MENSCHEN TITLE RUBRIK
MENSCHEN TITLE RUBRIK THEME Short or long chop forage maize? For years, this question has dominated discussions between farmers and agricultural contractors. And it’s not uncommon to see chop length become the crucial point when deciding on the “right” silage harvester. With the concept OptiMaize, Krone offers the solution: a single harvester for all chop lengths. Sir, would you like size S? Or is M preferable? Or perhaps you’d like XL better, after all? Now don’t worry: we’re not going to be discussing the selection of new shirts here. But we’re not too far away from the general subject and this is no coincidence, as Krone marketing manager Heinrich Wingels explains. “We really did adapt the four sizes S, M, L and XL straight out of the clothing industry. After all, they are well known to everyone and therefore closely associated with standard sizes when thinking of adjustments. In combination with the name OptiMaize it is then immediately clear what is being referred to: different forage harvester strategies in turn synonymous with different forage maize chop lengths.” Background to the OptiMaize campaign is the growing requirement of cattle farmers and biogas producers for forage feed quality – and therefore more demands on the harvester, says the marketing manager. In turn, this presents a challenge to the agricultural contractor as important service provider within the forage production chain who has to react to satisfy very different customer wishes. “As reported time and again from the field, we’re seeing an intensification of discussions over at least the past two years regarding chop length pivoting around the American example as massively publicised by a third party. With cattle feeding, longer chopped forage certainly makes sense in principle. What isn’t practical is a chop length for each feeding application and every ration! What fits for which rations always depends on the individual farm situation. Every customer should get the best solution for him,” emphasises Heinrich Wingels. OptiMaize TO EACH HIS OWN This is technically possible through the combination of different harvester components that can be flexibly matched to each other to allow achievement of all chop lengths between 4 and 30 mm without much dismantling effort and downtime. Alongside the knife drum itself, this features above all the Vari- LOC System in combination with two conditioning concepts, explains the marketing manager. In the OptiMaize harvester, the classic roller conditioner is joined by another roller. On top of this, different surface configurations (number of teeth per roller) and rpm speeds enable every required forage conditioning operation to be achieved, especially with regard to the maize grain. This flexibility is already offered by the disc conditioner. “Since 2017 all BiG X models from 480 to 1,100 HP are now available with VariLOC and thus are so-called OptiMaize forage harvesters. With this, we give agricultural contractors the 100% flexibility they need in order to optimally fulfil customer requirements regarding forage conditioning. To each his own – and this united in a forage harvester,” underlines Heinrich Wingels in conclusion. 6 7
