Mzuri, specialists in conservation farming equipment, will be launching a precision seeder option for its Pro-Til range of striptill drills at Cereals 2017, stand number 3054. This year’s event takes place at Boothby Graffoe, Lincolnshire, on 14th and 15th June.
Precision seeding in one pass
The new precision metering feature on the Pro-Til drill offers accurate seeding depth and spacing from a single pass system, resulting in huge cost savings.
Pro-Til’s advanced precision seeding option eliminates the need for prior cultivations and enables users to precision plant crops directly into previous crop residue or grassland, thus conserving moisture and soil’s natural structure.
Creating optimum establishment conditions
Retention of moisture, fertiliser placement and soil reconsolidation at seeding time have been proven to play an essential role to successful establishment of precision crops. The Pro-Til precision drill places the seed into moist, friable and nutrient-rich seeding environment and reconsolidates for maximum soil-to-seed contact, creating a perfect environment for successful germination.
Independently operating leading discs cut through surface residue. A breaker leg prepares a strip of clean, friable soil and places a band fertiliser to provide a nutrient boost for the developing roots. Each band is reconsolidated by a following press wheel to remove clods and air pockets.
The seed is precision placed behind Mzuri’s latest design low disturbance coulter which is followed by a second reconsolidation wheel for perfect soil-to-seed contact.
Precision metering with additional functionality
Each Pro-Til seeding unit boasts its own individual height and depth control.
Hydraulically-operated seeding legs exert constant down pressure that can be adjusted on each individual leg.
The system uses adjustable-pressure vacuum metering to accurately space crops, regardless of seed size. Each unit contains a metering disc and a singulator to prevent skips or doubles and is driven by an electric motor which maintains the same seeding distance at variable speeds.
A bulk fill system continually replenishes the mini hoppers on each metering unit directly from the Pro-Til’s dual 3400 litre tank (split 2040 litre seed/1360 litre fertiliser capacity) for reliable non-stop drilling.
Multiple drilling operations from one drill
The precision seeding kit should be available for the 2018 season as an option on new Pro-Til drills or for retrofitting to older models, further extending the drill’s versatility to carry out striptill, direct drilling and now, precision seeding operations with one drill.
Mzuri, specialists in strip tillage, have recently conducted a customer care survey as part of the company’s continuous improvement programme. Sent to the entire UK customer database, the questionnaire returned a high number of responses, highlighting the manufacturer’s technical and service excellence.
The survey measured user satisfaction levels at various customer touchpoints, from the initial contact and product demonstrations through to product performance and after-sales service, with the company being awarded consistently high marks across all areas. The team’s knowledge and expertise was particularly appreciated, with a staggering 98% of the respondents rating it as excellent or good. Furthermore, 9 out 10 customers were impressed or very impressed with their machine demonstration, and the service back-up received the same high score. 95% thought staff professionalism, communication and speed of response was excellent or very good.
Mzuri drills were awarded equally good marks with 9 in 10 users being satisfied or very satisfied with the system. Specifically, the survey measured the product’s performance in the areas of crop establishment, yields, fuel savings, labour reduction and soil health improvement.
Finally, the survey found that 100% of the respondents would recommend Mzuri to a friend, indicating deep levels of loyalty and trust in the brand.
Mzuri, UK-based manufacturer of specialist strip tillage equipment, have announced the opening of a manufacturing facility in Poland to meet the rapidly growing demand in export and home markets. A joint venture with the Polish company AN-AGRO, the new factory will be built in Bydgoszcz region, Poland, with the site’s production mainly destined for Eastern and Central European customer base. Mzuri’s UK operation in Pershore will continue to manufacture, market and service machines for the UK, Scandinavian and Western European regions.
Martin Lole, managing director at Mzuri, said: “These are very exciting times for the company and we look forward to pooling our resources with AN-AGRO to grow the European region further. The business has been going from strength to strength with the demand more than doubling this year, both in the UK and overseas. With the interest being particularly strong in Poland, Russia and Ukraine, the decision to open a factory close to market will help us to better service the area. The additional capacity in Poland is intended to free up some of the UK’s production which will allow us to be more responsive to the rapidly expanding UK market.”
The Pro-Til drill is a brilliant piece of kit and we are very impressed with the way it establishes all of our crops. The small press wheel gives excellent seed to soil contact which is where this machine has the edge over its competitors. The drill is very effective in creating the perfect seedbed in one pass whilst improving the rooting structure under the growing crop. Soil structure and biodiversity have improved over the last few years and there are definitely more worms in the soil profile which helps to break down straw residue after harvest. Another huge benefit is time – my working hours have reduced considerably meaning I have more time for my family now.
Using the Mzuri drill has dramatically reduced our establishment costs from £220/ha to £120/ha for wheat and £74/ha for OSR before seed. Our crop yields are increasing year on year, with winter wheat averaging 12.5 t/ha and OSR at 5 t/ha. This gives us a massive saving in cost of production and in these uncertain times it is vital to remain profitable and sustainable. I would never go back to the old crop establishment method.
Guy Shelby has been achieving record high yields while farming difficult soils at sea level and getting on top of a blackgrass problem. Guy puts this success down to his switch to strip-tillage three years ago when he bought a Mzuri Pro-Til 3T. The move resulted in considerable cost savings and soil improvement. Subsequently, he has been achieving 5t/ha yields on oilseed rape and over 10t/ha on wheat which is quite an achievement, given that Guy is dealing with difficult soils at sea level and a blackgrass problem.
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Arable farming isn’t just about growing crops, believes Staffordshire farming partners Tom Collier and Richard Clarke.
Livestock plays a key part in the system they run on the 1,000 acres their families own land – and the additional land they contract farm – from Tixall Heath Farm and Brick House Farm in Staffordshire, where medium light soils are interspersed with heavy clay patches.
That acreage includes 865 acres of arable land run on a five year rotation, with some 145 acres of grassland, which supports 500 ewes and their progeny.
They run a five year rotation – winter wheat; winter oilseed rape, winter wheat, spring barley and spring beans – and switched to strip tillage three years ago.
While their previous system – based around a one pass cultivator and cultivator drill – was performing well, they felt they could achieve several benefits by moving to strip till drilling using a 3m Pro-Til drill from Mzuri.
This drill uses a leading tine to cultivate a vertical strip and restructure the immediate root zone, before placing the seed in a pocket of tilth while leaving most of the ground un-worked:
There were elements of labour and cost-saving in making the switch, but our main motivation was a desire to improve soil structure”, says Tom.
We ploughed everything until about eight years ago, but felt we were depleting the soil to such an extent that it was becoming hard, compacted and lifeless.
We moved to a non-inversion system based on one cultivation pass and a cultivator drill as a first step to improve soil structure.
That worked well, but we felt there was further room for improvement. In effect, we felt we could achieve more by working the soil less
Using strip tillage is showing several practical benefits, he says: “Our costs are definitely lower and labour greatly reduced, which is helping us achieve better timeliness of drilling.
Yields have remained consistent, even though we have been through some pretty extreme and difficult seasons. We have been very pleased with the drill, and with company which is very good to work with.
But the drill is just one component in the operation; it is the farming system around it that really makes the difference.
Mixing autumn and spring sown crops is a key element in that. Their rotation helps and ensures clean crops – important as they aim for milling markets with their wheat; malting markets for the barley and beans are grown for human consumption:
Growing two successive spring crops gives us the opportunity to deal with problem weeds. We plant winter oats as cover crops ahead of them, and let the sheep graze them off over the winter, after which they can rarely green up enough in the spring to survive.
Bromes have always been a bit of a problem and we have noticed groundsel becoming more of an issue recently.
We mow a 3m strip around the crop and the headland several times during the year so we don’t move grass and weed seeds into the crop. It is time consuming but it works.
Black-grass is not a major problem. It tends to build up slowly over time. It only really builds up if you fail to do anything effective about it
Strip tillage is also having the expected benefits on soils: “We certainly have better worm populations and soil structure is much better. The drill is becoming easier to pull each year, and we don’t have to run the leading tines as deep as we did at first