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XtraBlatt Issue 02-2021

  • Text
  • Krone
  • Egger
  • Farmers
  • Dairy
  • Maize
  • Timber
  • Harvest
  • Cows
  • Agricultural
  • Bales
  • Xtrablatt

KNOWLEDGE The data are

KNOWLEDGE The data are recorded automatically in the background while the forager is harvesting. Once the field is cleared, Malte Carlsburg allocates the data to the specific field using the Next Farming software; then he imports them into the field plot file. we can’t shuttle the machines back and forth between farms, also because harvest starts late up here. Harvest begins in late September/early October, so we need to clear the fields within a very short time. After all, the winter cereals must go into the soil before winter. And then, autumns are rather wet over here, which of course slows down harvest.” TWO BIG X Jens started using NIR technology back in early 2015 when he bought a new Krone BiG X 700 that had the technology. This measures dry matter levels but also the nutrient levels in the silage. “For us as biogas producers, it is important to know these levels that tell us how much silage of which quality and monetary value we have in the clamp. We need to know whether our stocks will last for a full year to fuel our digesters. We could of course sample the wagon loads manually and have the samples analysed at the lab, but the results would be too inaccurate for our purposes and secondly this is a more costly procedure in the long run than using the NIR technology. On the other hand, the technology helps us estimate which quality we are purchasing from farmers,” explains the contractor. Since early 2021, Jens-Peter has been running a Krone BiG X 880 with a NIR Control dual Sensor from Krone’s new supplier m-u-t. In his view, this offers a huge advantage over the previous sensor model: “The dual sensor measures the nutrients not only in silage maize – starch, crude raw ash levels, crude fat, crude protein, NDF, ADF and sugar levels – but also the nutrients in slurry.” This is possible, because the hardware of the sensor is identical with the technology slurry equipment maker Zunhammer has been using and developing for years. Admittedly, the technology is not cheap. The good news is that the sensor is a one-off €20,000 investment. “Add to this €6,500 for attachment parts and the Krone licences for the nutrients measuring software plus €9,000 for the slurry software licences and the service from Zunhammer. Another cost factor is the lamp inside the sensor unit which is exposed to wear and should be replaced every two years, says the manufacturer. And finally there are costs for regular software updates as suggested by Krone and Zunhammer,” summarises the contractor. "But unlike the previous sensor, the new one offers two applications. From February on and all the way up to the first cut it measures slurry contents on the SP slurry spreader. After that we transfer it to the forager. From there we swap back to the self-propelled slurry tanker. And as these two operations hardly ever overlap, the dual use approach works very well for us. And that means that our costs per hour or rate, which we measure with the sensor, drop significantly. Transferring the sensor from the forager to the slurry spreader and back takes just a few minutes. It simply takes undoing or tightening four nuts and the unit is plugged into the electronic system of the machine. “The ISOBUS detects it automatically and automatically loads the slurry or maize curves,” adds Jens-Peter. During the first year of using the sensor on the slurry spreader he discovered that nutrient levels varied greatly: “We spread a lot of slurry from other farms on our Danish fields and in this season we discovered great differences in nutrient levels. The sensor detects that and takes care that the nutrients are distributed uniformly despite the heterogeneous quality of the liquid.” The operator can also select a specific nutrient “UNLIKE OUR PREVIOUS SENSOR, THIS NEW SENSOR SUITS TWO DIFFERENT APPLICATIONS.” JENS-PETER MESSER, CONTRACTOR that should be applied with restraint. “We set a threshold level for nitrogen, for example. Other farmers in regions where high phosphor levels are an issue, for example, could restrict the P value,” adds Jens-Peter. THE RIGHT SOLUTION Jens-Peter uses the cloud-based Next Farming software for visualising and processing the machine data. But finding the right application that works for them was not easy. “We tested three different applications in four years. Considering the time we invested in this, this has been quite frustrating, but the present solution seems to be the right thing for us. It’s quite an intuitive application and it accepts mixed fleets and connects to the agrirouter platform for cross-brand machine data communication. So we can send the data from the system right into our field plot file and evaluate them there. Also, we can compare the data from several years and relate them to yield potential maps and satellite maps. This helps us draw the right conclusions for our farm management. Conversely, we can send application maps out from our field plot file Undo / tighten just four nuts and connect the sensor unit to the electronic system of the machine. Done. The sensor is part of the ISOBUS. The sensor is programmed with two applications – one for slurry one for foraging. When the slurry is sucked in, the NIR sensor measures nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) levels in the slurry flow. The operator enters the rate as kg/ha. The rest is taken care of automatically. to the machines using Next Farming. The maps are sent wirelessly to the machines,” tells colleague Malte Carlsburg who heads the arable side of the business. He adds: “We aim at using fertilisers, chemicals and seeds as efficiently as possible and record yields as exactly as possible. Our new NIR technology is a great help for that, because it allows us to measure the contents of our organic fertiliser accurately and spread it at consistent rates. It also serves to measure the performance of the forager.” They system doesn’t require operators to put their heads into data logging, a fact Jens-Peter finds a real boon: “After all, all operators are stressed out at harvest and we don’t want to burden them with starting and ending jobs or recordings. We have the feature run in the background and then I can sit down at the computer and assign the individual recordings to the fields.” « DID YOU KNOW? Zunhammer NIR sensors from 2015 are upward compatible and can be upgraded for dual use. Customers merely have to send in the sensor to the company where it is reprogrammed to measure the nutrients in maize on a Krone forager in addition to nutrients in slurry on a slurry spreader. 28 29