Preparing your sprayer for spring

Mar 20, 2019

Early maintenance can help farmers spend more time in their fields

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Farmers will soon be taking their sprayers out of storage for the 2019 growing season.

By completing a thorough equipment inspection, farmers can ensure they spend more time in the field and less time performing maintenance, said Mark Burns, an application equipment marketing manager with Case IH.

“The first thing farmers might want to do is make sure any maintenance that wasn’t done in the fall is done now,” he told Farms.com. “That includes things like oil changes, replacing filters and servicing the hydraulic reservoir.”

From there, producers may want to check that rate controllers are set up properly.

“Growers will probably consider the rates they plan to apply, tank mixes and things like that,” Burns said. “They should also make sure all the data they need is available to them when they’re ready.”

Calibrating the sprayer to match what the rate controller reads is important, too.

“There can be a pretty big disparity between ground covered versus what’s been applied,” Burns said. “Ensuring all of that is calibrated properly can help farmers get accurate readings.”

Before running crop protection products through the sprayer, farmers can check for leaks using water.

“The last thing you want is a product leak,” Burns said. “That goes from the product tank all the way to the nozzle. You don’t want anything seeping out from any hose connections.

“Keeping with that, perform a catch test to make sure the output is matching what the control system thinks it’s applying.

Another factor that operators often overlook is the functionality of nozzle tips, Burns said.

“When farmers buy a new sprayer or take one out of storage, they just take the tips they used last year and put them on,” he said. “Tips are a wear item and certain products can be more abrasive than others. We want to make sure we’re getting proper patterns across all the tips.”

Video: How farmers are protecting the soil and our food security | DW Documentary

For a long time, soil was all but ignored. But for years, the valuable humus layer has been thinning. Farmers in Brandenburg are clearly feeling the effects of this on their sandy fields. Many are now taking steps to prepare their farms for the future.

Years of drought, record rainfall and failed harvests: we are becoming increasingly aware of how sensitively our environment reacts to extreme weather conditions. Farmers' livelihoods are at stake. So is the ability of consumers to afford food.

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Brandenburg is the federal state with the worst soil quality in Germany. The already thin, fertile humus layer has been shrinking for decades. Researchers and farmers who are keen to experiment are combating these developments and looking for solutions. Priority is being given to building up the humus layer, which consists of microorganisms and fungi, as well as springtails, small worms and centipedes.

For Lena and Philipp Adler, two young vegetable farmers, the tiny soil creatures are invaluable helpers. On their three-hectare organic farm, they rely on simple, mechanical weed control, fallow areas where the soil can recover, and diversity. Conventional farmer Mark Dümichen also does everything he can to protect soil life on his land. For years, he has not tilled the soil after the harvest and sows directly into the field. His yields have stabilized since he began to work this way.

Isabella Krause from Regionalwert AG Berlin-Brandenburg is convinced after the experiences of the last hot summers that new crops will thrive on Brandenburg's fields in the long term. She has founded a network of farmers who are promoting the cultivation of chickpeas with support from the scientific community.