In April and August 2013, on the fields of leading Lviv region agricultural producers Zakhidnyi Buh, Agrokultura and Agro LV Limited, Astra Agricultural Construction Alliance, with support from its suppliers Horsch and AGCO/FENDT (Germany), carried out a series of successful trials of soil-cultivation, seeding and tractor machinery. This let the agricultural companies’ leading specialists, management and owners account for their fields’ individual conditions when choosing agricultural machinery for production tasks, using modern farming technology, and plan deliveries to their farms well in advance.
For the trials, the format most convenient for agricultural producers was chosen, where machinery worked on each farm for 3 or more days, allowing the maximum number of specialists from all three companies mentioned above to study its advantages, get quality advice directly from factory representatives, and compare the trial results against the performance of similar agricultural machinery.
Continuing the trial tour, from 16 to 18.09.2013, ASA ASTRA and Horsch-Ukraine organised a trip to the Czech Republic for the top managers of the companies whose fields hosted the trials (Zakhidnyi Buh, Agrokultura, Agro LV Limited), to one of Horsch’s (Germany) own agricultural enterprises, where they could assess the level of business achieved through a rare symbiosis: agricultural machinery manufacturer – agricultural producer.
Every participant got to properly appreciate the performance not only of Horsch machinery, already widely represented on the market, but also got to see new experimental models needed for running an effective agribusiness. Guests witnessed how, under demanding conditions, new Horsch machinery models undergo trials, during which not only is a given model refined, but new ideas for improving production processes are born too.
Company owner Michael Horsch, together with his eldest son Lukas Horsch, gave a broader picture of their own company’s operations, which, it turns out, is not only a leader in global agricultural machinery manufacturing, producing premium-class agricultural machinery at 5 factories located in Germany and the USA, but is also one of the largest agricultural production operators in Europe. The Horsch family’s agricultural business has been growing since 1990 and today brings together 15 farms covering 20,000 ha of land (8,000 ha in the Czech Republic and 12,000 ha in Germany).
The enterprise chosen for the meeting was, quite deliberately, one that had joined the Horsch agribusiness just 15 months earlier. The enterprise farms 3,300 ha of land, a third of which is sandy soil, a third clay, and a third black soil (35/35/65 points). According to specialists, uneven fields made it difficult to work even with a 6-metre header on the combine harvester at harvest time. At the time of purchase, the enterprise’s yields were: wheat – 30 c/ha, barley – 28 c/ha, rapeseed – 18 c/ha. The enterprise also specialised in milk production (a 600-head dairy herd) and had 120 ha of an abandoned apple orchard. The enterprise’s tractor fleet numbered 58 units, with 77 people employed there.
Guests were told in detail not only about the new enterprise’s starting conditions, but also about the strategic development plan, under which Lukas Horsch is already developing and implementing a Controlled Traffic Farming (CTF) system for every field on the enterprise. Using specific software, routes – tasks – are developed for self-propelled machinery, so that the tractor, sprayer, combine, grain cart or other machine, sharing a single axle width (3 m), travels the field along the same set route (technological track lane) year after year.
Guests were shown the current state of fields that had been worked, levelled, sown and sprayed using Horsch machinery. Technology maps were also provided, and the logistics process was described in detail, covering the storage, delivery, loading of seed, fertiliser, spray mix, harvest transport, and so on. All these operations are carried out using Horsch’s new developments, which makes it possible to keep high-performance equipment running smoothly, achieve strong financial results, and, as a result, remain competitive on the market.
Representatives of Ukrainian agricultural companies got to see not just the results achieved using Horsch machinery, but also experimental models not yet in production, which are still being developed and trialled under the demanding production conditions of this particular enterprise.
It should be noted that the top managers of the companies listed above have extensive experience running agribusiness in countries such as the USA, Denmark, Scotland, Germany, Poland and Ukraine, creating a special professional atmosphere for exchanging agribusiness experience.
