Queensland Cotton growers report promising results in John Deere ExactRate trial

With 8000ha of farmland spread across six main properties and several smaller farms, the McVeigh family know all about managing overlapping deadlines for planting and harvesting.

Streamlined machine management is a critical part of this, and the family — who grow a range of crops in Queensland’s Western Downs Region — have reported positive results after trialing John Deere’s ExactRate liquid fertilizer system for cotton planting.

Crop production manager Alexander Stephens said the trial, carried out last year, supported the business’ quest to refine every aspect of the operation to minimise input use and optimise efficiency.

“We currently use granular fertiliser but our summer crop planting generally occurs at around the same time as the wheat harvest, and we don’t want to tie up grain trucks, augers and bins to cart fertiliser when we need them to shift grain,” Mr Stephens said.

“Our service providers, RDO and John Deere, offered us the use of a 1725C MaxEmerge planter equipped with an ExactRate system.”

Mr Stephens — who oversees the family’s programs for cotton, corn, sorghum, mung beans, wheat, barley and chickpeas — said a small truck and transfer pump were used for the trials, which proved “a lot less intensive”.

The team trialed a John Deere 1725C MaxEmerge 5e Row Unit, pulled by an 8R 310 tractor with front-mounted tank.

The MaxEmerge 5e — the “e” standing for electric drive — was designed to improve population accuracy and ensure uniform seed spacing.

Mr Stephens said the layout of the Gen 4 Display was familiar to the team of drivers, and the MaxEmerge planter could be swapped between the McVeigh Partnership’s fleet of John Deere tractors with ease.

“We have multiple operators working for the company and the farms are spread out, so there’s never usually the same driver on one machine,” he said.

“The simple layout of the Gen 4 Display on the planter made it very easy to navigate and adjust ExactRate for application rates and refill.

“To be able to swap the implement between machines is another big thing — we don’t have to have a tractor specifically set up for that planter.

“Provided we have access to a liquid fertiliser tank on the tractor, we can hook it up anywhere.”

The team applied FlowPhos 15 liquid starter with cotton seed at 35L/ha and set up trials of zero rate, normal rate and double rates, to see if they could detect any emergence benefits over their usual granular fertiliser application of 30kg/ha of Starter Z.

Mr Stephens said the trials were easy to set up.

“Our main goal was to see if we could find difference with the use of the liquid fertiliser, so the zero rate and normal rate is where we are really hoping to see some results,” he said.

“To be honest, 1.5 would have been more appropriate than the double rate and that will be something we consider in the future.”

“We focused on using fields that were very consistent with the irrigation and soil type and making sure we had enough area to replicate the tests.

“Having John Deere Operations Center accumulating the data produced from planting will take the headache out of keeping track of the trial plots and make it easier to compare once crops are harvested.”

Several areas of the trial were affected by a major hail storm in early November, followed by heavy rain, meaning results could be inconsistent.

But Mr Stephens is hoping a second trial will “come through unscathed”, with the team ready to take notes on growth between different plots throughout the growing season.