Kevin Dow is encouraging farmers to buck the trend toward one-pass harvesting systems.
The president of Schulte Industries Ltd. wants to sell them a machine that requires a second trip across the field but offers better residue management and the promise of smaller fuel bills.
Dow told producers attending the Agri-Trend 2008 Farm Forum Event in Saskatoon that Schulte’s rotary cutters use a combination of stationary fixed knives and free swinging blades that whirl around and mulch farm residue at a clip of up to 16,000 feet per minute.
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Mounted baffle distribution plates direct the mulched material out of the cutter, spreading it evenly across the field with no bunches or windrows, leaving the land ready for direct seeding the following spring.
“This is not the ditch mower you see running up and down the country roads,” he said.
The main advantage of using a rotary cutter to shred residue is that it allows farmers to set their combine header 20 to 30 centimetres higher than they would if they were trying to do everything in one pass.
Less material is run through the combine, allowing the machine to travel faster and use less horsepower. It speeds up harvest, saves on fuel and improves the separation of grain from residue, he said.
Increasing a combine’s ground speed by 0.8 km-h doesn’t sound like much but with an 11 metre header, that means harvesting an extra 2.2 acres per hour or an extra quarter section per week, assuming a producer is working 10 hours per day.
Schulte is working with Agriculture Canada researchers to determine if there would be net fuel savings with the two-pass system. The results are not in but Dow is pretty confident he knows what the answer will be.
“Your net fuel savings will be there on the overall package,” he told growers.
Rotary cutters are available in four widths ranging from 4.5 metres to 12.8 metres. The biggest machine can process 35.6 acres per hour.
The eight metre model sells for around $55,000 and the 12.8 metre version for about $100,000. Dow pointed out many farmers would be saving the $20,000 to $25,000 they would otherwise be spending on a straw chopper for the combine.
The units can be towed nicely by tractors in the 200 to 300 horsepower range at a speed of about 9.7 km-h.
Schulte’s flex wing cutters fold up into a compact three-metre width for transport, similar to cultivators and drills.
Dow said the cutters have mulched the stalks on a 200 bushel per acre corn crop in Europe, dealt with the remainder of a dense irrigated cotton field in Georgia and pulverized wheat straw in northern Saskatchewan.
The cutter has also proven popular with grass seed producers and organic farmers who use it to plow down their green manure crops.
About the only thing it can’t shred is the wiry residue of a flax crop.
“I’m not going to recommend it’s going to do a good enough job (with flax),” said Dow.
