Precision planters on display at the Outdoor Farm Show

Saturday, January 9, 2016

But even the best planter cannot do a good job if it is not properly maintained or set for the conditions in which it is working

by PAT LYNCH

Canada's Outdoor Farm Show was the place to see various planters in action last September. All of the planters plant crops more precisely than the planters of old. There were numerous high-speed planters, which could maintain precision seed drop even at 10 m.p.h. You don't have to plant that fast, but these planters keep their precision seed drop at speeds faster than the four m.p.h. for which many planters are designed.

Värderstad demonstrated a planter that planted four crops at the same time. Not that you would do that, but to show that you could do that. John Deere demonstrated their ExactEmerge which, they claim, has the shortest seed drop in the industry.

A reporter asked me: "What is going on here? They all seem to be doing the same thing." And, in a way, that is true. But the difference is in how it is being done. It really is a test to see which company has listened the best to growers, knows the most about seed and soil, and then uses the best engineers to obtain the type of stands that farmers want with the soil conditions that exist. 

Precision seed drop or, more correctly, precision of stands is evident in most fields. I did some talking this year at grower plot days. I always checked the population and evenness of stands. Since these were farm plots that were taken to yield, I believe they were planted better than most farm fields. But all could have been much better.

When I checked stand count versus seed drop, there would be between 2,000 and 5,000 difference between seed planting and final stand. Then, when I checked for "harvestable" ears, there was 3,000-6,000 difference between seed drop and harvestable ears.

The difference between seed drop and harvestable ears is related to planters. Some of this has to do with tillage before planting. Some of the newer planter innovations overcome some of the errors in tillage. Often, growers will plant into soil that they know is not fit. That is the reality of planting in Ontario. Our soil is uniform, previous field actions cause compaction. Some of the adaptations, such as seed-firmers, or down-pressure control can overcome these shortcomings.

At two of these corn plot days, the sponsoring company had a planter person there who went over the planter and showed how some basic repairs or part replacements would make the planter perform better. From what I saw, there are a lot of planters that could benefit from an experienced technician going over them. In some cases, it is a matter of replacing bushings. In others, disc openers are so worn that they cannot achieve a proper seed groove. And some planters have passed their "best before date" and should be retired.

The point here is that many planters can do a better job if they are properly maintained. And having a new planter does not mean a near-perfect stand. At the planter demonstration at Canada's Outdoor Farm Show, there was a new planter that is very capable of doing a great job. Unfortunately, it was not set deep enough. The stand was uneven.

That is the second part of planters. Even a planter that can do a great job may not do so if it is not set for the conditions in which it is planting. BF

Consulting agronomist Pat Lynch, CCA (ON,) formerly worked with the Ontario agriculture ministry and with Cargill.