Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 401 i Farms and Farm Machinery

Kubota’s two new generator models – the GL Series compact diesel generator and SQ Series (super quiet) diesel generator – have been designed with new features and can be easily transported and maintained. Kubota says the GL series is efficient and provides safe backup power as the 2021 summer storm season approaches. “As we approach the season, it’s important to stock up on generators,” says Kubota spokesperson James Tibos. “Sadly, we’ve seen the full impact storms can have on power supplies and Kubota’s GL series ensures back-up electricity at the push of a button.” While boasting a generous fuel tank that allows for extended operation time between refuelling, the GL Series offers improved fuel economy and reductions in both emissions and noise levels, says Kubota. With factory-fitted circuit breakers and…

Manufactured in Italy and engineered locally to meet the needs of Australia’s diverse agricultural sectors, Dieci’s specialty telehandlers are built to be tough and reliable. Dieci works every day to evolve its machines, adopting the best solutions based on research, advice and customer experience. This consistent exploration has resulted in a range of industry-specific telehandlers for poultry, cotton, piggeries and hay – all of which are designed with impressive attachments and features to suit even the harshest of Australian conditions. Using hydraulically-operated telescopic booms to transport, lift and position light to heavy loads, Dieci telehandlers can perform various jobs using the one vehicle. Unlike normal tractors with front lifting systems, these machines have far greater reach, hydraulic capacity and manoeuvrability. With lift heights ranging from 5.8 metres to 9.6 metres,…

Developed by Canadian farmers in 1991, the Seed Hawk concept first made its way to Australia 13 years later. Since then, it has become a popular product in this market, with more than 750 units in use across the country and Australia accounting for about 25 per cent of global Seed Hawk sales. The first complete Seed Hawk tool bar was imported into Australia in 2004 by New South Wales farmers Ambrose and Lisa Doolan. They used it in their zero-till cropping system before establishing their own distribution business and exhibiting at field days in their home state. After Väderstäd acquired the Seed Hawk’s international distribution rights, it was the company’s UK managing director Tim Needham who provided the ingenuity after moving to Brisbane. Assigned the job of developing the…

Aussie wine grape growers are set to lose $67 million annually unless new export markets are found for Australian wine, according to new data released by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES). The finding comes with the release of a new ABARES report Australian Wine in China: Impact of China’s Anti-dumping Duties, which investigates the impacts of China’s punitive anti-dumping measures on Australian wine exports. Additional duties were temporarily introduced last year before the Chinese Ministry of Commerce confirmed it would place the tariffs, which range from 116 per cent to 218 per cent, on Australian wine for five years from March 28. The Chinese government says its actions are in response to the Australian government subsidising Australian winemakers, and allowing them to sell wine…

Dowerin Field Days – Dowerin Dowerin Field Days is the largest field day in Western Australia, attracting more than 25,000 visitors each year. Around 7,000 broadacre farmers attend the event each year and over half of all visitors stated their reason for attending was a strong interest in agricultural products and services. The Field Days has also won several tourism awards at a state and national level. When: August 25-26, 2021 More info: www.dowerinfielddays.com.au Newdegate Machinery Field Days – Newdegate On the first Wednesday and Thursday of September each year, the town of Newdegate hosts one of Western Australia’s premier agricultural events, the Newdegate Machinery Field Days. Machinery, technology and research, animals and livestock, outdoor and camping exhibits, art and photography, fashion, show bags, food and wine, local produce, live…

The competition for labour will see harvest costs increase Headers are getting bigger, more complex and more expensive and so is the global demand for them. The value of the international combine harvester market today is estimated to be around A$20 billion dollars and is predicted to nearly double by 2030. Every month, somewhere in the world, you will find a harvesting machine working its way through the annual harvest of 2,790 million tonnes of grain (2020), which equates to 10,000 shiploads at 27,900 tonnes each. From Australia to Argentina, Sudan to Saudi Arabia, China to Chile you will see the annual grain harvest taking place – putting 1.1 billion tonnes of corn, 775 million tonnes of wheat, 505 million tonnes of rice, 159 million tonnes of barley, 62 million…

What we’ve been working towards in just changing the culture within the staff at the farm Victorian sheep and grain farmer Simon Craig has always been one to put safety first. That’s why recently, when Craig and another of his staff were faced with inspecting the inside of an old silo – regarded as among the most dangerous tasks on a farm – he was sure to take the necessary safety steps beforehand. “The best you can do is to start identifying the risks and work towards minimising it and finding a solution,” Craig told Farms & Farm Machinery. Together, the pair talked it through before he entered, devising a strategy of action should the lack of oxygen and increased levels of carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide cause him to…

Anything John Deere puts their name to has been held to the highest standard Third generation Marrar-based grain grower Barry McCormack knows John Deere’s lubricant range is tailor-made for the manufacturer’s machines, ensuring genuine oils are used across his entire green fleet. John Deere Plus-50 II Premium engine oil and Hy-Gard hydraulic and transmission oil are fundamental to the operation of his John Deere 9600 combine harvester, as well as his 4250, 8220, and 3130 tractors, which he uses to farm his 600 hectare cropping enterprise in the central Riverina district of NSW. “I know anything John Deere puts their name to has been held to the highest standard, which makes their oils good enough for me,” McCormack says. “As they are made to John Deere specification, I’ve had no…

John Deere is testing its ExactEmerge row units, which it hopes will increase planting speeds to 16km/h – double the typical speeds of standard planting. The manufacturer is testing the speeds as part of a collaboration with the University of Sydney, which will also include third-party validation. Once fully tested, John Deere hopes ExactEmerge will provide farmers with a quicker alternative while still maintaining accurate singulation, seed population, spacing, applied downforce and uniform depth. Able to integrate with both new and older planters, the ExactEmerge technology can be used on crops such as cotton, sorghum, sunflower and summer grains. John Deere Australia precision agriculture manager Benji Blevin says the collaboration with the university’s Institute of Agriculture will highlight the technology’s performance and its suitability for Australian conditions. “Growers are typically…

We don’t want people to think it’s a drone-based sprayer Hardi’s newest innovation, GeoSelect, marks the company’s “first step into genuine technology” with a software package that works in tandem with drone images to identify and spray exactly where weeds are on a paddock. It uses a “decoupled” structure, meaning the images are taken by drone before being processed quickly without loss of resolution and delivering a precise map of which areas require spraying. Multiple lightweight antennas, described as “rugged and waterproof”, are mounted along the sprayer’s boom to ensure precision to the centimetre when spraying, even factoring in boom deflection and weather conditions. Crucially, GeoSelect works with standard Hardi spray nozzles. GeoSelect was unveiled in Adelaide in July and Hardi Australia’s chief executive Bill Franklin said at the launch…

A round-table discussion between the National Farmers’ Federation (NFF), the Tractor and Machinery Association of Australia (TMA) and other relevant parties will soon be underway as the agricultural sector aims to find a solution on farmers’ and repairers’ right to repair. TMA executive director Gary Northover says the discussions will aim to achieve a ‘final position’ between all parties, including concerns raised by the TMA on the matter. “We’ve begun the process of reaching out to the NFF, for instance, to develop a bit of a round-table working discussion around this so that we can hopefully develop some guidelines which might be applied to the standards and expectations that the market is looking for,” says Northover. “It’s certainly early days but it’s a path that both of us believe we…

John Newman, a farmer and contractor with a property in Gowrie Junction, near Toowoomba in Queensland, was in the market for a Chamberlain tractor in 2017 when he stumbled upon the deal of a lifetime. “The main thing I was looking around for was something with more power than my Chamberlain 9G – it ran about 60 horsepower [45kW] and I wanted something in the hundreds… something to tow a trailer around,” he says. But with many of the Chamberlains he was looking at located too far away to make it a reasonable deal, Newman instead found a 1982 John Deere 4040 with 120hp (89kW) and a minuscule 2,212 hours on the clock. The tractor was fitted with an aftermarket M&W turbo kit when new, which saw the power take-off…

I must admit that, when I first spotted the Wild’s Livestock twin steer Kenworth, it blew me away! It went straight to the top of my ‘I’ve got to know the story behind that’ list. I thought it was going to be such a cool restoration story. I was so wrong; you want to know why? In order to be a restoration story, the truck has to have been restored! It turns out that the Wild’s Livestock truck has never stopped; it has not had time for a restoration, it is just a hard-working iconic truck. The truck did get a little downtime when the motor was first replaced with a couple of million kilometres on it. Since then, the big girl has racked up another million-plus kilometres. All up,…

Measurements collected by the machine can detect soil contamination in forage New Holland has added the NutriSense nutrient analysis system to its MyPLM Connect precision agriculture system in European markets. The system, which is not currently planned for release in Australia, will provide farmers with valuable agronomic measurements such as crop moisture, starch, crude protein, fibre, ash and crude fat content across the field. Farmers can also visualise the data through the MyPLM Connect interface to make more informed decisions to enable them to extract the most profit out of the crops. Global head of product marketing for MyPLM Eduardo Nicz says farmers will now be better able to visualise crop nutrient data collected by their machines at harvest. “Our strategy at New Holland is to integrate digital technologies to…

The company Vigolo was founded in 1963 by Luigi Vigolo right at the time agricultural machinery was taking off in Italy. Vigolo and his wife are still involved in the company today, which offers an extensive line-up of cultivation and mulching equipment, supplied worldwide. While the machine is Italian-designed and built, Agriline is the sole New Zealand importer of the brand, while Armour Group imports Vigolo machinery into Australia. The Vigolo Eagle-DT 2.5m heavy-duty machine has several key features that make it durable enough to tackle 15+-year-old tobacco weed trees and large gorse plants, yet is also flexible enough to then go and mulch a paddock of kikuyu grass. Machine owner Dave Polglaze has been in Kaikohe on New Zealand’s North Island for more than 25 years. Polglaze and his…

Horsch has upgraded its Sprinter NT tine seed drill, adding features that the company says have been based on customer feedback in the Australian market. The German manufacturer’s popular piece of direct seeding equipment has received a new drawbar system, an extra set of tyres on each wing and upgrades to its air package and hydraulic lines. Jan Moens, service and training manager of Queensland-based Horsch distributor Muddy River Agricultural, says the upgraded model has been “well received” since its introduction into the Australian market. “The Sprinter NT is something that Horsch really makes specifically for our market,” he says. “The last couple of years have really snowballed and [with] the more Sprinters you have out in the field, you come across things you discuss with the supplier and say…

They say virtue is its own reward, but for Queensland beef producer Stockyard Group, meeting targets in emissions, worker safety and animal welfare could pay off in the monetary sense. The company has entered into a sustainability-linked loan (SLL) with CBA, with the bank to charge lower interest if certain metrics are met, in what both groups are saying is a first for Australia’s agriculture industry. While details of the three-year loan have not been released, CBA says the arrangements set out clear parameters that will see the SLL stretch towards sustainable outcomes “significantly beyond its existing, strong baseline performance”. “The deal ties the facility pricing to five metrics, grouped into three sustainability performance targets, including: reducing Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions; improved animal welfare outcomes; and workplace…

It is about validating what is the best for each unique soil profile and environment Researchers at the University of Queensland (UQ) have teamed up with barley breeder InterGrain to investigate ways of boosting root systems and improving yield sustainability for Australia’s second most popular grain. With a total budget of $780,000, the four-year project will use cutting-edge technology to analyse root traits and fast-track barley breeding for diverse production environments across most Australian states. Co-funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage grant, the project will be conducted in conjunction with Australian National University (ANU), as one of 65 awardees in a $30 million grant round first announced in April. University of Queensland associate professor Lee Hickey is heading up the project, and says the research will provide the agricultural…

Thirteen agricultural shows and related youth groups across Australia have received grant funding via the new Australian Young Farmer Challenge (AYFC) Regional Grant Program. An initiative of the peak body for the 580 agricultural shows across the nation, Agricultural Shows Australia, the grant program helps shows invest in the spectacle of a ‘young farmer challenge’, which is a showcase of young people in Australian agriculture competing in diverse and colourful challenges testing skill, technique, knowledge and safety practices. Held at agricultural shows across the country, young farmer challenges can involve changing tyres, driving tractors, handling alpacas, identifying cattle breeds, putting out fires, tourniqueting faux snake bites, erecting fences and myriad other farming tasks in teams, against the clock and in front of a crowd. Agricultural Shows Australia executive officer Katie…

Sales of agricultural tractors have exceeded 15,800 units sold for the financial year ended June 30 – a full 29 per cent ahead of the previous year, following a one per cent increase in June. This is an outstanding result for the industry and, while there is cause for celebration, perhaps the focus should be on the job done by manufacturers, importers, dealers and suppliers to industry in achieving this under such extreme conditions. Delivering such a result against a backdrop of lockdowns, social distancing restrictions, supply challenges, staff shortages and climatic extremes is a credit to the industry. A more detailed look at the numbers reveals that all states have reported increases on the previous year, with NSW leading the pack, up 10 per cent in June to finish…

The improvements for Fendt’s Ideal models as well as new features for Fendt’s straw walker combine harvesters will be available in Australia sometime in 2022, local Agco representatives have confirmed to Farms & Farm Machinery. Upgrades to Fendt’s Ideal 2022 model of combine harvesters mean the machine will be able to work to an accuracy of 2cm using its lane guidance system in conjunction with the real time kinematic (RTK) correction signal. Currently, Fendt Ideal harvesters have included the VarioGuide tracking system and a NovAtel or Trimble receiver as standard on the harvesters. However, the latest RTK signal is available as an optional extra. Using the RTK correction signal to sustain the lane guidance system, entire fleets are able to work in the field by consistently following set tracks and…

Breaches fell 1.6 per cent to 16.9 per cent of all deliveries in 2020–21 A scheme to help grain truck drivers load their vehicles more accurately saved more than 8,000 trips over a substantially stronger harvest season. The 2020-21 Harvest Period Report into Victoria’s Grain Harvest Management Scheme (GHMS), released in July by the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR), showed strong improvements in compliance. The GHMS was designed in response to industry calls that protested the difficulty many have with heavy vehicle mass limits when loading grain for transport. Uncertainties around the changing density and mass of grains and other crops when being transported can create difficulties during the process of loading trucks with grain before they are sent to a grain receiver. First launched four years ago, the GHMS…

For 60 years now, Hustler has been redesigning its machinery line-up into sleek-looking, ‘outside the box’ designs, incorporating the ideas and on the ground opinions of the very people who purchase and use the machinery. This, along with the recent ‘MiNT Edition’ colour scheme change, has farmers highly invested in the launch of the new Hustler RX wagon range, moreso the big daddy: the RX218. I’ve spent some considerable time with this wagon, which is the result of six years of thoughtful research, development and refinement. In true Hustler style, the company opted to do something more creative than the norm to release this machine – investing in a roadshow around New Zealand, taking the RX218 to farms from the bottom of the South Island to the top of the…