Rape: A crop to keep in mind

Las week, we were reading the Campo magazine (from www.campocyl.es website) when we received its newsletter (it is sent weekly) and we found an interesting article about rape in Castilla y León (it is an area where there are over 26,000 hectares of colza). As we could read in these article, it is an important crop in this​ ​Spanish area and it is interesting to carry out crop rotations. Our friend Alberto (from Turégano) and Espejo (from Chinchón) sent us some pictures as you can see below. Alberto sowed colza this year (it is the first time he cultivates it) and he is going to sow it this campaign again... his production was of 2,130kg/ha. As he told us, colza is a crop which needs water in its first week after sowing (it is sowed in September) to grow up. If it rains in these period the success is almost guaranteed.

The article begins to saying "the profitability that can be obtained with rape is impossible to be got with cereal"). ... It begins really great!!. Rape can produce between 2,000kg and 4,000kg per hectare and its price is about 375€/t besides its costs regarding to cereal are only about 50€/ha more. In irrigated fields, rape yields are similar to corn and their costs are really lower.

We could see in this magazine an interesting summary of profit/cost per hectare according to a farmer from Peleas de Abajo - Zamora (he has sowed 54ha for 6 years). That summary is the following one:

Costs:

• Seeds: 55€
• Sowing tasks: 40€
• Harvesting tasks: 47€
• Ploughing and harrowing tasks: 75€
• Fertilizer tasks: 205€
• Spraying tasks: 140€

Total costs: 562€

Profit (if you have an average production of 2,500kg/ha): 937€

In our area nobody sow rape... we suppose there aren't good conditions for it. Some farmers sowed rape in near Villages but after a few years they changed crop :(... What experiences do you have with this crop? We are waiting your comments!!

Versión en español.

Working among sunflowers

We have spoken about sunflower works like harrowing or sowing which were published in the blog and our YouTube channel. Sunflower is a really important crop in our area and in the last years high oleic sunflower is getting very good yields. This time, what caught our attention was the implement that our friend Vicente Castillo was using. We would like to comment the steering system used when he sowed them.

As you can see in our pictures, the tool Vicente was using is designed for sunflowers (maybe it can be used for corn too). It has 5 minicultichissel per row to remove all weeds in spite of coming very near sunflowers; besides this tool put more soil near sunflowers so they have a great growth. Regarding Vicente’s comments, maybe he needed higher sunflowers to get the best result of his tool because he was working at 8km/h and the ideal working speed is about 10.5km/h. Definitely, this implement is pretty lightweight and really effective... we liked it so much!!

On the other hand, we would like to stand out sunflowers were sowed using the Cerea autoguidance system. Vicente has problems to keep an absolutely straight row during a whole day so he decided to install the Cerea steering system. As you can see in our pictures and the video, the sowing task was optimum and his system only used the EGNOS signal (it is the GPS signal with less accuracy). We use Cerea system too, which you can check in this old post we published it in cereal sowing days.

Versión en Español

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