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by Lineup
2176 days ago
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From a duplication of effort standpoint, how much of this can be combined (-intended) into a single process with the right implement? I know little about farming.... What is the purpose of the mowing? I know that things like alfalfa are often tilled into the soil to improve fertility. <p> Would a mower/tiller/broadcaster (all in one pass) be feasible or is there a reason these things happen separately? It would represent a substantial time & cost savings |
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To be honest, we have great soil in CA and I can’t speak broadly ..but almost every big farm will have their own system. Broadly, there is standard tillage, bed disc system and strip/conservation tillage in CA.
Strip tillage is often conservation tillage and sometimes used near Davis/Sacramento area where our wheat and tomatoes are intercropped..(our most impressive crop) In Salinas valley , our lettuce producing ‘salad bowl’, they have almost always had minimum tillage protocols. A sub soiler/ripper. I know a farmer who rips it in the beginning of the season and discs it FOUR times before listing.
You can’t really make a decision without evaluating soil, moisture and soil microbial activity.
Having said that..I am interested only in small acreage farm automation..that is sub 100 acres ..2-3 times bed flipping vegetable growing farms. I don’t have experience with industrial ag systems. That’s like factory production assembly line. They got all their ducks in the row. My interest is in automation for small farmers and market farms. It’s super sub optimized market.
I would recommend a minimal till-no till approach focused on soil health. Maybe rip the fields every 2-3 years. Single pass implements will reduce compaction due to machinery but when you make a light farm bot, compaction of paths between short semi permanent beds shouldn’t be an issue. The holy grail would be a no toll system. But it’s not without its issues.
So..to your question. A single pass Solution with implements on a gang. Yes. It’s possible. But you have to remember that this would mean higher HP. Upwards of 200-350. At which point, it defeats the purpose of finding automation for small farms. Which small farm can afford those mega tractors? It becomes a scale/$ issue.
If it’s electric, then HP decision is even more complicated because now you have to decide between draft implements or PTO implements. And as that adds up, so does the weight of the tractor/pulling unit. And boom! We are back to ‘size matters’. We can only grow in 1000+ acre farms.
Small acreage automation is a difficult but interesting challenge. That’s why I am interested and also because right now because food crops are mostly Imported and cheap, Agtech doesn’t care. But that will soon change. Sooner than we expect. We should build.