As the 2020 planting season readily approaches, most farmers will have heard countless times that Speed and Precision are the driving factors when it comes to increasing their profits at the end of the year. Therefore, those two words inevitably become the factors to consider when in the market for a new planter and, given the time of the year, surely they are on most farmers’ minds these days.
Skeptics among us will suggest that those two words are meaningless marketing fluff, and they can be. That is why it is crucially important to separate the wheat from the chaff, which, in this case, translates to establishing what it is exactly that those two words–Speed and Precision–should mean for You and Your farming business.
Today, almost every major planter manufacturer uses these two words in their marketing literature. Unfortunately, without stating exactly what type of precision one can achieve at varying planting speeds, manufacturers are relying on the emotional thrill of speed to overcome the logic of precision, and to dull the senses of a conscientious farmer. What is more important for Your operation – Speed or Precision?
Speed is a straightforward concept when it comes to planting. It creates efficiencies allowing You to plant more hectares without necessarily having to invest in additional or larger (expensive) equipment. But higher speeds come at a great cost as well: more fuel to pull the equipment, increased equipment failure rates due to fatigue, and, ultimately, decreased planting precision.
Precision is a much more complex aspect of planting to assess correctly. Fortunately, research conducted by long-time innovators in seed technology, Pioneer and Monsanto, recently cracked the case of the undeniable importance of precision in planting wide open. Not one, but two independent studies were carried out and their findings speak for themselves.
What the researchers found was that for each percentage point of skipped soil in a field, the yield can be negatively impacted (=reduced) by a staggering 1.5%. Both of the conducted studies emphasize the fact that skips that occur during planting are the ‘highest contributing factor to yield losses’. In fact, as a point of comparison, the researchers discovered that skips are significantly more impactful when it comes to yield than such all-time favorites as inconsistent emergence, planting outside the optimum planting window, and lack of within-row plant spacing uniformity.Kinze, established in 1965, an acclaimed manufacturer of precision planters, has been selling planters in the Eastern European region for 40 years and is the 2nd biggest player in the U.S. planter market. It has developed a simple interactive calculator, based on the results of the aforementioned studies, that will help You understand the potential financial impact of Your planter’s performance (or lack thereof). Utilizing data from Your operation, You can use the calculator to measure your planter’s impact on profit:
- Simply input the price per ton You expect to receive for Your grain
- The population of seeds per hectare
- The guaranteed germination rate from your seed provider
- What level your current planter is performing at regarding skips
- What to expect planting with a Kinze True Rate planter – Kinze consistently sees 99% plus accuracy in the field with less than 0.5% of skips
- How many hectares you are planting
The result is the likely increase in profit for Your operation, were You to use a Kinze planter. The example above shows that a 4% improvement in Singulation over 1,000 hectares would increase profit by 54,083 euros annually.
Almost all farmers evaluate emergence after planting the crop, but it is difficult to truly understand the impact of skips that way, as we are naturally not capable of quantifying what we visually see across a 20 or 40 hectare field. Look at the example to the right — it represents a field planted with 5% random skips. When walking through a field such as this, most would believe their planter performed rather well.
However, if we consolidate all the skips into a single area, we can now clearly see that we have lost a significant portion of our field, which is yielding us no profit, while also costing us in terms of unutilized potential.
The independent studies conducted by researchers at Pioneer and Monsanto were carried out using maize, therefore, Kinze’s calculator was developed to be used primarily with maize, but the same principle can be applied to other crops as well.
To learn more about Kinze Accuracy or speak with one of our dealers, please visit our website at www.kinze.com.int
References:
Planting Outcome Effects on Corn Yield, Pioneer https://www.pioneer.com/us/agronomy/corn_planting_outcome_effects.html
Effects of Singulation on Plant Population and Yield Potential of Corn, Monsanto https://monsanto.com/app/uploads/2017/05/effects-of-singulation-on-plant-population-and-yield-potential-of-corn-hlc.pdf
About Kinze Manufacturing
Founded 55 years ago on the premise of innovation, Kinze Manufacturing, Inc., markets its planters and grain carts globally and is known for a number of industry “firsts.” Kinze operates with core values of integrity, customer focus, excellence, innovation and mutual respect. Kinze Manufacturing is the recognized technology leader and innovator of planters for row-crop production, grain auger carts, high-speed tillage equipment, and technology offerings. Kinze employees spend their nights and weekends farming, putting them in a unique position to be both manufacturers and customers of the planters and grain carts they build. © Copyright 2020 by Kinze Manufacturing, Inc. All rights reserved. Kinze® and the Kinze™ logo are trademarks owned by Kinze Manufacturing, Inc. Kinze Manufacturing, Inc. reserves the right to make changes in engineering, design and specifications, or add improvements at any time without notice or obligation.
