Treating the soil with logic

Ekotechnika successfully proceeds the integration of smart farming technologies. Over the past two years, pilot crops have been planted in Ekosem-Agrar's fields within the LeadFarm project initiated by Ekotechnika in collaboration with John Deere. In order to witness the next phase of this unique project, we visited one of the trial fields:

"At the moment we are carrying out a trial sowing of corn with a sowing standard of 80,000 seeds per hectare," declares Alexei Nizkodubov, chief agronomist of the farm "Levoberezhny". "In total, it is planned to sow grain and silage corn on 2,600 hectares. As part of the project we are testing the John Deere DB55 Precision Seed Driller with a new ExactEmerge row unit. The machine is distinguished by high sowing accuracy and a speed of up to 17 km/h without loss of sowing quality. It is much more productive than previous models. A special feature of the machine is the ability to sow a variety of crops in a differentiated way.”

The first half of May was rainy, but in the meantime the weather has improved and the seed drill is transported to the field after a short adjustment.

"We started by digitalizing all our fields, delimiting them electronically and carrying out agrochemical soil tests within these borders," explains Sergey Kapustin, head of the Smart Farming department of EkoNiva. "As a result, we now understand how much potassium, phosphorus and nitrogen is contained in each field section and what the grain size distribution of the soil looks like. And the more we become familiar with the subject of Smart Farming and the individual approach to each square meter of the field, the more data we will have at our disposal that will allow us to accurately estimate the yield potential of a particular area. We are then able to apply the optimum amount of fertilizer and seed".

The DB55 seed drill from John Deere is the perfect tool for this. While the seed drill moves to the other side of the field precisely according to the map loaded on the operator's monitor, EkoNiva's specialists evaluate their work. The sowing depth and the distance between the seeds are precisely maintained and correspond to the control chart used.

Ekotechnika, in cooperation with John Deere, is currently pioneering the application of these precision farming technologies in Russia. But even if clear successes are already visible, a few more trials are still necessary until the sowing process is completely optimized.

By Alexander Kutishchev