Enhancing Crop Residue Distribution for Optimal Nutrient Reuse in Double Cropping
15 Nov 244m 39s

As combine technology advances with features like active spread tailboards and adjustable choppers, managing residue has become a game-changer for regenerative agriculture, minimizing tillage and optimizing soil fertility.

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00:00:00 Residue distribution is the stuff that comes outta the back of your combine being evenly dispersed. 00:00:04 So that makes it better for your double cropping or for your next season planting. It's an important deal as heads keep getting wider and wider 00:00:11 and as crops keep getting bigger and bigger, you've got more fodder. Alexander working with Temple, you say this is a big deal. 00:00:16 You said, you know what, we should bring Alexander in this video because he's the one that follows the combine 00:00:20 that plants the double crop soybeans. Tell me why it matters, Alexander. Yeah, so in wheat, um, double cropping beans behind wheat, 00:00:26 it's a big thing with, with fodder distribution. Um, because you know, it's middle of summer ground's tight ground's hard 00:00:33 and it's already hard enough to get the planters to go in there anyway. And then you add clumps of fodder 00:00:38 and fodder that's not spread evenly. It, it's more of a struggle for the planters to get that seed into the ground. 00:00:43 Was this an issue when you were a kid? When we had smaller head and smaller Crops, it's always been an issue. 00:00:48 We've always had to plant double crop beans or worry about that fodder come, come spring, come springtime or whatever it is. 00:00:54 But you know these, a lot of these choppers nowadays or tailboard, spreaders, you know, residue management, I mean that's a big deal. 00:01:01 Residue management, you know, look at where we're going with regenerative agriculture. Yep. Sustainability. 00:01:07 We need to be able to spread that residue completely. Even all the way across there. I can't tell you how many times Alexander's called, 00:01:13 you know, raising hell because we've got an issue where it's leaving a trail somewhere. Well, that trail is one 00:01:20 or two rows of beans that aren't gonna come up. Right. And he's fighting the planter. Well, he can't make, he can't make an adjustment on one 00:01:27 or two rows 'cause it's jumping all over the place. So it's a big deal. They're making a this all about, 00:01:31 this is Adam Barrett here with Fent. They're making this all about planting either a double crop or in the following spring, but it's also an issue about 00:01:38 nutrient distribution because at some point I'd like to see a future where we do a lot less tillage, which means that therefore where that stuff lays is where it's going 00:01:45 to decompose, which is where the organic matter's going to build, et cetera, et cetera. You said, Hey, this is something we're pretty proud of here. 00:01:51 Tell me about what I'm looking at this is, would you call it a tailboard? This, this is the tailboard here, 00:01:55 the chopper farther back up inside the machine tailboard. Yep. But what we've got set up here, 00:01:59 we've got a couple of different options. What we see on the back of this combine is what we call active spread tailboard. 00:02:04 This is combined with a couple of different chopper options of the number of knives. 00:02:08 So we've really got two steps, what we're trying to accomplish to get that even spread that they're looking for, for that following crop or for that soil health. 00:02:15 The first one of those is to finally chop that material that's coming outta the back of that processor. The Smaller it is, the farther it 00:02:20 Can blow, the smaller it is, the better it's going to be incorporated into the soil. Second step of that is we want to evenly distribute 00:02:26 that chopped material across the width of whatever head that is. So with this design, we've got two things happening here. 00:02:33 We've got the fin layout that allows us to direct that material where we want it to, even that distribution. And then we also have these outer tailboard spinners 00:02:41 that are gonna collect that outer bit of material and fling, fling that out to the ends. Now this is adjustable from the cab. 00:02:48 So as you spoke to those 40 foot heads, this one would even cover, cover a 45 or a 50 or a 50 plus feet head when we got into 00:02:56 some of the soybean conditions. It does a fantastic job of with that. Is It game changer or is it a nice feature? 00:03:01 Well, it is a game changer. Think about what we just talked about with regenerative agriculture. 00:03:05 Think about the amount of residue that we have out there. We got a 40 foot head on, you know, 00:03:10 let's just call it just corn. There is 60, 70 pounds of potassium left out there. There's 40 to 50 pounds of phosphorus left out there. 00:03:19 You're talking about evenly distributing nutrients. Yeah, right. Are you gonna take your fertilizer spreader and leave streams in the field? 00:03:25 Right. No. Do you want to leave them out there because that's what you're leaving. It Kinda seems that Alexandra, you know, 00:03:30 obviously you're a young guy and you think about the technology that we're deploying, et cetera. 00:03:33 We're now talking about making sure that fertility is within three inches of the seeding. That way it gets to the root 00:03:40 because we know if it's in the middle of the row, it's 15 inches away, the fertility may not get to the root. How would we think then if the organic matter 00:03:46 or the residue is 10 feet away? It's getting to the right place. Yeah, Well, I mean even, not even like only that, 00:03:51 but years like this, when you're trying to cut back, I mean you've already, you've spent however much money in this crop already, why not try 00:03:57 to reuse it in your next one? You know, on years like this when we're all trying to cut back, I mean it all flows 00:04:02 together, you know, are we paying Any more for this, Adam? Oh, it's gonna be in the options list. 00:04:06 So this one is a little higher on the, on the price list, but uh, in the grand scheme of things, 00:04:11 it's just a small piece of the, the overall farm puzzle. Yeah. Then if it's put my, if it's putting my, 00:04:16 my nutrients where they need to be, I can probably justify that. Yep. Got it. He's Adam Bear. 00:04:20 I'm Dan Mason with Extreme Ag coming at you with Alexander and Temple from Centerville, Maryland. 00:04:25 We're talking about nutrient distribution. Residue distribution, and making sure that you disperse all of that fiber that's off those big crops 00:04:31 so it gets out there and does what it needs to 00:04:32.925 --> 00:04:33.725

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