Agriculture Seed Drill - Overview and Benefits

It has been observed that the use of seed drill has largely increased in recent times in northwest and eastern India. From labor scarcity, development and refinement in agriculture sector, to weed management, seeds drills has played a major role in managing the farm and made it easier to plant seeds using its technology. A multi-crop planter and its ability to place both seed and fertilizer has helped improve setting up crops in a improved way.

When placing seeds manually into the soil, seeds are not placed evenly sometimes, but with the seeds drills a farmer does not need to worry about the alignments and rows as it is done in a very systematic manner by the seed drills. A seed drill consists of seed and fertilizer box, seed metering mechanism which save the seeds from getting wasted on the fields.

 

The use of seed drill also helps in reducing the soil erosion thereby preventing loss of nutrient from the soil and making better availability of both natural and applied nutrients to the soil. It also have been noticed that if crop residues are added to soils, the growth of plants can be improved.

The seed drills are preferably used in the areas where soil erosion caused by water and wind is a major issue, as it does not create any disturbances in the soil while placing the seeds. The seed drill sows the seeds at the same distances ensuring the proper depth and that the seeds get covered in the soil perfectly. A farmer can undoubtedly invest in the machine as it helps in increasing efficiency in planting season as well as saves the environment.

 

Rotavator Overview – Uses and Functions

 A rotary tiller also popularly known as rotavator is used for soil preparation before planting seeds of the crops. It is used as a tractor implement pulled behind it to drag through the area for making seedbed. It uses rotating blades that are also known as rotors attached to a frame either to the rear or front of a tiller. These rotors spin and cut though the soil to make it suitable for planting cop seeds. It also breaks small and big clods, increase moist and pulverizes the soil providing it a healthy environment for plants to grow and to get high yield.

Rotavator is specifically used to prepare the land for sowing seeds and is very popular among farmers because of its effectiveness. It is cheaper if we talk about maintenance, economical to use and also needs less storage space. The type of rotavator a farmer needs usually depends on the surface soil. Rotavators can work at different speeds just need to adjust its settings which allow the rotors or blades to move slower or faster. A farmer may also take a test run of a rotary tiller on the soil at their farm to decide its speed. A farmer must be careful when choosing the right rotovator for his farm so that they don’t get stuck with the wrong one. And once the buy it, they should use and maintain it properly.

Uses and Function of a Rotavator or Rotary Tiller:

·         Breaks up the clods in the soil

·         Loosen the soil giving a smooth surface.

·         Prepares a perfect seedbed for sowing seeds.

·         Turns the topsoil that allows plants to absorb maximum amount of nutrition available in the soil.

·         Helps in increasing the yield

·         Kills the weeds and removes old crop residue.

·         Rotavator is versatile machinery that can be used in primary as well as secondary tillage.

·         Its suitable to work in different types of soils.

·         It is mostly used for cultivating vegetables and in paddy field.

 

A farmer can save a lot of time and money that needs to be invested in tillage process, as a rotavator is a versatile equipment, that allows making a perfect seedbed in all new or existing farm land.

Combine – Overview and Benefits in Harvesting

 A ‘Combine’ is a modern self-propelled combine harvester, which gets its name due to its capability of combining all the harvesting steps into one inside the machine. The modern combine harvester has evolved as complex machinery that uses a significant amount of energy to work into the grain and crops field. It mechanically processes all the required steps for harvesting the crops. This modern harvester machine has replaced the many old fashioned machine like a thresher, grain reaper and binder that were earlier used to cut and gather the grain to place grain in shocks to let it dry in the field prior to carrying to a fixed threshing machine.

A combine harvester is compatible for harvesting crops like potatoes, carrots and beets as well as many types of grains like wheat, rice, corn, barley, soybean, pulses, sunflower etc. Self-propelled combine harvester are indeed a part of a fastest developing agricultural machinery market. Modern harvesters collects cuts, the grain process it and clean it in such a way that it can be directly delivered to the markets from the farm. The crop residues are thrown back into the fields in the form of fluffy straw 2-3 m wide, which can be baled easily and can be kept safe to be used to feed animals at dairy farms till a long time.

The combine machine has multiple benefits for farmers such as –

• During manual harvesting sometimes unseasonal excessive rains can damage the standing crops during the harvesting season which can slow down the process of harvesting. Though while using combine harvester farmers can complete the harvesting in very less time.
•  A combine harvester alone can harvest acres of land in hours that saves farmers from wasting time in arranging labours and also saves the cost of labours.
• The grains are cleaner and ready to use as soon as it gets out of the machine, so it can be directly delivered to the market, which saves the storage cost for farmers
• A multi-crop harvester can be used for harvesting various types of grains, a farmer just need to use the different headers as per the crop type.
• Modern combine harvesters are usually equipped with many advanced technologies as ac cabins and gps systems that allows the generation of digital yield maps.

Overall the machine is worth an investment for grain farmers as it alone can handle the work of a dozen of people, and delivers the high quality grains resulting into better profits.

What does combine harvester mean?

Harvesting is a process of collecting the grain or edible part of the crops, once it is grown completely. A combine harvester is one of the most modern and versatile machinery which is used in agricultural processes. It not only makes the harvesting process but also saves a lot of time during the critical harvesting time. Before the machine was invented, farmers used to most of the harvesting work manually using different types of small equipments or by different types of machines made for different steps of harvesting such as reaping, threshing and winnowing.

But a combine harvester performs all the steps in single process, which is why this is also known or called as Combine. Since the invention of combine harvester grain farmers can harvest acres of land within a week, comfortable sitting in the cabin of the vehicle.

Many agriculture machinery manufacture offer this modern harvester with different kind of automated features that allow a farmer to monitor the quality to quantity of harvested grains. A multi-crop harvester allows farmers to harvest different types of grain crops, such as - 

Wheat

Rice

Soybean

Pulses

Sunflower

Cor, etc.

Fieldking is one of the largest manufacturers of Combine Harvester in India, and also exports their farm equipment to other countries globally.

Combine Harvester - A Farm Equipment with Multiple Benefits

Harvesting is not just as simple as it sounds. Especially for grain farmers, it can be a nightmare when it comes to harvest those longest yards. Harvesting is the final operation in overall farming activities and all the hard word done through the season depends on the harvesting process. Time is also crucial when it comes to harvesting, as if not done in time; there is always a risk of damage to the crops by natural calamities like thunderstorms and heavy rains. All thanks to the modern combine harvesters that make it possible for farmers to get grains out of the crops without any hassles and also maintains the best quality of the grains.

Before the combine harvester was invented, farmers had to do all the harvesting work manually, by using different type of tools and equipment in different steps. But since the invention of large combines that work automatically, all the different steps can be performed at same time.

A combine harvester can harvest different types of crops, some we have mentioned here –

 

·         Wheat

·         Barley

·         Oats

·         Maize

·         Soybeans

·         Sorghum

·         Sunflowers

·         Rice

 

Benefits of using a combine harvester:

 

·         A combine harvester eliminates grain loss when compared to manual harvesting. In manual harvesting cutting, tying, carrying, transporting the crop causes a significant loss of harvest but using combine harvester completes all steps easily without any grain loss.

·         Combine harvester machine is capable of harvesting and threshing one acre of land in just one hour. Whereas the manual method would need at least 12 people, one full day to perform the same task, that’s too without threshing.

·         In manual method separate step are performed for threshing, which increases multiple day time, and many more days for cleaning. Thus in manual method the time from crop cutting to market ready is a week or more. But for the combine harvester the same process makes crop market ready in an hour or so.

·         The combine harvesting provides cleaner grain than the manual process, for which market also is willing to pay better prices.

·         The mechanized harvesting is priced to be far lower than the cost of manual harvesting in consideration to the labour cost used in manual harvesting.

 

 

Make Your Farm More Profitable With Agricultural Machinery

Using innovative agricultural machinery allows farmers to work on largest of farms in minimum time. Tractor being a versatile machinery is the most commonly used in farming on a high scale. Initially, tractors were used only for limited farming activities like ploughing, soil levelling, pulling implements, and even for maintaining placed seeds. But with time, tractors are now available with new upgraded features and are able to perform activities that previously they could not.

 

Tractors now come with many advanced features like GPS systems set up to guide the user. Many automated features also help the farmer in saving, fuel, time and reducing costs while working on a farm. Like a tractor, various modern farm implements are available with upgraded features to perform different activities of farming.

 

Now it’s not the tractor only, but with constant upgrades in agriculture technologies new farm implements and machines are launched every day. These versatile farm equipments can perform multiple tasks on a farm. For example, a rotavator is the best machinery to prepare a perfect seedbed on a farm as it allows farmers to perform primary as well as secondary tillage. It pulverizes the soil perfectly and gives it a smooth structure to prepare a seedbed.

 

Also a Combine harvester popularly known as a combine is the most advanced machine in agriculture sector that makes the harvesting process very easy and efficient by performing multiple harvesting steps with one machine.

 

The name combine is driven on the fact that it merges three harvesting steps altogether such as cutting, threshing and winnowing into a single process. Modern combine also come with automatic laser guided techniques and ac cabins. A multi-crop harvester or combine machine can allow farmers to collect grains from plants such as rice, oat, barley or maize.

 

However, tractor and combine harvester are the most expensive agricultural machinery due to the heavy engines and extensive functions but for a large scale farmer and grain farmers, these are must have equipment to increase productivity and save time.

Zero Tillage Farming Equipment – Uses and Benefits

Zero Tillage farming also known as no till farming is a soil cultivation process that allows farmers to plant crop seeds are directly into the soil without tilling. In this process seeds are directly planted into untilled soil by creating a slot trench at the suitable depth and to obtain right seed coverage.

The zero machine or zero tillage machine makes it quite effective and also reduces the tillage cost for a farmer. It allows maintaining the harvest and protects environment on the other hand. The zero tillage system let most of the microorganisms keep intact in the soil making it more fertile as its structure is not disturbed in this process.

In zero tillage process there is no need of tilling or ploughing the soil like usual. The seeds are places into the ground through the no-till drills without creating any disturbance in the soil. Zero tillage not only helps farmer in significantly reducing cost of the land cultivation and irrigation requirement but also helps saving the environment from issues like soil erosion and weed effect etc.

In simple words we can understand that it is a way of growing crops without creating disturbance in the soil. So we can say that the major benefits of using a zero machine are -

 

• ·         Increased water infiltration capacity of the soil
• ·         Increased organic matter retention capacity of the soil
• ·         Increase in the cycling of nutrients into the soil
• ·         Reduces soil erosion in areas where it is a major problem.
• ·         Makes soil more resilient and more fertile biologically.
• ·         Improves the efficiency by reducing time of sowing seeds in farming operations.
• ·         More popular in humid areas as there is more risk of wind and water erosion.

Farm equipment such as disc seeds drills, zero machine or zero tillage planters, no till seed drills are used in such farming operations to reduce tillage.

Zero till machine or zero machine also work as fertilizers spreaders as they consists of different boxes for seeds and fertilizers. It also includes seed and fertilizer metering mechanisms, furrow openers, seed tubes, seed and fertilizer rate adjusting lever and transport cum power transmitting wheels. The seeds are directly places into the fields through the seed tubes at a fixed depth and distance. The weeds are are reduced with the application of fertilizers and herbicides without disturbing the soil. The zero tillage farming is especially helpful in plains to avoid erosion of the soil.