Sowing sugar beet with Maschio Bros.

​Last week, we spoke about the choice between performing farm jobs with an outsourcing company and with our own machinery. On this occasion,​ we are going to show an example about an outsourcing company carrying out sowing tasks of sugar beet in Magazos (Ávila) working with a Maschio Gaspardo pneumatic precision planter with hydraulic folding frame. The owner of this company told us they have a lot of work with sugar beet... it is a very specialized crop. They sow about 400ha (sugar beet, corn and sunflowers) for farmers of this area, e.g., their Fendt worked about 700 hours during the last year in sugar beet harvesting jobs. 

In these area, farmers usually have small  pneumatic precision planters (Monosem or Solá, for example) of 7 rows or less... this outsourcing company uses one of 12 rows, which allows them to sow about 20 ha/day (the working speed is over 4 km/h). Pneumatic precision planters are normally too expensive, so farmers have to think about its amortization. On the other hand, this outsourcing company only charges 45 €/ha for this job... What option is the best for you?

As our friend Carlos said, and as you can see in our pictures, the sowing accuracy is very high... the seed are put on the soil at 17cm (rows are at 50cm) and the dose used is of 110,000 plants per hectare. We think it is not possible to sow this crop on the other way... the box of Danicia KWS seed (it is the variety used in this field) has 100,000 plants and the price per hectare is of 400€.

Maschio Gaspardo company is going to be in the next edition of Demoagro on 27th, 28th and 29th of May... there, we will be able to test this seed drill and all its produtcs. We invite you to go.

Versión en español.

Joaquín Herminio Tribaldos (Twins' Farm)

Spraying days. Using your machinery or outsourcing company?

During the last days, we worked with our Fitosa sprayer to weed out the pulse vegetables (peas and yeros) and cereals (barley, triticale… we didn’t sow wheat for this year). The company, which sold us its plant protection products, supplies free water to all farmers who buy their products. It is a really good idea... we can fill our sprayer (1,200 liters) in just 5 minutes.

As you can see in our pictures, we basically used the ​four plant protection products showed below:

• Aramo 50 (Tepraloxydim 5.0%).  We used it in our peas and yeros. The dose used is of 1.5 l/ha... it is a very expensive product (about 30€/l). We used 300 liters of water per hectare to spray this product.
• Herbenuron​ and Ansar​ (Tribenuron-metil 75%). We used it in our cereals. The dose used is of 20gr/ha... The price of a  bottle of 100gr is about 50€ and the dose used is 20gr/ha. We used 200 liters of water per hectare to spray with this product.
• Arsol (Fenoxaprop-p Etil 6.9%). We used it in our cereals where there were wild oats. ​The price is about 38€/l and the dose used is of 1 l/ha and also we used 200 liters of water per hectare.

While we were working in these spraying jobs, we had a question about the profitability... we don't know if we carry out these tasks with our machinery is really more profitable than carrying out them through an outsourcing company. In our area, all farmers perform almost all their tasks using their tools but in other areas (we think they are areas where population are older or agriculture is lower profitable​ or more profitable... we don't know​) the outsourcing company are very common and lots of farming jobs (sowing, fertilizer, spraying, harvesting,...) are outsourced. In our case, we only carry out harvesting and fertilizer (with liquid fertilize in spring) tasks with outsourcing companies. 

We think it depends on the price, but it is a pretty good option for farmers who have other jobs or farmers don't have modern machinery... What is your position? If you want, we can perform a little study with the follower options. What do you think about that?

Versión en español.

Joaquín Herminio Tribaldos (Twins' Farm)