An air seeder scratches a channel in the dirt and a bunch of seeds are blown down tubes into them, some clumped together, some spaced far apart. The Grains Research and Development Corporation says the success rate of emergence using that methodology varies from 50-85 per cent but the trade-off is seeders can be configured for narrow rows which equates to more yield per hectare.

Good enough to turn a dollar, given the relative low cost of seeds and equipment to achieve that result. But given a choice, a farmer would want the successful emergence figure to be north of 90 per cent – and seed singulation with a high-speed precision planter makes that possible.

How seed singulation works

The way it works is that seeds from the main seed cart are blown into smaller seed boxes which sit above the soil opener and have a metering system inside. The metering system is typically a rotating disc plate with holes into which seeds are held (usually by vacuum) until they pass over a delivery tube. The vacuum is blocked at that point and the seed falls down the delivery tube into the furrow at a set distance from the previous seed.

It’s a system already common in maize, sorghum, cotton and sunflower crops, and there have been excellent results in canola. The next frontier is making it work in the narrow rows of winter grain crops, and advancements in sensor technology are starting to make it more viable.

US seed singulation specialist Precision Planting has been at the cutting edge of the technology for many years, using advancements in sensor technology to measure soil moisture, temperature, electrical conductivity and organic residue with a light spectrum.

It’s all done on the fly so that when coupled with adjustable depth controls, the seeder can plant at the exact depth for maximum yield potential. It comes at a cost and in summer crops, where rows can be much wider, yield gains are more apparent.

“The cost benefits are clearly there in the wider summer crop rows, but it would take longer to recover the cost of investment in winter crops,” says Anthony Martin, who has been experimenting with seed singulation in winter crops at Mullaley near Gunnedah.

The simple reason for the added cost is the number and physical width of the seed metering boxes which sit above each soil opener. Each unit comes at a premium and trying to squeeze them into the sub-40cm row spacing idyll for a winter crop is less than practical.

But Anthony has been giving it a go, working with Precision Planting to trial a variety of winter crops on his minimum till, controlled traffic farming operation.

“We want to move to singulation in all grains and have been planting winter crops of legumes, cereals and canola,” he explains. “We’ve been using the planter at 50cm row spacing but it’s a bit on the wide side for cereals. It just needs to be a bit narrower.

“Yield was still good at 50cm but that was offset by the cost of weed suppression and surface protection from the sun.”

Wider channels between the rows means less competition for weeds while the sun dries out the soil because it’s not covered by the canopy. Anthony is confident that if these issues could be solved, the yield benefits would outweigh the costs.

“The system we used singulated bread wheat perfectly,” he says, “but it wasn’t quite as good on durham, while in canola we got a bit of static electricity on the disc plate which is solvable with an additive.”

“Once we solved the static electricity issue, we go very high singulation in canola – around 95 per cent of single seeds. Mung beans and chickpeas got high 90s, while in sorghum we got as high as 99 per cent.”

So why is seed singulation so important?

David McGavin from Precision Seeding Solutions says it’s all about giving each seed – some of which are getting more expensive as hybridisation becomes more of a reality – the best chance to grow.

“There’s a huge difference between a precise machine and one that does an okay job,” he explains. “We’re talking another third because if you were to look closely at a row of air-seeded grain, you’d get rid of 30 per cent of it.

“When two seeds are dropped into the row together, there is no benefit. They are competing for moisture and nutrients which handicaps their ability to get a good start, so you end up with two spindly plants which affects grain size.”

He admits the cost of going to narrow-row spacing gets in the way of realistic adoption of seed singulation in winter crops, but still believes there are gains to be made.

“Yield benefits can be anywhere from 2-5 per cent which is still big dollar returns depending on area,” he says. “One customer planted 137ha in sorghum and achieved half-a-bale yield difference, which is about 3 per cent increase.”

Perhaps not the figures to start a revolution, but as communication technology in machines advances, David says it will become more viable.

“The smartest thing we’re doing is taking moisture and soil type readings and from that, determining the depth the seed needs to be to optimise seed germination,” he says. “With hydraulic depth control, the system will automatically adjust depth on the fly.”

Martin says he’d love to have the money to invest in that level of technology, but even without it believes there are still benefits in singulating winter crops.

“It’s a tool for managing crop competition, helping reduce disease caused by seed clumping, and with canola, reducing seed cost,” he says. “Seed producers and bulk grain producers might get the most out of the investment, but we’ll keep an eye on the technology as it advances.

“I’ve seen trials in the US where machines are planting corn seeds up the right way so they don’t come up late and with the right orientation to the row so the leaves grow 90 degrees to the direction of the row for the best light inception. That’s pretty amazing.”

The Deere vs AGCO heavyweight bout

An indication that precision planting with seed singulation and delivery systems is expected to become widely used by row-crop farmers is the legal intervention which saved it from becoming monopolised in the ag marketplace.

In 2017, the US Department of Justice stepped to block John Deere’s bid to purchase the Precision Planting company. Deere already had 44 per cent of the high-speed singulation market with its seeders, and because Precision Planting had a 42 per cent share of the market, the DoJ reckoned that was just a bit too greedy because “high-speed precision planting technology is expected to become the industry standard in the coming years”.

This gifted Precision Planting to rival global giant AGCO which then found itself in a well-publicised patent punch-up with Deere over similarities between the two precision planting systems.

When you consider (according to Goldman Sachs in 2016) there’s a potential 70 per cent improvement in farm yields by 2050 and $240 billion to be made in ag tech with this kind of technology, you can understand why it is a hotly contested space.

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The unique climate and demands faced by Australian farmers have seen the birth of Aussie farm inventions that not only solved problems here but went on to be adopted worldwide. It’s a rich heritage which has yielded dozens of technical breakthroughs, but we’ve narrowed them down to a showcase of the inventions that made the most impact on farmers here and overseas.

Headlie’s Header Harvester

Immortalised in bronze at Henty, Headlie Taylor is recognised as the inventor who revolutionised grain harvesting with his Aussie farm invention. While there were already machines capable of stripping grain from standing wheat, Taylor’s design enabled farmers to harvest crops flattened by storms. His idea was to lift the damaged wheat with a long-fingered comb fitted with reciprocating knives, which would cut the stalks and feed the wheat up an elevator to a thresher. It’s a method replicated in nearly all modern combine harvesters. Three of his new machines were made under licence in 1915, starting a boom which has seen Headlie recognised as Australia’s greatest ag machinery revolutionary.

Ridley Stripper

Before Headlie’s Header Harvester, Australian farmers had been stripping grain from wheat stalks from the mid-19th century on. The stripper harvester was invented by John Ridley, an English immigrant who farmed wheat in South Australia after arriving in 1839. He developed a machine pushed by two horses through a crop, stripping the grain and collecting it in a hopper. Instantly popular, thanks to a lack of labour in the state at the time and the fact it kept the crop dry so export quality was high, the Ridley Stripper earned its inventor a good income. But some historians credit its inventor as John Wrathall Bull, even though it’s beyond dispute that Ridley was the first to put it to work.

Sunshine Harvester

Hugh Victor McKay sits between Ridley and Taylor in the combine harvester development timeline as having successfully invented a machine capable of harvesting, threshing and winnowing wheat. While working on his family farm, the boy from Drummartin (he was 19 at the time) read about combine harvesters being developed in the US. He put some ideas together and built what become known as the Sunshine Harvester in 1885 – an Aussie farm invention that changed the way things were done. He wasn’t the only one. James Morrow came out with the same idea that year and won a government prize for it, but McKay had better business sense and his machine went on to be a commercial success.

Wolseley Shearing Machine

Sheep stations were frantic hubs of activity at shearing time with up to 20 men cutting the wool from the backs of 50,000 sheep with hand shears. It was arduous work and not much fun for the sheep, who were routinely stabbed and sliced with the razor-sharp, scissor-like shears. NSW farmer Frederick Wolseley came to the rescue with the first ever mechanical shearing machine, which was very much like the hair clippers of today, with knives above a comb moving side-to-side to cut the wool. Power was originally generated by a horse gin connected to a belt and pulley which rotated a shaft that ran the length of the shearing shed. A wheel at each shearing bay drove a length of sheep gut at 1600rpm within a leather pipe which ran to the shears. It totally revolutionised shearing, allowing for much better-quality fleeces shorn from the backs of much happier sheep by shearers who could mow through more than ever before.

Gyral Air Seeder

A particularly wet 1956 season in Dalby, Queensland prompted broad-acre farmer Albert Fuss to try something new to get seed in the ground. At the ripe old age of 68, Fuss sought a solution to handling the compacted soil and trash which the combine drills of the time were struggling with. His son Roy later said, “My father came up with a lightweight air seeder which could be mounted on to a chisel plough, plus it had the added bonus of handling all types of cereals.” Immediately seeing the potential of this new Aussie invention, the family applied for a patent that year, making the Gyral the first commercial broad-acre air seeder in the world. The name came from the gyroscopic action of the spinner at the bottom of the seed hopper. The spinner would blow the seed down a hose to the furrow just behind the tyne which tore through the hard ground. Such was its success that the family went into the engineering business and Gyral air seeders are still produced today.

Stump-Jump Plough

The expression “tough as a Mallee root” may well have been coined by farmers trying to get a plough through ground cleared of the stubby eucalypts in Victoria, South Australia and southern NSW in the mid-19th century. The roots left in the ground were gnarly, rock-hard and difficult to budge, and the furrow ploughs of the time did not enjoy unexpected encounters with them. Money was offered to anyone who could come up with an effective way to get rid of the stumps but that had limited results. Richard Bowyer Smith thought outside the square and in 1876 developed a plough capable of skipping over the stumps then re-engaging the ground. Hinged ploughshares (the part behind the chisel at the tip of the plough blade) rode over the stump and were then driven back into the ground with weights. Smith’s Aussie farm invention revolutionised crop farming in rough ground and is still recognised as one of the most important agricultural breakthroughs of all time.

Harrington Seed Destructor

Dealing with weeds is a $3.23 billion headache for Australian broadacre farmers because the herbicides used to control them are expensive and lose their effectiveness over time. Numerous alternatives to chemical treatment have been trialled over the decades, but a Western Australia farmer created a method which is gathering international interest. Ray Harrington created a way of crushing weed seeds as they exit the combine harvester, rendering 95 per cent of them incapable of germinating. The seeds are in the chaff which is usually blown out the back of the harvester leaving a trail of potential new weeds. Harrington’s invention is a cage mill with rotating metal blades which smash the seeds as they are pushed through with the chaff. Originally the Harrington Seed Destructor, as it was dramatically named, was a cart towed behind the harvester, but it has since been redesigned to mount on the machine. It’s getting interest from the US and Canada for its potential to save farmers millions.

Worthy mentions

The Ute: Ford created the coupe utility (ute) in 1934 in response to a letter from a Geelong farmer’s wife who wanted a vehicle to take her “to church on Sundays and pigs to market on Mondays”. It went on to become an iconic Australia-centric vehicle which has evolved into the big dual-cab utes on the roads today.

Koerstz Wool Press: Developed by Christian Koerstz, a Danish inventor who settled in Australia in the late 19th century, the wool press did the work of several farm labourers who would stomp the 16 fleeces required to make a bale. The press had a long lever that would squash the fleeces into an even and well-presented bale.

Furphy Water Cart: Built in the 1880s, the Furphy watercart was a steel and cast-iron tank laid on its side and mounted to a cart to deliver water to farmers and later soldiers in WWI. The cast-iron ends of the tanks are now very collectable, and the term “furphy”, which means a tall story, is said to derive from the exaggerated tales told by the cart’s drivers as they travelled from place to place.

60-foot Header Front: In 2014, Queensland header front maker MidWest Fabrication put the first commercially available 60-foot wide draper platform front on the market. Used mostly by harvest contractors, the front is 15 feet wider than the most common front on the market and is designed to maximise a header’s capacity to get crop off the paddock fast.

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