BRANDON – Cash for carbon credits seems like a sweet deal for zero till farmers, but the wrong openers on seeding equipment might stamp “stop payment” on the cheque.
Atom Jet of Brandon has dusted off its drawing board and designed a fully carbon credit compliant opener.
“The carbon credit programs are coming in and we wanted to make sure we meet the new criteria when they become official in Manitoba and Saskatchewan,” said Robin Ponto of Atom Jet.
“The carbon credit criteria factors in your opener width as a percentage of your drill spacing. The formula says you can have 38 percent surface soil disturbance. So if you’re on 10 inch spacing, then each opener is allowed to disturb 3.8 inches of surface soil. Our new Twin Band opener is 3.25 inches wide, so we fit well into the new standards.”
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The carbon credit industry has set the criteria in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, while the provincial government wrote the rules in Alberta.
It is anticipated the federal government will adopt the Alberta formula in the near future for all agricultural carbon credit trading in Canada.
Atom Jet decided the new opener should have triple shoot in the design, making it friendly to variable rate, single pass seeding systems.
“We blow the seed to the left, through a big opening that now has the extra advantage of an internal deflector,” Ponto said.
“This deflector kicks the seed over to the far side of the spread area, away from the fertilizer. Your phosphorus mix and sulfur fines and other dry fertilizer drops down a tube directly behind the centre of the opener. Your anhydrous or other nitrogen goes out the insulated tube on the right side. In the (manufacturing) jig, we set it up so the tube doesn’t touch any steel. It’s fully insulated with the spray foam.”
Terry Markeson of Foam Lake, Sask., installed eight of the new openers on his drill in 2008 and left them on the drill for 4,200 acres of seeding.
By injecting coloured dye in the anhydrous distribution lines, he was able to observe 2.5 inches to three inches of separation between seed and anhydrous in all conditions.
Markeson saw no damage to the plants, even at 200 pounds per acre of actual nitrogen.
The previous Atom Jet side-banding opener provided only a 1.5 inch separation between seed and nitrogen.
“We sold those for years,” Ponto said. “We never had any reports of serious problems, but producers weren’t comfortable with an inch and a half, so that means we weren’t comfortable either. So now we’ve erred on the side of safety.”
The new opener is narrower than its predecessors, at only 3.25 inches at its widest point.
For more information, contact Robin Ponto at 800-573-5048 or visit www.atomjet.com.
