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The geographical spread of the McVeigh Partnership’s 8000ha of farmland, spanning six main properties and some smaller farms within 45km of Dalby, means overlapping deadlines for planting and harvesting make streamlined machine management critical.
With the support of their Crop Production Manager, Alexander Stephens, the McVeigh family grows cotton, corn, sorghum, mung beans, wheat, barley and chickpeas across the year, with around 40% irrigated and the balance under dryland production.
Mr Stephens said the opportunity to trial John Deere’s ExactRate™ liquid fertiliser system for cotton planting this year supported the business’ continual quest to refine every aspect of the operation – for minimised input use and optimised efficiency.
“We currently use granular fertiliser but our summer crop planting generally occurs at around the same time as the wheat harvest, and we don’t want to tie up grain trucks, augers and bins to cart fertiliser when we need them to shift grain,” Mr Stephens said.
“Our service providers, RDO and John Deere, offered us the use of a 1725C MaxEmerge™ planter equipped with an ExactRate™ system, which features variable rate and prescription application, turn compensation and individual row control.
“For the trials we used a small truck and transfer pump and it was a lot less intensive.”
The team trialled a John Deere 1725C MaxEmerge™ 5e Row Unit, pulled by an 8R 310 tractor with front-mounted tank. The MaxEmerge™ 5e – the ‘e’ standing for electric drive – is designed to improve population accuracy and ensure uniform seed spacing.
Mr Stephens said ease of use was ‘great’ for two key reasons – the layout of the Gen 4™ Display was familiar to the team of drivers, and the MaxEmerge™ planter could be swapped between the McVeigh Partnership’s fleet of John Deere tractors with ease.
“We have multiple operators working for the company and the farms are spread out, so there’s never usually the same driver on one machine. The simple layout of the Gen 4™ Display on the planter made it very easy to navigate and adjust ExactRate™ for application rates and refill.
“To be able to swap the implement between machines is another big thing – we don’t have to have a tractor specifically set up for that planter. Provided we have access to a liquid fertiliser tank on the tractor, we can hook it up anywhere.”
The trial
The McVeigh Partnership team applied FlowPhos 15 liquid starter with cotton seed at 35L/ha and set up trials of zero rate, normal rate and double rates, to see if they could detect any emergence benefits over their usual granular fertiliser application of 30kg/ha of Starter Z.
“The trials were very simple to set up,” Mr Stephens said.
“Our main goal was to see if we could find difference with the use of the liquid fertiliser, so the zero rate and normal rate is where we are really hoping to see some results. To be honest, 1.5 would have been more appropriate than the double rate and that will be something we consider in the future.
“We focused on using fields that were very consistent with the irrigation and soil type and making sure we had enough area to replicate the tests. Having John Deere Operations Center accumulating the data produced from planting will take the headache out of keeping track of the trial plots and make it easier to compare once crops are harvested.”
Several areas of the trial were affected by a significant hail storm in early November followed by heavy rain meaning results may be inconsistent. Mr Stephens, however, is hoping a second trial will come through unscathed, with the team ready to keenly take notes on growth between different plots throughout the growing season.
An additional bonus of the exercise, was the amount of data generated by the 1725C MaxEmerge™ 5e Row Unit.
“The electric drive metering systems with hydraulic downforce on the planter created data through John Deere Operations Center on seeding rates, ExactRate™ application and downforce maps, to track where the machine applied more downforce to maintain good ground contact,” Mr Stephens said.
“Hopefully we can correlate this data with our agronomy management decisions, so if the planter shows that we have an issue in the paddock, we can manage the affected area in the growing season.
“The data collection available through Operations Center is a huge thing for us, whether it’s record keeping, weather records, spray maps or harvest yield maps, it’s great.
“Being so spread out, we can have operators on multiple farms on the eastern, northern and western side of Dalby and I can be on my phone and direct them via tablet, computer or phone.
“We essentially changed over to John Deere equipment for its ease of use and also the availability of See & Spray™ on self-propelled sprayers, so that we have the option to be spraying just the weeds, not every acre, which is much more economical.”
An addition feature of ExactRate™ is turn compensation that ensures inner and outer rates are automatically adjusted to maintain consistent application across the full width of the planter, and row-by-row section control to reduce overlap on headlands and waterways.
About RDO Equipment Australia
RDO Equipment Australia is a provider of John Deere agricultural, construction, and forestry equipment, dedicated to empowering Australian farmers and contractors with advanced machinery and exceptional service. Committed to customer satisfaction, they offer comprehensive support and services to ensure optimal equipment performance. For more information, contact your local RDO team on 1300 008 608.
Original article by John Deere.
