This is a repost of an article from No-till.ru. I think it should be read by any farmer in our country who is engaged in crop production. In an interview, Vitor Kakharchuk, director of one of the agro firms, explains his approach to agro business. And on the fingers explains what zero processing is and why it is needed.
Victor KUKHARCHUK (Kharkiv region, Ukraine)
The problem for many people who have been working in the agricultural business for a long time is that they think they will work in this business tomorrow. But if they do not change their views, new people will come to their place.
A striking example of a new generation of farmers is Viktor Kukharchuk, Director of Production at Trigon Agri.
He is comprehensively developed, open, thoroughly knows his business, is very enthusiastic about it, comes to the very intricacies of growing crops.
Victor not only sets, but also knows how to implement the most ambitious plans. So, for example, he sets himself the task of not just achieving stable yields, but getting consistently high yields.
All these qualities help him to successfully implement the No-till technology in the fields of the company in which he works.
While this interview was being prepared for publication, it became known that Viktor Kukharchuk accepted an offer to become the operating director of one of the largest Ukrainian agricultural holdings, the Mriya company, which is now not in the best situation. Learning about this, for some reason I was not surprised - this person has the potential to solve the most difficult problems.
Mikhail Draganchuk
No-till.ru
- Tell us about your company.
- We work in Ukraine and Russia. In Ukraine, we have 47 thousand. And in Russia we have 40 thousand hectares. This is a very arid region - this is practically Kalmykia. In Ukraine, this is a subsidiary of Traigon Farming Kharkiv, we work in three regions - Kharkiv, Kirovograd, Nikolaev. In the Kharkiv region we have 32 thousand, 5 thousand - in Kirovograd and Nikolaev - 10. That is, all three regions are different. In each region, we have our own crop rotation, depending on the climate and how much precipitation we can get, and the crops are designed for this.
- Having visited your fields, I saw how deeply and substantively you are engaged in No-till technology. How did your business come to this technology?
- At first there was economics and economy, and then it got into my head that the land cannot be used incorrectly. Then literature began. At first, they tried to save money. But to say that there is a field and say that there is no-till, because you do not plow - this is wrong. You need to feel that this piece of the field is ready, it is alive, it needs to be revived, it needs to be prepared - at least it needs to be leveled.
- How long ago did this decision come?
- I joined the company 6 years ago, there was not even a word about it. No-till equipment was purchased there, and there were plows that were used for plowing. Before sowing, for example, they discarded 10 cm, then the Great Plains seeder was started and it sowed 10 cm, because it cannot otherwise. This is where all the problems started, because we could not get high-quality classy wheat. This is the first thing.
Then, when we spent the first year, we saw that there were problems with overwintering. The absence of plant residues, the absence of stubble led to the fact that we had losses of rapeseed and even wheat. We began to think about what wheat wants, what rapeseed wants and how to avoid all the risks that every winter crop has.
We analyzed all the risks, we identified them 13. And for each risk, we concluded that nothing else preserves every crop better than No-till, i.e. rapeseed and wheat. Then they looked at the seeding rate and seeding time. We just did not increase the number of equipment, but reduced and shifted the sowing time, and accordingly changed the seeding rate. If we talk about winter wheat, then we start sowing from 1.5 million / ha.
- Why were the dates shifted?
- In order to extend the sowing time.
- Did you lack equipment?
- The equipment could have been bought in addition, but there was no point in that.
In addition, we had different predecessors. There was winter or spring rapeseed, soybeans and sunflowers. It is clear that soybeans and sunflower are medium and late sowing dates, rapeseed is early. It turns out that we went into rapeseed, then early soybeans, early sunflower, and so we moved to the end. We used seeders efficiently, we used people and every motor we had. It would be possible to buy 4 more tractors, 4 seeders and sow in the period from 5 to 25 September, but sow from 3 million and more. This is also money.
We changed the terms, seeding rates - accordingly, there is less logistics, less chemistry, less seeds. We got very strong wheat. Yes, you need an additional insecticide, but it's 2-3 dollars per hectare - it's just a penny.
- Weren't you afraid of pests that are inevitable at early sowing dates?
- Pests can be scary in the southernmost regions, if we talk about different flies. There was no such problem. This is the first thing.
Second - I will say this, what can a fly do for wheat that has 5-6 stalks? Well, the first one will kill.
Then we looked. We had such a case in the Stavropol Territory - there was an early sowing and I don't know why, the fly chose one field and it simply killed 70 percent of the wheat. What was to be done? Reseeding? We decided - let's see what happens.
What happened? She killed the dominant - the main escape. And what we did as growth regulators in the spring, leveling the wheat - it turns out that it killed the first shoot and the wheat began to intensively tiller and all the ears were at the same level.
We have reaped the largest harvest in this field. Paradox! And so I used to be very worried about the autumn fly. If there is 10% damage to wheat in the fall, then it does not affect the size of the crop, because spring pests create more problems. If the bug pierces the spike plant, then you will not have an ear at all. We had more problems here, so we kept the bug strictly.
And if in our early crops, of which we have 25-30%, there were damage by pests up to 5%, I do not see this as a problem. Because the fly, as a rule, flies in warm weather - this is autumn, + 15-18 °, in the afternoon until 4 o'clock in the afternoon it has intense years. It turns out that if we enter with a sprayer, then we can catch the fly that is on the fly. If there is an egg, then she has already killed. But wheat, if the fly kills the central stem, begins to bush very intensively. The most important thing for us was to make a strong root system and so that it began to bush strongly. The root system matches the growth time of wheat - the longer the wheat grows, the better the root system develops. But it was necessary to make a root system that would penetrate as deep as possible from the fall and get a secondary root system.
Not just - the primary root system, coleoptile. We didn't have a coleoptile at all. Wheat was sown to a depth of 1.5-2 cm - immediately the primary root system, then 3 leaves, tillering and immediately the secondary root system. We got away from the problem of bulging due to a powerful root system. Plant residues also help in this matter. The more of them, the slower the soil warms up. I will not say that it is 20-30 days. But even 2-3 days play a huge role, because you are going through all this. 2-3 days this risk, 2-3 days - another. It turns out that you smooth everything out. We have already played at this micromolecular level.
I know for sure that we will sow wheat and it will all overwinter with us, no matter what we sowed - a seeder, a spreader, when we sowed. I have a guarantee that we will not lose wheat. The biggest losses we can have for rapeseed in April. At the end of April - 9 °, - 10 °, already with the flowering of rapeseed, we can lose some area in the lowlands where there was frost, or at the top where the wind blows. On a field of 100 hectares, we can lose 5 hectares in the lowlands. But this is not a loss of fields, nor a loss of arrays - not globally.
- When in the summer I was in your fields, I saw the plots on which experiments are being laid. Usually, industrial workers expect recommendations from science and simply follow them. At the same time, they usually say - we cooperate with science. You are doing the work that science should do. Why?
- Agricultural science has lagged behind for many years. She didn't even lag behind, but she just goes the other way. How can they justify their experiences if they have never seen a No-till planter and use an ordinary planter in the zero-till experiments. Or science has always said that you need to sow wheat to a depth of 5-6 cm, but in reality it turned out 7-8 - and that's all, death for wheat. She climbs up and no longer thinks how to produce offspring, but thinks how to survive herself. And the most important thing is to produce large healthy and heavy offspring. Big kids. So simple.
There are a lot of experiments, and the most important thing is to find the square in these experiments that will be for analysis, and what was the best this year and in this climatic zone. What are the problems of agriculture in these regions where we work - we never know when the critical period will come. Why does Europe get high harvests every year? Only technology? Yes, they get 6 tons, in 10 years they get 6.5 tons. Another 10 years - 7 tons. Another 10 - 8 tons. t. They do not have that. They have a stable climate, stable rainfall, stable temperature, stable wind, or no wind is best. They can predict everything.
It turns out that you never know what you will have. How do we react to crops? We see that all our crops from the winter come out approximately the same, that is, well-tilled, poorly tilled, even an awl when it leaves in winter. Because it all depends on when and how much rain you have.
Everyone gets the same nitrogen rate the first time. Then we kind of sit "in ambush" and watch - the rain is being transmitted over the Internet here. We put out all the spreaders, saltpeter before the rain and after the rain one day - this array was closed.
Yeah, if there is more nitrogen, then it is necessary to recalculate the protection accordingly, because there is the first fungicide and everything must be healthy and clean, there is no point in feeding, treating. Like in kindergarten.
If he fell ill - to the hospital, he came back and again in the ranks. So we have an array, it should get the first base all the same. Then we sit and watch - yeah, we see the wheat is well planted - we need two growth regulators. Accordingly, she will have more diseases, because less is blown. Wheat, which later - you need a weaker fungicide. Necessarily, but weaker. And you need less than the norm. You need nitrogen for active growth and a regulator for intensive tillering.
Pulled up. The rain stopped. What do we have to do? You need to make a big ear. What is needed for a large ear? It is necessary to do as much vegetation as possible. To do this, you need a good fungicide and you need the latest nitrogen to stretch out the growing season of the ear itself just after flowering. The longer the wheat grows after flowering, the longer it is green, the more grains there will be in the spikelet. And it turns out as - 50 grains per ear or 75 - 50% of the difference in the yield. And the difference is in the yield. The mass of grain from the field is 30 g and 40 g - another 25% of the crop. If all this is multiplied, here you are, please, 30-40% of the harvest. That which is taken for real in a month.
- As if everything is simple?
- Yes, it's simple. Very simple. I saw an ear with 150-170 grains. He was covered with diseases. These were neglected experiments in the Czech Republic. I couldn’t believe my eyes - there were 10 grains in a spikelet. I thought, what's wrong? Why does everyone say - 2, 3, maximum - 4. I started to take it all apart. It turns out such a paradox - wheat blooms from the center of the ear. Everyone says that wheat bloom is usually 2-3 hours. It blooms from 2-3 hours to 3-4 days. And it turns out that the first spikelet fades and until the last one blooms 3-4 days. In the first spikelet in the middle of a spike, 10 forms, in the next - 8-9, then - 6-7 and goes up to 3. It turns out that 4 days of continuing the growing season forms this kind of yield potential. So what had to be done? It was necessary to extend the growing season as much as possible.
We do it. We already get eight grains in the center.
- It turns out that all you are doing is a desire to extend the growing season in order to unleash the potential of wheat?
- Yes, and at the same time it is not necessary to have everything in ears of corn on a square meter. I had such a case - friends came, got into the harvester, we went together. Wheat for sunflower, late. We pulled the growing season on purpose, made an ear. And when we were threshing, I felt how ears fell on the table of the header. It was like such a sound: bang, bang ... They were so heavy! And most importantly, the land was visible - it was very rare. And we collected 5.5 t / ha there. I ask myself the question: what if there were 2 times more ears? That's 10 tons! There is no limit!
This year we prepared a lot of fields to get the top ten. And we got 9.24. This is the best result across the field. There were many fields from 7.5 to 8.5. They were just tracts with such a yield.
- When you set maximum goals, do you get maximum results?
- The most important thing is to set a big goal for yourself, then it is easier to hit it.
Or if you want to live as you have never lived, you will have to do what you have never done.
There are some rules by which I personally live. There are many of them, such rules.
If you look closely, we have made such a symbiosis - business and agriculture. Yes, we use the land, like everyone else uses it, but we have a living land.
There are, of course, their own problems. With no-till, the most difficult crop rotation is when there is winter wheat and winter rapeseed.
- And what is your crop rotation?
- Wheat - rapeseed - wheat - sunflower - wheat - soybeans.
Sunflower is big money and good results every year.
Rape is the first money and always a stable price. Forward, everyone buys.
Soy is an insurance crop. If you're lucky - 2.4-2.5 t / ha, if you're not lucky - 1.7-1.8 and it can burn out. If at the peak of flowering and pouring heat - the pods are simply dropped and that's it. It is clean, reaches 1.5-1.8 m, but lacks mass - the grain is very small.
- How much precipitation is in your driest region?
- This year, from January 1 to June, we had 270 mm, they came to us from the same company, which had 540 mm during the same period. They checked everything, drove through our fields and asked us a question:
- We cannot understand, we have 2 times more moisture. Tell me, why don't we have wheat like yours?
What is the problem here? It's not just rainfall. I believe that precipitation is secondary, the most important is temperature and wind. I was in England when there was no rain for 2 months. They showed me 7 mm last month, 12 mm this one. It's drought for them. I looked at the wheat fields - there were exactly 6 to 12 tons. I ask: - How can it be without rain?
- But like this.
I wake up in the morning - I don't see anything at all, everything is in a fog. The fog at 12 o'clock just started to dissipate. Temperature 16 °. Why rain?
We play at home only on the difference in temperature. During the day it can be + 40 ° and it is good if it drops to 20 ° at night. I already have this dew, this movement of moisture into the soil is enough to survive for a day - two - three - five and wait at least for the temperature to drop. Because for wheat the most comfort is 18-25 °.
This is a completely different technology. We have fewer diseases, we have more pests. It all depends on the region and climate.
Last year we worked with one fungicide and such a minimum rate that no one simply believes that this could be so. There was simply no need to give a second - we got everything, we got our class, we got quality, we got quantity. Why drive costs? In addition, the fungicide is also aggressive. He not only heals, he also affects culture. It turns out that we work with the minimum standards, but we worked proactively for the expected diseases. Because it started raining, we worked before that and protected ourselves from fusarium of grain, ears, removed the beginning of powdery mildew. We didn't have any rust. Everything worked out, we got to the point, as it should.
And on average, we have from 350 to 500 mm of precipitation. But how do they fall out? We can have 100 mm in a month, and fries for a month and a half. And for the wheat to die, it takes 3-4 days. 40 ° degrees during the day and if 25 ° is at night, then moisture simply will not have time to form in the soil and wheat simply will not pull it.
If you dig up the wheat root system during the period of wax ripeness or the end of the wax ripeness, we will see that the entire bulk of the roots is 10-12 cm. And if you look at the stem, what is the ratio of roots to stems - how can this hair pull?
We had such a strategy - to form a root system that will actually suck water, where water is most retained due to condensation. That is, ventilation was done with a special crop rotation so that the air enters the soil. Hot air enters the soil, the soil is colder, condensation. Hot air leaves moisture, it cools down, goes up. And again such a circuit. But the fact is that this moisture does not linger by 10 cm, because the temperature difference on the soil surface and by 10 cm is so minimal that condensation does not work there. Condensation - somewhere from 50 cm. And our goal was to form such a root system that can get moisture for at least 2-3 days. This is not a panacea, but it is still the result. Three days have been extended, but what if you're lucky and some dew will pass there.
And be that as it may, this is not one step or one action in No-till. This is a combination of operations, crop rotations, rates, timing, varieties, treatments, untreated, seeds, soil, sowing depth. It's just a whole combination that has formed a chain. But the most important thing is that if people don't believe it, nothing will work out.
- You grow rapeseed. What are the yields?
- We budget rapeseed 1.8 t / ha. We get, depending on the year, from 1.6 to 2.2. There are better fields that give 2.6. But this does not depend on either the variety or the hybrid.
How do we sow rapeseed? We grow the seeds ourselves. We sow it with seed drills without fertilizers. The seeder goes through the field and goes like a harrow, in order to make at least some mulch so that it does not dry out. It passes 2-3 cm, sows rapeseed. But the most important thing is that today we are harvesting wheat, it is desirable to sow rapeseed as much as possible tomorrow. Because two days later it’s too late.
- The most interesting moment. Many people who get high yields of wheat believe that it is impossible to sow rape with no-till because of the large amount of straw in the field. People don't know how to deal with straw, get seedlings.
- First, one of the elements of No-till is straw management. If there is no cutting in the combine, or there is one, but there are low-quality knives, if there is no chaff spreader, then all fields will be striped. Chaff is even more harmful than straw. Let me give you an example - how wheat was previously stored in Kazakhstan, and even in Ukraine. They just poured down the mound, it was raining. Part of the chaff, because it is light, always lay on top. And the chaff, together with the wheat, made a crust of 3-4 cm. Then the wheat could lie for six months, a year, because such a layer formed on top. Then they drove up, shoveled everything from above and took high-quality wheat from there.
It’s just the same, only worse. Because there is chaff with wheat, and here is pure chaff. And the floor, as soon as water gets there, serves as such a crust like a slab. You cannot sow there, because you cannot cut it, but you press it. And most importantly, in order not to hang the seeds, there must be contact with the soil. You have to put everything underneath - and that's a problem. That is, the first thing that is needed is straw management and chaff management.
- Relative to the height of the straw for sowing rapeseed. It is believed that it should be as small as possible. And there is an opinion that as much as possible. Your opinion?
- There are many opinions regarding the cutting height, the length of the straw.
If you have the right wheat, the right density, 500-600 plants, then every 10 cm of straw is 1 ton of straw per hectare. It turns out that if you have 20 cm of standing straw, then you no longer throw 2 tons of straw per hectare.
If you have properly grown wheat, then it should be, as an indicator, just above the knee. This is from 60 to 70 cm, you should have a height of wheat, because if the right ear, it bends down and you lose these 10 cm that you need to load the harvester, you need to feed a lot of wheat into the harvester so that it was not empty. And you have to lower the header to get going faster. That is, the more you lower the header, the more straw through you. And the more straw through you, the more straw you need to properly distribute across the field.
First, you need a combine that evenly distributes straw across the header width.
And further, there are different opinions regarding the length of the straw after the harvester. If there is a cut, you will never have long straw. There is such a rule - the length of straw from 3 to 5 cm should be about 70% of the total mass and 30%, exactly in half, can be shorter and longer.
The straw is still alive after harvesting; if it is long, it can be twisted, but it will not break. It needs time for this straw to dry and to be well crushed, become rotten.
What option could there be? We do wheat desiccation and start harvesting 4-5 days earlier. This allows us to save another 5-6 combines in our harvesting areas. At the same time, the straw is already ready, it is fragile. Easily chopped up and scattered. There is like dust. Then rape is easier to sow.
What's the other problem with straw? Straw is cellulose. In order for it to rot, it needs nitrogen. We do not supply nitrogen. She takes free nitrogen. It takes free nitrogen, which means that rapeseed must look for something to live with. He will search for a long time. So what are we doing? We must give him more life. We gave rapeseed a month more life - we sow a month earlier than the optimal time. We remove and sow immediately, thereby catching moisture.
- How long does it take?
- Mid-July.
- Doesn't it frighten you that it's kind of early?
- Rapeseed grows in different ways. If everything is ok, the rape will sprout quickly. But when it starts to grow, it becomes nitrogen deficient. And he slows down in growth.
Then we wait for at least 60% of rapeseed in the field to have 3-4 leaves, and apply a growth regulator. We immediately press him to the ground. How does rapeseed grow? It grows horizontally. As soon as the rape leaves touch each other, it immediately picks up the leaves and begins to grow towards the sun. It is precisely at the point of contact that we must introduce a growth regulator. And then he just lies down on the ground. We got 20-leaf rapeseed. The growth point was 3 cm. Everyone says that you need 5, 10, 30 plants per square meter. But if we have 2 such plants per square meter, then they will form such a mass! As a rule, dormant dots come afterwards.
- You sow with your seeds. Is there no temptation to sow thicker?
- We sow 1-1.2 million / ha. Because, there are provocative shoots. He can rise, then there is a drought and he disappears. This often happens with us - it sprouts, we can lose it, then it started raining and the one that did not sprout for the first time sprouts.
- And if the conditions are favorable and everything will come up?
- So that with No-till the rapeseed sprouts all at the same time - it will not be so for sure. Because there will be dominant plants. If the rape even rises 3-4 days earlier, it will still score the one that comes later. It will be intraspecific competition, there will definitely not be extra rapeseed there. There will be no field with 100 plants per square meter.
No one around us sows rapeseed, everyone looks at us and does not understand what we are doing.
This year we have even grown spring wheat. We leveled the structure of crops, as we did not have time to sow winter wheat on sunflowers. Received 4.4 t / ha. We have closed flat fields of 5.2 tons - with only 160 kg of saltpeter. Where there were slopes, clay - got 3.5-3.8. Everyone says there has never been winter, but here is spring! Well, lucky this year! Shot. 1 class.
We tried sorghum this year. Cool culture too. Closed at 7 t / ha in offset. And they sold well. It turns out that sorghum can be an alternative to corn.
- And what did the corn give?
- We do not sow corn in Kharkov. Here one year you can get 7 tons, another year - 2 tons, the third - 5 tons. We all calculated this. I'm not ready for this when you don't know what year you will receive. And I do not want to disgrace myself either in front of people or in front of the owner.
All our corn is grown in the Kirovograd region, we get from 7 to 11 tons.
- At zero?
- No, there is no zero. We have zero technology in Kharkov, Nikolaev and Rostov.
We shifted all the corn to Kirovograd, where corn goes after corn. There is an elevator. We counted everything: logistics, grain yield, average yield for the company. We calculated all sorts of different options that would be effective and cost-effective for the company.
This is not to say - you need No-till, or you need to plow, or you need to loosen. We need to create a system that makes it a business.
Why is England plowing? The biggest problem there is black oats. They just can't handle the grass. If you did not cope with it, then the wheat yield will be a maximum of 2 tons. If you remove it. One panacea is late sowing and burying black oats.
We process nothing in Kharkov except fire strips.
- For a fairly large company that is located in different soil and climatic conditions - what was your strategy for the choice of technology? How did you decide for yourself where is No-till, and where are other technologies?
- Kirovograd is our best region, where temperature loads are not so strong and where there is at least some guarantee of constant precipitation. We brought all the corn there and we are making it there, as it were, our corn belt.
This is a business. We need to get a lot of grain. Corn can also be grown on no-till, like any other crop, but you need to do a crop rotation. We have only 5 thousand hectares there. If you do a crop rotation for corn, you need at least 4 crops. It is necessary for grain seeders, row-crop seeders, and everything, everything, everything. We have there, on 5 thousand hectares, 3 seeders for corn are concentrated. They sift corn, then they go to Nikolaev and further sow sunflower to Kharkov.
If there is no crop rotation, there is no need to talk about No-till. Corn has the highest vegetative mass - root system ratio. If you have not prepared the soil for corn, this does not mean that you have not loosened, plowed, - by crop rotation. If it doesn't hook well to the ground, you won't form a vegetative mass. You will not get friendly shoots, you will not form a vegetative mass - you do not have a head of cabbage.
- And if corn did not dominate in your country, but was only one of the links in the crop rotation?
- No problem. Soy corn. I have a friend in Zhitomir, he has his own crop rotation. It works without any fertilizers at all, it has 100% zero. Soy-soy-soy-corn-soy-soy-corn-soy-soy-wheat. All without fertilizers. He receives from 2.5 to 3 t / ha of soybeans, from 6 to 7 t / ha of corn. He plays very well in economics, because he has one seeder. Sowed corn, went to soybeans. The economy is very cool. He has very little wheat, he sows it only for shareholders. This is not his business.
His business is soybean seeds. Corn - for crop rotation, since you need to introduce some kind of cereal to take a break between diseases. Soy is normal for 3 years, then in order not to spend money on fungicides, he passes the field through the corn. And besides, it accumulates plant residues again.
There are cereal predecessors and there are broad-leaved ones. Broad-leaved plants do not form a large amount of plant residues on the soil surface. If you look at it - soybeans, sunflower, rapeseed. The sunflower reaches almost 3 m, and after harvesting the field is clean. There is nothing, only sticks stand. But they don't cover the ground.
Forms plant debris which is best? Corn, sorghum and wheat.
It turns out that it is necessary to dilute the crop rotation with them in order to form plant residues.
It all also depends on how quickly these plant residues undergo nitrification and mineralization. It depends on how long it rains and warm weather. We studied the experience of No-till in various countries. In Latin America, nitrification is very fast. Last year there was corn, now there is sunflower - you don’t know what was sown there, you won’t find any remnants, there’s nothing. They say that we have a problem that the mineralization is so fast that there is practically no plant debris on the surface.
“On the other hand, it means that bacteria are working.
- This is so cool.
- Many people here think that if there is no straw on the surface, then this is not No-till, but some kind of nonsense. Need a pillow, etc.
- I have never seen a 10 cm pillow, especially in Argentina. This does not mean that the pillow has to be made of straw. The pillow should be in the head.
The cushion can be soil. It could be mulch. But the most important thing is that this mulch can be 2 cm. Not 5, not 6. Because there is no such mulch. It will already be concrete after the first rain.
There are many nuances. Such an interesting topic that you need to go through it, as it were, point by point. From every week of plant life and weather. To make everything fit into a system.
For example, the sowing depth of wheat. This is a decisive factor in No-till. Everyone says that for No-till you need a seeder with a coulter pressure of at least 175 kg, and if 350, then this is generally super. If you are using 350 kg, then you are not a laptop operator, because you have not prepared the ground. The soil is a living organism, the seeds should just fly into it easily. And the more lively it is, the more it looks like a sponge. There won't necessarily be a lot of straw. This is all organic matter, these are the same worms, these are your roots, this is the whole state.
- When in the summer I was in the sunflower field on your farm, I noticed that the soil under my feet seemed to spring.
- This is the case. But there are also fields that do not spring. So they are not ready yet.
We approach each field individually. If the field is ready, you can feel it with your feet, with your hands, you can smell it. There are fields that are not yet springy. There are fields that are not No-till ready. And there you can lose.
Our goal was to maintain yields while keeping costs down.
One guy came to see me. We come to the fields, he looks at everything and says:
- I kind of understand everything, read everything. I tried No-till, but I put the farm down.
His yield dropped by 3 times. And he says:
- I promise that I will come here 2 more times to see all this in May and to clean up. It is on these fields. Because I don't believe you did it. I started it and I know what it is. But I do not believe that you have done this even on such large areas.
I do not want to say that we are some kind of pros there, but we are not amateurs either. We analyze everything clearly. Because our goal is not the same - No-till or not No-till. Our goal is to be stable. And how is stabilization? This is how much you spend and how much you are ready to answer for the result. It is impossible to engage in agriculture without costs. The most important thing is controllable costs and a guaranteed harvest in each region.
That is, if I know that I may have a sunflower problem. If everything is bad there for the weather, I know that I will get 2.5 t / ha in Kharkov. I also budget 2.5. If everything is great, I will get 3.5 at the same cost. As a rule, we get a three. If there is an array where everything worked out, we get 4.5.
- Is it No-till that allows you to achieve your main goal - stability and minimum costs?
- Absolutely. So far, we have succeeded.
Since we left everything on No-till, after harvesting wheat, sunflower, soybeans, we do not touch the soil at all. Let everything grow there - weeds, carrion. Let it grow! Then, the most optimal, when it all covers the ground, we add glyphosate, dicamba. And all the remnants turn brown, lay on the ground and cover it. Many people at this moment think that we have abandoned the earth. Of course, it looks awful from the outside.
In fact, we get a free cover crop. Why waste another 5 liters of diesel fuel to sow 15 kg of mustard?
And then you come to the field picking up all these plant residues, and there the worms are not in the soil, but crawl on the surface and eat these residues. There, 10 cm square, 10 pieces each. These are large, but small ...
In the spring, we often want to sow, but we cannot. The neighbors are sowing, and we are waiting. The soil needs to be revived after winter. She must be ready physiologically, physically. Where is the hurry? If earlier we rushed faster so as not to lose moisture, now we are not in a hurry, because the moisture is immeasurable.
- What kind of seeders do you work?
- Different. All that has gone before. All with coolers. We sow sunflower Gaspardo, Kinze, Crucianelli. We sow Great Plains solid planting crops.
The end of the interview can be viewed in video format:
