This thread is to document my mechanised farming experience.

We just received most of the equipment for the farming. Hopefully this dry season will give us opportunity to put them to work.

Feel free to give us any advice you think can help us.

First to discuss is the land. We have done farms previously in Delta state, Edo State and Oyo state.

The verdict is that Delta state is better for us due to the longer length of the farming season. So we have settled for Delta state and leased 100 acres for a start. We can get thousands of acres if we want, but we have started with 100 acres.

Tractors, they are great inventions, there is nothing like mechanised crop farming without tractors.

We got two tractors. One Ford TW-10 tractor and one MF 3670 tractor.

The Ford is old model tractor so it should be easier for the local mechanics to repair while the MF 3670 is newer model with such nice things as automatic gear system, air conditioned cabin, nice electronics controls and even a mini fridge and fm radio.

I like the MF tractor, but electronics and Nigeria technicians are parallel lines. So this is one are I think we will be needing support. How to get a reliable maintenance team for the MF3670 tractor

Available farmlands as far as the eyes can see and lots of rain

More on the farm lands

Following boss man... Hope we get to see pictures of the tractors soon

Here....

I wish i had access to tractors.

Makes farming so much more attractive and cheaper

Nice moves. More details please. Cheers.

I'm all ears sir

ogb5:
More on the farm lands

Which part of Delta state?

Ajusshi:
Which part of Delta state?

Delta central

Today was eventful. We tried several ways of clearing the land.

First let me share some pictures

waiting for the all important and perhaps inspiring pictures

Attaching the pictures has been difficult.
I will keep trying

Nice thread.....following !

Very nice

Ford TW10 Tractor

More

At long last I have found a way of attaching the pictures easily. I found that the pictures are over 4mb in size and NL simply refuses to attach pictures that are over 4mb in size.

I now send them to myself through WhatsApp for size compression before loading on NL

Like I said previously, the above Ford TW10 Tractor is 170 hp, so I expect some real power from it. However it is 2 wheel drive, which might turn out to be a downside.

I have seen the front wheels go up in the air when testing one of Plough, which means that we might probably get some weights to put in the front.

This is the lovely MF3670.
It has a rating of 121 hp and is 4 wheel drive with lots of electronic controls.

I will probably say a few things about the implements since a tractor without the implement is of little use

Reversible disc Plough .
We bought 2 of these to ensure that both tractors can Plough simultaneously

40ft boom sprayer

The boom sprayer will be used for application of herbicides and pesticides.

We should be able to cover 100 acres easily with it in one day.
To ensure uniform coverage with herbicides and pesticides, we will apply chemicals in 3 runs to each place.
That means we will apply 1/3 of the required chemical concentration per pass on the sprayer over any given area and make 3 passes through each area, each pass facing different directions.

This multiple pass procedure ensures that the likelihood of missing an area is minimised during herbicides and pesticide applications.

With a boom sprayer, you can easily do multiple spray runs over the same plot, it will be to expensive and cumbersome to do multiple spraying of a plot with a manual knapsack sprayer.

Disc Harrow

We hope to level the ploughed land with the disc Harrow. This came with tyres so it can be transported without lifting it with the tractor.

A few days ago we made a trial of running the Harrow across the weed so as to level off the weed. Thereafter we will spray contact herbicides on the weed and the burn the thrash after thee has died. This should have been an alternative to bush clearing.

At the end it was better to plough the land with the disc plough. This ensured that the weed are ploughed into the soil improving the soil organic matter content and saving on the cost of land preparation

8-row corn and soybean planter

This is what I call being serious, op where's ur location? Lemme know if would consider coming for excursion.

SnowJay92:
This is what I call being serious, op where's ur location? Lemme know if would consider coming for excursion.

This farm is in Delta state close to Sapele.
We have not yet fixed the excursion fee, once excursion fee is fixed you will be contacted.

The corner and soybean planter has a separate compartment for fertiliser, so it plants the corn and applies fertiliser simultaneously.

It plants 8 rows simultaneously.
We intend to plant the corn at a crop density of 30,000 stands per hectare. I think we should be fine with that.

On weed management of the corn farm, we intend to apply the start clean and stay clean principle, that means all weed will be killed from the plot before planting and pre-emergent herbicides will be used to prevent weed from growing after planting the corn.

Doing this will require timely and fast application of herbicides since most weed seeds germinate in a couple of days. That is where the boom sprayer and 8-row corn planter will come in handy.

In fact we can use one tractor to plant with the planter and use the other tractor to follow the planter with the boom sprayer and apply the pre-emergent herbicide in the same day of the planting.

We will try this and see how it goes.

Has anyone planted corn at 30,000 stands per hectare previously? and what is your experience.

I have tried it before but we had to thin in down when we could not get fertiliser to buy and apply.

Those were the days of fertiliser subsidy and fertiliser hoarding