REGINA – For farmers concerned about plugged seed hoses and seeding rates, Agtron Enterprises from Saskatoon has recently introduced a stainless steel population and blockage sensor.
“This represents the state of the art in this technology,” said Bill Baker, president of Agtron, during the product launch at last week’s Farm Progress Show in Regina.
“Each sensor is a microprocessor to accurately determine the seed rate, either for blockage purposes or population purposes. We have the ART 100, which is an advanced blockage monitor. It does an accurate job of telling you when you have blockages in the tubes. The population monitor – the ART 120 – gives you an actual seed population, or seeds per acre.”
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The sensor is a thin-walled stainless steel tube that goes inside the hose. The hose is then clamped to the sensor on each end. There’s nothing interfering with the flow of the seed on the inside of the tube.
Each sensor has its own computer-controlled eye watching it. Even if farmers use only one sensor per air drill tower, they can still determine if there’s a blocked run.
“What will happen is a blockage will cause the rate to rise in the other runs. If you’ve got eight runs and suddenly one run gets blocked, the same material has to go out seven runs. You’ve got an increase in flow of roughly 12 percent in the other runs,” said Baker.
A trend in the industry has farmers starting to look at established plants per acre rather than how many pounds of seeds per acre. Baker said Australian research shows that the density of seed can vary by 25 percent.
“There’s no way a farmer would accept an air seeder that would only seed within 25 percent of the target rate. He may be putting on the correct weight, within one or two percent, but his established plant population may be varying 25 percent,” he said.
“With small grains, this is the way it’s been done forever. With large grains, they’re used to thinking about plant populations. Corn farmers get out their tape measure and measure the distance between each seed. I’m not suggesting we need to be that extreme with small grains, but we do need to figure out the established plant populations.”
The sensors are installed in line in the hose, usually up by the tower to keep them out of harm’s way. Baker said farmers can cut the hose a foot from the tower, put the sensor in line with clamps, then run the loop extension cables between the towers. Those usually go along the hydraulic hoses. Then the main harness is run up to the cab, the monitor installed and it’s done.
“We’ve retained the simple loop wiring system, but have improved the communications with optical coupling, which enhances the communications,” he said.
Baker said the stainless steel part is a real improvement.
“We have guys using these with abrasive, coarse fertilizer. The plastic sensor bodies weren’t as durable. The stainless steel sensor is immune to fertilizer and other chemicals. The sensor itself is also resistant to seed treatment buildup.”
Baker said farmers can choose how few or many sensors they use on their drills.
“Typically what they’ll do is in the first year buy just one per tower. Then they expand to put them in all runs, if and when they want to.”
The basic package, with the ART 100 monitor, six sensors and wiring, costs about $1,400. With the ART 120 monitor, the price is about $1,600. Additional sensors can be bought separately.
