Sandstone takes delivery of new Planter. 

With the planting area increasing on the farm and the fact that we only have one planter we had to look at either buying more small planters and tractors or possibly buying one big planter to match one of our larger tractors. The most cost-effective option was to purchase a planter for our Case MX 285 tractor. With 95% of our lands flat and with no contours we were also limited to a size that the tractor can pull.

This planter is a combination of an air seeder and a vacuum planter, i.e. air to regulate the fertilizer and vacuum to regulate the seed.

All the bearings used on the planter are normal over the counter bearings that we can get at any parts store, the same goes for the furrow opener discs and the fertilizer discs, thus making running costs low.

The manufacturer has also provided the following information on this impressive piece of machinery:

In 2004 the EQUALIZER became not only the first Wide Span planter frame to be commercially available to South African farmers but was designed and built in South Africa offering farmers, facing ever increasing input costs, the opportunity to improve their cost/ton ratios by using 12 and 18 row planters.

The Wide Span concept is synonymous with reduced crop establishment costs but should not be viewed in isolation of other field activity. To truly benefit from the advantages of wider planters other field support and crop handling facilities need to be changed to provide a WHOLE farm compatible mechanisation structure.

The benefits of going wide are numerous:

Improved timeliness of planting
Reduction in total machinery capital cost
One machine can replace two or three
Considerably more efficient field operations with less time "refilling" means more ha/day
Lower whole farm total Kw required
Reduced fuel costs/ha.