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How Two Yorkshire Farmers are reducing the cost of crop establishment.

26/01/07

With the dramatic fall in cereal prices and the spiralling cost of inputs, farmers are desperate to find ways of cutting costs.

JK Senior and Sons, Crop Consultants in Yorkshire, are well aware of this predicament and have been working with their clients to realistically reduce the cost of crop inputs. They have managed to reduce their cost per tonne for wheat, doubtful if it can drop further without serious yield penalty, so they are now looking at methods available for one pass drilling to reduce power inputs and to improve soil management.

Direct drilling first appeared in the late sixties and after a year or so it became apparent that it was not the immeditae answer, but the introduction of Roundup and modern technology has helped the cause.

The Claydon One Pass

One of their clients, Graham Oliver of Swine near Hull purchased a Claydon one pass machine which is fed seed pneumatically from a tractor front mounted hopper through a series of pipes. The machine framework which can be in various widths from 3.4 to 4.8 metres, has a front row of rigid tines 30 cms apart, behind each of which in the next row there is another fairly rigid spring tine with a wing like a duck foot which protects the seed dropper underneath it. For wheat the removable wing is 12 cm in width and has a split outlet to give two rows of wheat 8 cms apart which leaves 15 cms between them and the next twin rows, for rape the wing is 8 cms. When sowing beans the wing is removed to reveal a rigid tine and one row outlet for the beans. At the rear is a pneumatic wheel for each tine, which rolls and consolidates the slots. The frame is like a stealth aeroplane's wings being swept back to each side, which allows trash to pass through easily, which means the tines are not in a straight row across the frame. Depth is controlled by two wheels mid way mounted.

The only soil disturbed is where the seed will fall. So far things look encouraging, it is much cheaper than conventional sub soiling, ploughing and then working the land down. It is also cheaper than a tillage train, which necessitates a drill operation afterwards and disturbs all the soil thereby letting daylight into the soil that encourages weed growth. So not only is there a saving on fuel and time, it allows timely drilling to be carried out with a possible chemical saving also. "There are fewer wheel marks so less paddling of land and this system might be able to be used all the time or it may necessitate a ploughing job once in three or four years" says Graham. This will depend on the grass weed infestation or otherwise. It might be a problem it might not but one should be aware and watch out for it. "As we all have to do a soil management plan, this idea should go down well with the powers that be by travelling on the land when it is dry and by just working the top soil" commented Simon Senior. Graham uses a 150 hp tractor on some reasonable strong land but to put beans in deep on hard going it could be that a 200 hp tractor would be required. There is also the possibility of slugs living and working in the topsoil and the debris from the previous crop so be aware of that. If you are sowing spring crops, you can claim your ELS points for over wintered stubbles and then direct drill without having to plough in the spring. If there has been a blackgrass problem and you have ploughed the seeds in, provided you don't plough them up again they rot after 18 months so a reduction of that weed is quite possible. So on this farm there is a lot going for this system and it will be closely monitored.

Even Simpler the Cousins Flat Lift

Another client, John Sharp who farms over 2,000 acres is also keen to reduce input costs and has an even simpler idea. He uses a Cousins Flat Lift frame with tines 45 cms apart. On the front of the frame is mounted an Opic seed box which has a land wheel driven metering device and pneumatic assistance to deliver the seed, in this case rape, to the back of the tine where the seed simply drops into the slot. Some variable depths of seed are going to happen but it doesn't seem to make any difference, the crop looked magnificent. It was noticeable there was no pigeon damage and it looked as if the previous stubble between the drilled rows of rape was still there and pigeons do not like landing on that sort of stubble.

Behind the tines there is a packer bar of D rings and when drilling takes place, the operation is followed up immediately by Cambridge rollers. On this farm they had used a 175 hp tractor for convenience rather than anything else, a smaller one would do admirably. Drilling had taken place early after harvest and diagonally to the previous drilling which allowed them to use the former tram lines which could easily be distinguished. It looked as if because little land had been disturbed that spraying would not necessarily have to be done for weeds so another saving there. Doing it this way, John had been able to get his substantial rape acreage drilled a week earlier than by using conventional methods. However he did a couple of fields traditionally and one field half and half to give a fair comparison.

One thing he is going to do next year is to mount a slug pellet applicator onto the frame to save another job.

Again as with conventional techniques and the Claydon also, avoid doing it if the land is wet and smearing. Because of the large acreages achievable each day with both systems, it does allow for work to be done in more ideal conditions. There has been no adjustment of seed rates on either farm and on both farms the crops looked magnificent.

Simon Senior who organised the two farm visits says that if he does find a grass weed problem then the plough will be brought in again for whole farm weed management but it certainly will not be needed every year. That means he is erring on the side of caution, it may never happen and if it does maybe a new spray will have emerged by then to overcome the resistance being seen by black grass.

Of course what is sure to happen is that by the time we all adopt this new approach, prices will have increased but both farmers said if they did so much the better they will keep this tackle as they see a bright future for it.
(Extract from Farming Online)

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• Oilseed Rape Seed Treatments (21 September 2009)
• Can you control blackgrass and establish a crop of winter beans for £20 per acre? (22 May 2009)
• J K Senior & Sons - Metaldehyde Usage Dropped (23 March 2009)
• How Two Yorkshire Farmers are reducing the cost of crop establishment. (26 January 2007)