A Riverina farming partnership has made the move to disc seeding in an effort to increase cropping efficiencies.TOM McKENNY and MARK SAUNDERS report.

THE Moolpa Partnership, Moulamein, NSW, recently bought an 18.3m Tobin Bullet disc seeder to replace a tined 17m machine. The Bullet is a single-disc machine that has a 610mm diameter disc on each sowing row set 305mm apart. The seeder has been put to work already sowing more than 5000 ha since being delivered earlier this season.

Moolpa Partnership’ s Andrew Douglas said the decision to move to a disc seeder was made after investigating minimum and zero till systems and how they could be tweaked to fit their particular production needs. They wanted to change from the past years of conventional farming system and move to a more hybrid farming model that adopted no-till but recognised the importance of sheep grazing to the partnership.

‘‘With the tined systems reliance on trifluralin, a wider, longer rotation and with grasses important to the sheep operation we didn’t like the idea of being restricted,’’ Andrew said. ‘‘We wanted a system that works for both cropping and sheep and this was largely why we held off on the move until we saw the disc machine in action. ‘‘The land out here is quite marginal country so we have been looking at various cropping systems for a while,’’ Andrew said. ‘‘Discs are certainly not for everyone but we’re now sufficiently confident they will work in our particular situation.’’

Having not long finished cropping with the Tobin and a second conventional air seeder, Andrew said they would follow The Bullet’s results for

another season or two before deciding whether to run just a single machine. The sowing results compared to the conventional seeder were sound, Andrew said. ‘‘I’m not seeing any significant differences between the conventionally sown crops and the disc, it seems to have every bit as good a germination as the rest,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s quite early in our use of The Bullet to endorse it fully but it’s done everything we hoped it would so far.’’

‘‘It was a very wet spring/summer and then it dried up in March so we were sowing into ground which had a very dry crust on top. ‘‘The Bullet did allow us to sow into country we would not have got into with our tined machines.’’

The Tobin disc seeder can also be used at faster ground speeds than tined seeders but the real focus for the partnership is efficiency. ‘‘The speed factor could be handy but we never thought we would be sowing all our crops at 20km/h. We thought this may just be a way for us to free the capital tied up in the second seeding unit.

‘‘Part of the thinking is to get 10 to 12,000 acres of wheat in with one machine and wanting to move to a more modern system.’’ The Tobin is combined with a 17,000-litre capacity Simplicity bin, letting the partnership sow more than 400ha a day. Andrew said the crops sown with the Bullet so far had been at a ground speed of 12-14km/h and the disc seeder had performed well in heavy stubble loads. ‘‘When we got the Tobin into those stubbles it just hared along.

‘‘If we had left our stubble paddocks standing the disc would’ve just sailed through — I don’t think you could grow a crop here thick enough to stop it.

‘‘We changed the angle of sowing where the Kelly chain had been and it handled it fine and the crop is fine as well - you wouldn’t believe what those bigger discs will go through. ‘‘It has worked well and that’s after doing everything we did not think we would have to - loading all the weight on to the discs to force them through the soil crust.

The average rainfall is 325mm and after the wet conditions of the past 12 months, Andrew said the country hadn’t looked better in years. ‘‘We’ve had 330mm of rainfall already this year and the country has recovered remarkably well after so many dry years. Most of the crop sown this year will be wheat, with about 400ha of barley.

The Partnership uses GPS guidance on the Challenger MT 855B 336kW tractor that hauls the Tobin seeder without any dramas. The GPS ensures accuracy to within 10cm, and Andrew said the seeder and Simplicity bin were set up for variable rate application of seed and fertiliser.

The Bullet was bought through HS West Motors, Cobram.  HS West principal John West said the Tobin seeder was renowned for its heavy duty build quality and ability to handle large amounts of trash or stubble. ‘‘It’s low maintenance and it’s made in Forbes, NSW, so it’s purpose built for Australian conditions,’’ John said.

Source: The Weekly Times, June 29, 2011 - see attachment for original article.

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The Weekly Times, June 29, 2011