Cereals 2014 takes place in June at Chrishall Grange, Nr Duxford in Cambridgeshire and according to its organisers it is the leading technical event for the UK arable industry with over 64ha of stands and live demonstrations including Crop Plots, Working Cultivations, Sprays and Sprayers, Post-Harvest Technology, Business Area, Potatoes and Renewables.
Organisers also say 500 leading suppliers come together to update nearly 26,000 visitors on the very latest products, ranging from seeds to sprayers, crop varieties to cultivation equipment, fertilisers to finance.
John Deere’s new mid-specification M-Series trailed sprayer range will be making its working debut at the event this year, in the Sprays & Sprayers demonstration arena.
John Deere says to help reduce spraying cost per hectare, its new M700 Series sprayers have been specially designed for farms growing up to 750ha of cereals, oilseed rape or row crops. M700 Series sprayers are available as standard versions with 2400, 3200 or 4000-litre tanks, or as ‘i-specification’ machines with 3200 or 4000-litre tank capacities. Equipped with a triple folding 30m boom, these sprayers match 6m seeders or drills.
New John Deere M740 trailed sprayer
The larger M900 Series sprayers have many of the same features as the top of the range R900i Series trailed machines, including high capacity filling performance using the PowrFill chemical inductor, the same choice of 5200 or 6200-litre tank capacities for maximum productivity, and durable steel booms from 24 to 40m.
Both the M700i and M900i sprayers are ISOBUS ready, so the machines can communicate with the tractor and enable ‘intelligent’ John Deere solutions. These include the Tank Fill Calculator, which helps the operator to calculate the correct amount of refill volumes required for each application, BoomTrac automatic boom height and tilt control and FieldDoc documentation software. M900i sprayers also offer a new in-cab nozzle control, allowing the operator to switch between spray nozzles on the move (see separate release).
To meet the increasing demand for satellite guidance systems, AutoTrac automatic tractor steering and GPS boom section control are available for use with both i and non-i versions of the M-Series sprayers. A new Implement Display 1100 has also been developed to control the sprayer in conjunction with the multi-function lever; on the non-ISOBUS machines, this can be replaced by a GreenStar 1800 display when using a StarFire receiver and for automatic boom section control.
New Holland
Cereals 2014 will also be the stage for the long-awaited UK debut of the new Varifeed 41-foot grain header for the New Holland CR combine harvester.
The header width of 41 feet (12.50 metres) was chosen because today many large farms utilise 36-metre tram lines in their fields. New Holland claims with a robust welded frame design, it adds even more capacity to one of the highest-output machines in the world.
The adjustment range for the knife in longitudinal direction is 575mm and adjustment is performed electro-hydraulically from the cab to suit all harvesting conditions. It is easily adapted to use with optional side knives for harvesting rapeseed.
The header is equipped with four wide Autofloat sensing pads that enable its height and lateral inclination to adjust automatically.
New Holland will also be exhibiting alongside it a range of machinery including the Basildon-built T7 and T6 tractors as well as a selection of hay, forage and material handling equipment.
The show will continue the official year-long celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Basildon Tractor Plant and it will represent another chance to see the special edition Golden Jubilee tractor up close.
New Holland Varifeed 41ft
The brand will be showcasing the advances of Precision Land Management (PLM) which has up to 32 orbiting satellites at its disposal to fix a machine’s location on the farm to guide operations down to a few centimetres.
Take, for example, someone without PLM seeding a field with a drill width of four metres and an overlap of 15-16cm – over 1,000 acres that works out as working an astonishing 40 extra acres.
With PLM, however, those small differences in time, expense and effort that mount up are instead squeezed down, making unnecessary labours increasingly a thing of the past.