TUME seeders double victory in this year’s oat race
The biennial KM crop competition is an interesting event to watch. Professional farmers from all over Finland try to get the highest possible yield from their plots, which is determined under official supervision at threshing. What makes the competition interesting are the different starting conditions, soil types, acidity, nutrient balance, crop type, seedbed preparation, growing season measures and other variable factors. To sum up, success in a crop competition requires several years of work on basic field preparation, a successful crop rotation and the professional skills to apply the right crop variety and timely measures during the growing season.
But the harsh reality is that even if all the other things are right, if the sowing fails, the peak yield is lost early in the growing season! This year’s winner was Kimmo Polo from Alastaro, who has also won the 2019 Rye Champion title. Success in the harvest competition several years in a row reflects the professionalism of the farmer and also the fact that Kimmo’s current sowing chain works. Kimmo sows his top crops with a 15+ year old Tumen Novacombi + Cultipack combination, which Kimmo has been happy with. Kimmo has made small improvements to his old machine, but Kimmo feels that the new Tume NovaCombi Module models have already taken these improvements into account. It is also interesting to note that, despite persistent beliefs, it is possible to get top yields by sowing seed and fertiliser in the same row. With today’s (non-urea) nitrogen fertilisers and the increased spreading of fertiliser during the growing season, it is also safe to sow in the same row as seed.
The runner-up in the race is Frans Tuna from Laitila and the Tume Orion with an optional electric feed system, and is also sown in the same row. What is particularly pleasing about the machine is the usability of the electric feeder and also the precision of the feeder, which can be used to sow very small or large quantities of seed as required. For example, a large-grain, Hurja oat in a harvest competition was sown at 270kg/ha, but only about half of the input power was used and there were no problems with spillage. Frans has also been very pleased with Orion’s versatile but simple double disc coulter system.
Frans Tuuna’s sowing is carried out with Tume Orion, which also has an electric feed equipment as an accessory.
Frans is a first timer at the crop competition, but that’s how convincing his performance was, so hopefully we can continue to learn from his professionalism in the future. The best part of a harvest competition, apart from the competition itself, is how both competitors and followers can learn new things from professional farming. However, Kimmo and Frans laugh humorously that, in retrospect, the best part of the harvest competition was actually doing well in the competition after all the arguing between the competitors.
