Taking sowing to edge with ProTrakker

So Ongerup farmer Matt Campbell spent last year playing around with the ProTrakker guidance system setting it up for this year’s cropping program.

And, so far so good.

The ProTrakker is a hydraulically-controlled guidance hitch, which is fitted to the tractor hitch or an air seeder hitch of a tow-between model, with a GPS receiver fitted on the tractor and on the seeding bar.

It eliminates the problem of bar drift, maintaining the bar’s line of direction within an accuracy, using RTK guidance, of plus or minus one to two centimetres (0.4-0.8in).

This contrasts with bar movements of plus or minus 20cm (8in) normally associated with seeding bars and the reason why a lot of farmers have moved from 25cm (10in) spacings to 30cm (12in) to avoid stubble blockages.

Matt, who farms a 2800ha program with his partner Danille and parents John and Jane, employs a DBS precision seeder on 25cm spacings and bought the ProTrakker last year from distributors Burando Hill after assessing edge-row results and discussing the system with Burando Hill director Simon Hill, who introduced the concept into WA five years ago.

Since then there has been steady adoption and the growing number of ProTrakker owners validates the system as one of the important tools moving towards more sustainable and profitable cropping.

For Matt, the ability to have more control over stubble handling is the big issue at the moment but the ‘ripple effect’ of edge-row sowing is also obvious.

“Hopefully in a dry start the fact you can sow into the previous year’s row will be an advantage in terms of accessing moisture and nutrients, especially early sowing canola and lupins,” he said.

“There won’t be a necessity of leading coulters to cut stubble and we’ll be able to harvest higher with confidence, which means we get the job done a little faster too.”

This year Matt aimed for a 70mm (nearly 3in) ‘nudge’ from the previous year’s rows sowing into moisture.

“We were only aiming to get alongside the stubble and we could have gone closer to about 50mm (2in),” he said.

In a paddock sowing Mace wheat next to canola stubble, it was clearly evident of almost nil stubble disturbance.

According to Simon, trial results involving the ProTrakker have shown a seven per cent yield increase across wheat, barley and canola trials.

“I would expect even better results in a hard finish,” he said.

“It is definitely proving a valuable tool and a seven per cent lift in yields over a big program is significant.

“It’s easy to see the visual differences sowing alongside the stubble and sowing in the inter-row with the ProTrakker compared with conventional sowing.”

Arguably the ProTrakker is taking precision seeding to a new level, especially on non-wetting soils.

“On our farm, the ProTrakker has several advantages for us because we can sow our canola in semi-wet conditions drilling it into last year’s furrows without disturbing the stubble,” Simon said.

“We also can sow wheat on the inter-row in high stubble residue paddocks, again without disturbing the stubble cover.

“Without the ProTrakker we couldn’t reliably sow between rows let alone seed alongside the stubble in last year’s rows.

“You can see what happens to the bar’s status when you turn the ProTrakker off in operation and even using RTK guidance you don’t get the line accuracy you achieve with the ProTrakker.”

More information: call 9821 4422.