Hardest conditions ever?

This Year 2015 is the year BEDNAR FMT breaks the ice by importing its implements to South Africa. Our first cooperation starts with manufacturer and importer, BPI and Michigan Equipment. The southern hemisphere autumn means its time for farmers to start harvesting corns.  As the farmers are in a big area of South Africa which is very advanced in growing technologies, the maintaining of the straw residues is still in an early stage. The reason is simple,  Not enough high-quality implements. So Bednar FMT in cooperation with good South African companies is showing farmers the first machines directly on their fields.

Why a Bednar implement?

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After several years of producing Bednar disc harrows it came time to test them on the fields with corn trash of yields over 16t/ha and in some parts close to 18t/ha. These amounts of yields are typical for the region of the Northern Cape in South Africa. Farmers are working here with enough  underground water and systematically use this for watering their plants. The watering systems are  wells with distributing pipe systems operating in circles. The circles are between 30ha to 60ha. To grow such high yields comes from the benefit of having a continuous  African sun and good daily temperatures. Not only the amount of trash has been high, but also the height of the stubbles which was about 45 cm. To meet the farmers requirements  the Bednar team suggested the Atlas HO 6000.

Another farm where Bednar demonstrated its implement was on one of the oldest farms with the watering system in place. This farm is using Ridge till technology for wheat and corn so the trash on the fields was more than 18 t/ha. In this situation Bednar suggested the heavy duty implement the Terraland DO 4000.

Straw management procedure

As Bednar offers the whole process of maintaining the the soil the procedure of straw management was upgraded and the first step of mulching with our great product the Mulcher MM 7000 was done and then straw and soil mixing with the Terraland DO 4000. This combination offers farmers straw cutting together with a great mixing process where the Terraland DO offers  disc and tine section together. After this the soil is ready to be seeded. 

African popular deep- ripping

As in European regions deep-ripping is very popular  in Africa. The reason is that the soil has a high content of sand, low content of organic material and high pHs These are the simple reasons why ripping is popular. But there is one process missing here and that is the surface soil “closing”. The generally dry conditions in Africa is the largest struggle for farmers , when the farmer is deep-ripping approximately up to 60 cm, the soil is too open and even the small amount of water  evaporates. Most of the deep-ripping implements are without back closing rollers. This is not the situation with the  Terraland TN/TO, the machine processes soil with deep-ripping, mixing the top 20-30cm and then immediately closes the soil with double spiky rollers with coulter section to prepare the soil for seeding.