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SW Michigan | Jim - 2/16/2016 09:59 You must be dreaming according to the "data" posted above... ;-) Thank you for sharing your experience. Jim at Dawn
Huh. Never been publicly belittled by a factory rep before. Interesting sales technique. Anyway, let me see if I can better explain my above post.
I raise seed corn. Our actual yields range from 50-135 bpa. My pay is based on a formula that takes into account how my fields perform compared to other fields that grow the same variety. There is no way that I'm going to shut off my downforce system to do a field trial, when all other research data indicates that I would experience a yield loss to do so. Last year there was a variety that had a 0.6 bpa difference between the first place field and the fourth, so every little factor matters.
I did say that others mentioned how even our stuff looked. These folks were the agronomists that walked my fields almost every day, as well as the fields I was competing with. When they mention to me how nice and even our fields came up, I know that's relative to my competition. And at the end of the year when I end up with three top yielding fields (one of which was the overall top BPA for the local production plant), I'd say things went right from the start.
My grower ranking made a nice jump, and the premiums I received for having those top fields paid for a good chunk of the DeltaForce upgrade. With all the factors involved it is impossible for me to attribute all the success to the new downforce setup; however it was the one big change made that affected every field. So, when I posted that I can't say for sure the ROI, I mean I can't put it in to the same BPA equivalent that would be relevant to the majority of the viewers here. For me, it seems like it was a good move.
Functionally, I have double-disk 2x2 fertilizer openers on each row unit. They pull deeper into sandy ground and push up in the harder stuff. Geographically, I'm farming on the edge of a glacial deposit. One field in particular is half sand and flat, and the other half is a hill with high clay content and rocks. On that field, DeltaForce applied a range of 200+ lbs of down force to 150 lbs of lift. According to you, I would have had to cobble together a spring system to get yours or any other single-acting system to perform like that. Why would I want to buy a system that does half the job? And if the result of a single-acting system is a more precise actuator, what's the point if the actuators don't have input (scale) to react to? Seems like a contradiction. The extra precision is a waste if there's nothing controlling it. I'm sure there's a market for your system (CCS setups, harder ground, lower price point), but for my application the value wasn't there.
Plus I now have the backbone in place to easily add anything else I "dream" of, like electric drives, precision fertilizer placement, or belt seed delivery tubes...
Edited by LLF 2/17/2016 09:44
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precision planting vs. Ag Leader hydraulic downforce
