Soil at the heart of the UK Agriculture Bill

Difference between wide span and standard CTF

PH143713 — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 09:22:34 GMT

Wide span can halve tracked areas and provide greater precision

Tim Chamen from the UK and John McPhee from Australia have contributed an article to NEXAT's blog highlighting the differences between wide span or gantry tractor CTF and conventional tractor based CTF systems.

One thing we missed highlighting in the NEXAT blog was the advantage of wide span when harvesting grain crops. Wide span leaves standing stubble across the whole width between its wheel tracks, whereas standard systems will roll down at least 15% of the area, meaning this will have to be dealt with differently. Steve Larocque in his NEXAT blog emphasized the advantage of leaving a long stubble to protect a new crop and indeed provide support for crops such as peas. Do read Steve's article, it really highlights the advantages of CTF in so many ways and particularly the improved resilience of cropping in these times of increasing weather uncertainty.

If you have any comments, please let us know.

NEXAT at Agritechnica

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 10:47:01 GMT

Don't miss the chance to book a 30 minute slot to talk to people on the NEXAT stand

Since winning the DLG gold medal in 2019 and missing out on having their machine at Agritechnica in 2020 because of the pandemic, the people at NEXAT have been working hard with testing of the machine in different environments. From the USA, to Brazil and continuing work in the Ukraine and Romania, they have covered a lot of ground. This machine, compacting just 5% of the land is truly the way forward and the system cannot be surpassed in terms of environmental supremacy.

NEXAT update, July 2023

Tue, 04 Jul 2023 21:45:46 GMT

Latest video from Farmworld.TV

Things have moved on apace as far as NEXAT is concerned, with machines in Germany, USA and Brazil as well as many more in different stages of production. The recent video produced by Farmworld.TV published in December 2022 shows just some of its capabilities with many more planned, including the slurry spreading system shown above (www.nexat.de). The complexity and pace of this development is quite staggering and the team at Kalverkamp must be congratulated on their amazing achievements - may they lead to commercial success.

New gantry technology announced - NexAT

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 09:29:36 GMT

Kalverkamp Innovation announce the 'Next generation in Agricultural Technology" - the NexAT

After 5 years of design and development, the NexAT has been announced and will be shown at the next Agritechnica in Hannover. See our "Present and Future" page for more information and visit NexATs dedicated site .

Soil compaction compromises spring seedbeds with slow and gappy crop germination

Thu, 16 Apr 2020 15:58:53 GMT

Avoiding compaction can deliver this instead

The spring oats shown in the top photo, taken during trials at Silsoe some years ago, were sown on a trafficked plot on the same day and at the same depth as those sown with a gantry, shown in the bottom photo - both photos were taken on the same day.

Subsequent measurements revealed that eventual plant numbers on the trafficked plot were 581/m2, whereas they were 707/m2 on the non-trafficked soil.

UK Agriculture Bill to protect soils

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 15:22:48 GMT

Vision to incentivise soil protection

It’s pleasing to hear that the UK Government has today announced a new vision to protect the soil. Part of that vision should be incentives to adopt CTF as best practice. Defra (UK Government body) funded research in 2011/12 (SP1305) to assess the relative costs of soil compaction mitigation. Soil compaction is one of the main causes of soil degradation costing farmers and the environment millions of pounds every year.
In all cases, CTF was the most effective means of combating compaction both in monetary terms and as far as CO2 not emitted and nitrogen not lost were concerned. This shows that CTF works with existing equipment, but in these times of dire need to reduce our negative impacts on the environment, how much better it would be if it could be adopted within a wide span or gantry tractor system!