Saskatchewan, Canada
November 27, 2014
Brooks White, shown here with his family and farm staff, says there was no yield difference between corn planted on his farm with the new SeedMaster corn meter, and corn planted with a neighbour’s corn planter last year.
As SeedMaster unveils its new corn meter now available as an option on 2015 seeding systems, the new technology is proving to offer major advantages to farmers who are already using it to plant silage and grain corn.
‘No Yield Difference’
“We saw no yield difference between the 700 acres of grain corn we planted with our SeedMaster and the new corn meter, versus the 160 acres we planted with a neighbour’s corn planter last year,” says Brooks White, a Master Seeders Network member who has tested the new corn meter for two years on his farm near Pierson, Man.
“As we’ve refined the corn meter design – striving to achieve the same near-singulation precision of our UltraPro Canola Meter – we’ve invited Master Seeders Network members like Brooks to test the technology and provide us with feedback,” explains Owen Kinch, SeedMaster Field Research Manager.
Wet conditions this spring limited White to seeding only 250 acres with the corn meter. While the crop looks good, it was too early to determine yields at the time of publication. “The SeedMaster does a great job of seed placement and depth control,” says White. And although the in-row spacing between plants is “not quite as uniform as a corn planter, it’s pretty good and I plan to keep using it,” he says, especially considering there was no yield difference and it eliminates the need to buy a corn planter
One-Pass Fertilizer
Sol Stahl, another MasteWhile most corn acres grown on the Prairies are for silage, there is definitely strong interest in grain corn, says Ken Coles of Farming Smarter, a non-profit, producer-led, research organization in Southern Alberta. “Seed companies are investing heavily in lower heat unit varieties because they see tremendous potential for grain corn in Western Canada,” says Coles. “With clubroot issues in canola and lower commodity prices, growers want to try something different, and corn is getting lots of attention.”
A Master Seeders Network member, he had been poised to buy a new corn planter for his 400 acres of silage corn before hearing about the SeedMaster corn meter. “We tried the corn meter this year and I’m very pleased. The plants all came up nice and even,” says Stahl, the Farm Boss at Spring Water Colony near Biggar, Sask. “We can now seed any crop with the SeedMaster, and apply all our fertilizer in one pass. With a corn planter we have to work our ground three times to blacken it up, apply fertilizer, and smooth it out.”
Whether they’re growing silage or grain corn, SeedMaster’s new corn meter offers growers many benefits, says Kinch. “The corn meter uses our on-frame, Individual Row Metering – so the seed’s not damaged by going through towers and hitting manifolds,” he explains. “And seed spacing down the row is more uniform than any other seeder.”
“It adds up to big savings – minimizing the investment required to experiment with new crops like grain corn and giving growers a one-pass system that can successfully seed all crops,” says Kinch.
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