Good equipment design isn’t just about doing the best job; it also takes into account shifting agronomic trends and practices.
Curtis de Gooijer, agronomist with Bourgault Industries Ltd., was recently at the Crop Production Show in Saskatoon, Sask., to highlight their agronomy program and some of the recent in-field trials that have been conducted.
The company has been focused on fertilizer placement, specifically phosphorus, says de Gooijer, in the interview below.
“The safety of fertilizer is extremely important on the drill, but in order to place fertilizer safely, it all ties into how the equipment is built, and different things that are designed around the equipment, focusing on agronomy,” he says. “I think we’ve moved into an era of greater crop yields and we’re pulling a lot more off the field. So we’re playing a lot with how we put down more phosphorus.”
In terms of equipment, de Gooijer says placement defines how much can safely be put in the seed row, and for some, that’s not enough to keep up with replacement rates. Which has led to the question of where else can we put it in the drill, where else can we get it down safely so that we can replenish our soils from what we’re taking off, he says.
Four or five years in to the research, he’s confident in the findings of how the Bourgault drills perform and how much to put down with the seed and in the mid-row band.
Bourgault is also looking at singulation of canola, and as de Gooijer notes, there are a lot of producers and equipment manufacturers interested in looking at it as well.
“What we’re diving into is playing with how does [singulation] affect the canola, how do we get more from the crop — whether that be through the yield or through the cutting of some seeding rates. So I think that’s some new and exciting things we’ve got on the go.”
Check out the conversation between RealAgriculture’s Kara Oosterhuis and Curtis de Gooijer, below:
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