring and winter wheat using modern imported machines.

Andrey Palachev, Deputy Director General of Muchkap-Niva, has been engaged in hard farming work since childhood, when he used to help his father, Fedor Palachev, who worked as a chief agronomist. Now, Andrey’s father is the Head of Muchkap-Niva and, like in his childhood, Andrey helps him to manage the farm, but at a more serious and professional level now.

‘We are not planning any expansion since there is no more available land in our area. However, we are going to introduce some improvements. For example, Russian Railways has recently offered to connect our farm to the railroad, and we will probably agree because motor transportation is getting more and more expensive nowadays. We are also planning to improve the quality of sowing, field management and harvesting. We intend to receive maximum yield from our fields, therefore, we increase the application rate of liquid and pelleted fertiliser year by year.’

In order to increase the quality of sowing and, consequently, the quality of the harvest, Muchkap-Niva has been purchasing Tempo and Rapid seed drills manufactured by Vaderstad since 2013.

‘A few years ago, AgroCentre arranged a trip to the factory, which manufactures these seed drills. We even had an opportunity to be present at the machinery testing’, says Andrey Palachev. ‘We were very happy with what we saw and we purchased our first models: two TPF8 seed drills and one RDA600C. It was the right choice, the machines have exceeded all our expectations. For example, Tempo seed drills are among the very few which can sow with maximum precision at a high speed. Even though the manufacturer indicates that the maximum sowing speed is 17 km/h, in fact, the machine can sow efficiently even at 22 km/h. It is important to note that these seed drills need tractors with the capacity of not less than 200 hp, for example, the Challenger МТ685.

Andrey asserts that Rapid direct seed drills do a very good job on both tilled soil and on crop residue.

‘Our enterprise has three seed drills of this kind: RDA400C, RDA600C and RDA800C. They help us to sow efficiently after maize. It is not even necessary to till the soil, which enables us to save on costs considerably. Besides, the equipment allows simultaneous sowing and fertiliser application.’