​Fertilizer for cereal. Which is your best option?

In Spain, during these days, a lot of farmers are fertilizing their crops of cereals. If you speak with farmers or fertilizer seller, you can find a large variety of ideas about how you can fertilize your fields... it is really complicate to know which is the best option, even you have to know that there are a few external factors (sowing date, crop variety,... and the most important factor: rainfall) which will generate you some important doubts about what is the best way.

Some farmers commented us some options about winter fertilizer... we don't know which is the best. The fertilizers commented here are several examples of them... you have much more fertilizers with similar features in the market.

• Option 1: Two times of fertilizing: Medifer Urea 46 (200kg/he) in February and liquid fertilizer N-32 (100kg/he) in April.
• Option 2: Two times of fertilizing: Medifer Marte 45 (200kg/he) in February y liquid fertilizer N-32 (100kg/he) in April.
• Option 3: One time of fertilizing: Medifer Urea 46 (280kg/he) in February.
• Option 4: One time of fertilizing: Compo Novatec Nitroriz (250kg/he) in February. 

Their compositions are detailed below:

• Medifer Urea 46:
• Urea Nitrogen 46%
• Medifer Marte 45:
• Ammoniacal Nitrogen (NH4): 5%.
• Urea Nitrogen: 35%.
• Sulfur (SO3): 12.5%
• Liquid fertilizer N-32:
• 32% of N: half of it as urea and half as equal parts of nitric and ammoniac
• Compo Novatec Nitroriz:
• Urea Nitrogen 20%
• Ammoniacal Nitrogen 12%
• Sulfur 32%

Its prices (aprox.) are detailed below (euros per ton)

• Medifer Urea 46: 300
• Medifer Marte 45: 290
• Liquid fertilizer N-32: 260
• Compo Novatec Nitroriz: 420

What option is your favorite? What fertilizer technique have you most commonly used?

Versión en español.

​Nematodes

Throughout the 2015, we spoke about vineyard works several times. Even, our friend Óscar sent information and some pictures when he planted his new vineyard. This time, we are going to comment a task which is carried out ​b​efore planting when the winegrower would like to plant a new vineyard on field where there was another old vineyard.

First of all, it’s remarkable to remember that there is a restructuring plan to allow farmers to change their vineyards which offers important grants for winegrowers. When a farmer decides to change his vineyard with the aim of having new vines, the first step is to evaluate his soil in order to know if it is infected with Nematodes. For that, the farmer has to pick up some samples which will be delivered to a specialised lab where people will perform an analysis to know if the soil is healthy or infected.

The result of the analysis is detailed below:

• >5 Nematodos/100g soil of Xiphinema index sp. (it is a problem for grapevine)
• >30 Nematodos/100g soil of other sp. species.

Also, you can see the result of the analysis of the Óscar's field in our last picture. Some winegrowers don't make this analysis because the Anti-worm treatment is really expensive, but if you want to avoid risks, the best way is analysing​ ​the soil to know the phytosanitary treatment needed.

If the analysis is positive, winegrower must performance an anti-worm treatment.. On this occasion the phytosanitary product used was DD-Inyectable of the Celtis Company (dichloropropene 116% w/v. AL). Its composition is 1​.160 g/L of equivalent dichloropropene to 95% w/w of the mixture; its content of dichloropropane doesn't exceed 0.24%.​ ​Winegrowers have to ask an important number of authorizations to buy and use this toxic product​.​

The dose used for vineyard is of 500kg/ha and the product is injected at 30cm depth as you can see in our video and pictures. It is an expensive treatment because the price is of 3.7€/kg. In addition, farmer has to carry out some deep​ ​ploughing jobs before and after the Anti-worm treatment with the aim of the DD-Injectable product can go into soil without problems and this soil can be aerate appropriately.

Vesión en español.

Video:

Pictures:

New farming machinery sales in 2015

​The data about new farming machinery sales in 2015 were published. The most important information was that 10,605 new tractors were sold... as you can see in our graph, this confirms that the market of new tractors is around 10,000 units. You have all statistics which were published by Official Department of Agriculture from this link. 

We would like to highlight the best seller new tractor was the John Deere 6125M, followed by New Holland T4.95 F, Kubota M8540 and John Deere 6150M. On the other hand, we would like to mention some absences like Kubota M7001 and the Deutz-Fahr Agrotron 9 Series (out of which only one tractor was sold in 2015)... we spoke about them last year.

A few interesting rankings about new tractors sales are detailed below:

Ranking sales rates per brand

1. John Deere: 2,661
2. New Holland: 1,933
3. Kubota: 873
4. CaseIH: 786

Ranking sales rates per group

1. CNH: 2,719
2. John Deere: 2,661
3. AGCO: 1,407
4. SDF: 1,186
5. Kubota: 702
6. ARGO: 474
7. Claas: 290
8. Resto: 995

Ranking Avg. power (HP)

1. Fendt: 170.2
2. Claas: 148.7
3. Deutz-Fahr: 141.7
4. CaseIH: 141.1
5. Valtra: 139.1
6. Massey Ferguson: 131
7. John Deere: 125.5
8. New Holland: 113.4
9. McCormick: 90
10. Same: 90
11. Lamborghini: 88.8
12. Landini: 85.8
13. Kubota: 84.8

Other highlight data of new farming machinery sales are the following ones:

• Sold trailers: 5,147 units in 2015 (5,242 units in 2014)
• About trailed or mounted machinery:
  • Soil tillage machinery: 2,673 units in 2015 (2,378 units in 2014)
  • Seed drills machinery: 783 units in 2015 (692 units in 2014)
  • Crop protection machinery: 5,752 units in 2015 (4,754 units in 2014)
  • Spreaders machinery: 2,115 units in 2015 (2,189 units in 2014)
  • Harvesters machinery: 1,989 units in 2015 (1,939 units in 2014)

Ranking new combines sales rates:

1. Claas: 103
2. New Holland: 97
3. John Deere: 70
4. Fendt: 19
5. Deutz-Fahr: 18
6. CaseIH: 4

Ranking new automotive grape harvesters sales rates:

1. New Holland: 40
2. Gregoire: 17
3. Pellenc: 12

Versión en español.