Sowing days: Cereals and pulse vegetables

In our opinion, the sowing task is our favourite job. We work to sow a few days per year (about 15 days) but they are really funny. It is a job you must carry out with high accuracy (our Cerea autoguidance system by GPS helps us) because it is the first step to have a good crop and good harvesting yield... when we finish sowing a field we are satisfied with the work done, as long as the result is appropriate. In our area it rained in October and first days of November so soil was fine to sow. Our followers told us that in others areas of Spain it didn't rain for a few months and they aren't enjoying their sowing tasks.

This campaign we have diversified our crops and we have sowed a few varieties of cereals and pulse vegetables. We have been carrying out this process for many years to rotate our fields with different crops and in order to have better weed control. Normally, we sow sunflowers but this year we have already sowed all our fields except some fields that are going to be fallow whole year.

The seeding dose used in our crop sowed are below:

• PR Wheat: 240 kg/ha
• Narbonensis Vetch: 225 kg/ha
• Comanche Pea: 220 kg/ha
• Trujillo Triticale: 210 kg/ha
• Hispanic Barley: 210 kg/ha
• Mariana Vetch:  180 kg/ha
• Lentil: 150 kg/ha

What seeding dose do you use in your farm?

Our great friend Oscar (from El Provencio) sent us a few interesting pictures of his sowing works and his new Lamusa Europa 2000 XSR seed drill. He told us the seed drill works really very fine and he will be able to finish sowing tasks really soon... Unfortunately, the soil is dry and the work is not perfect as he likes it... we hope it rains soon because we need water in our fields. ​Also, Diego and Cesar sent us a few pictures about their Claydon, Aguirre and Lamusa seed drills...thank you very much!!​

Versión en español.

​Cerea. Autoguidance solution

It was 15th of July of 2010 when Cesar Domínguez began this project and he advertised that in his old blog. It was the day when we began to have news about this magnificent autosteering solution guided by GPS and called Cerea. This idea appeared as result of trying to save money because professional autoguidance systems sold were really expensive, and the project grow with an unstoppable power. Many farmers started to carry out test on field... we began to use it a bit later (last months of 2011) and since then only successful and satisfactions have been received from it. We have installed systems for some friends and they are working daily without any problem and they are pretty pleased.

Cerea is an autoguidance solution made for farmers so it owns all the features they need and it is designed following their instructions. Nowadays, we are over 45 farmers in Spain who are carrying out test on field and we report our needs, incidents, improvements, etc... for Cesar Domínguez.

Autoguidance systems by GPS allows to farmers save money... yes, you can really save money because your fertilizer, spraying, harrowing, sowing and harvesting tasks are done more accurately. Another important aspect is the comfort, since you can work a long sowing day and you can arrive at home without fatigue. Even that, the main goal of Cerea is that the tractor doesn't need a driver. The first step is done because tractor can change on head automatically, e.g., when you are spraying or fertilizer.

Its prices are really cheaper and about price/quality ratio we are convinced that is the best on the market. It is a system farmer can buy it with different configurations or even farmer can work in its installation. The standard prices are shown below (taxes not included) but they can be different according to the needs of each farmer (RTK signal, installation in some tractors…).

• Software license: 150€
• Manual guidance system: 600€
• Autoguidance system: 2,600€

In our opinion, we recommend this system for all farmers because it is easy to work and its results are very gratifying.

Versión en español.

Videos

Pictures (source: CEREA AUTOSTEER GPS Facebook Group)