We’re taking the show on the road this week to Boone, Iowa, for a look at some of the cover crop equipment on display at the Farm Progress Show.
For this episode of Cover Crop Strategies, brought to you by Verdesian Life Sciences, we’ll hear from APV-America’s Cameron White, Yetter’s Andy Thompson, Unverferth’s Andy Unverferth and Mandako’s Mark Lussier. They’ll showcase their company’s products and talk about the latest trends in the cover crop world.
Videos from the conversations in this podcast can be found on the Cover Crop Strategies video page.
The Cover Crop Strategies podcast series is brought to you by Verdesian Life Sciences.
At Verdesian Life Sciences, we believe that supplying healthy water and soil for the next generation is just as important as supplying efficient nutrients for every crop farmers grow. For us, sustainability and profitability go hand in hand. That’s why we call ourselves The Nutrient Use Efficiency People. We have dedicated ourselves to providing prescriptive nutrient use efficiency solutions that improve plant uptake and reduce fertilizer losses, helping preserve the environment and make the most of your investment. Learn more at vlsci.com or talk to your ag retailer today about Verdesian products.
Full Transcript
Noah Newman:
Hello, and welcome to another edition of Cover Crop Strategies. I'm your host, Noah Newman. Thanks to our sponsor Verdesian Life Sciences. We are taking the show on the road this week to Boone, Iowa for a look at some of the cover crop equipment that was on display at the Farm Progress Show. We saw a lot of great stuff. We're going to visit with APV, Yetter, Unverferth, and Mandako. Also, a heads up, video from all these conversations can be found on covercropstrategies.com. All right, let's kick things off with APV America. Territory Manager Cameron White tells us how the relatively new company is making a name for itself and the cover crop world.
Cameron White:
Good evening. My name is Cameron White. I'm with APV America. We are a pneumatic air seeder company. Everything's based over in Europe, but we have a headquarters here in Pottsboro, Texas, started in about 2017. We have a variety of cover crop seeders, different sizes, anywhere from about three bushels of 45 bushels. This is our largest single tank capacity hopper that we have. This is a 45 bushel hopper. You can do anything from grass seed to clover, to a pea. All these can be done out of one hopper. We just have a different metering wheel that you can change, super user friendly, super versatile. We can do that for whatever type of farmer we're trying to go after, we have a solution for him.
Noah Newman:
Yeah. Who would you say is your ideal customer for APV?
Cameron White:
We have that beginner hobby farmer, all the way up to the veteran farmer. We really pride ourself in learning what that farmer is trying to accomplish and finding a solution for him to do that, whether it is a one fill 2000 pound hopper that can go on the back of his vertical tillage or a guy looking to plant food plots in the spring or fall. We really have that solution for everybody. It's just trying to figure out what that farmer is trying to accomplish.
Noah Newman:
Yeah. You were telling me that APV is a fairly new company, right?
Cameron White:
Yep. We started in the US in 2017. We were warehoused out of Colorado. Like everything else, COVID happened, we lost a lot of traction, but we're out here at Farm Progress, really trying to get in front of the consumers. That's really what we're trying to get after, build the brand. We're yellow, we're red, we really make an impression. We're just trying to get in front of as many people as possible.
Noah Newman:
We've just seen a boom in cover crop usage over the past decade. Do you feel that from your customers, that they're craving more options, when it comes to cover crop equipment?
Cameron White:
Yes. For us, it's been one of those things, we've really seen an increase in the past year in sales. There's more government subsidies coming out. NRCS, they want to plant cover crops, where you can't leave that soil bare. One thing we really pride ourself in is being environmental friendly. We want to take care of that soil, because it's taking care of us. If we can do that by introducing cover crops, it's a win-win for everybody.
Noah Newman:
Well, let's take a walk here, Cameron, and show off some of the other equipment here. I'll let you lead the way. Where do we want to go first here?
Cameron White:
Again, we really work with everybody. We do have smaller single disc spreaders from about a 40 pound capacity all the way up to a 100 pound capacity. These can go on the back of four wheelers, side by sides, your truck, whatever you're trying to accomplish. We do a lot of waterways with these, hard to reach areas, but we can get super accurate with our seeding on them.
Noah Newman:
Yeah. What feedback do you get from customers on these?
Cameron White:
We actually work with Chris Brackett, out of Illinois, who's a avid hunter, had his own TV show. He said it's the best food plot seeder he's ever used, and we weren't paying him. He just used a machine, gave us this honest feedback. We did get a lot of good feedback from that. People really enjoy it, comes with the controller, it can all be open and closed right from there, so you're not having to hop off your tractor or your four wheeler. You use a controller and can calibrate from right there. Then we go into our Grassland Seeders. This is our GP 300, our Grassland Pro Harrow, a grassland or even work ground, where you're not wanting to disturb that soil, it essentially acts as a no-till. You just have four rows of harrows that actually open up the soil, de-thatch, aerate.
Then you have your cover crop seeder, runs down your dispersion, then you have a cultipacker that packs everything in. We call this our Six in One Pass. A guy looking to cut down on his input cost, fuel, seed, he can use a machine like this and really accomplish what he is trying to do. Again, we have various sizes of our cover crop seeders. This is about a 20 bushel. Then we go to our Implement Carrier. This will actually hook between your tractor and your vertical tillage piece, so you're not having to mount a seeder on your vertical tillage. Three point mounted on this side, here, you'll have a draw bar hitch that hooks up to your vertical tillage piece, then your dispersion hoses run out there, and you just mount them on your vertical tillage. It can be quick disconnect and super simple, if they're trying to use multiple vertical tillage pieces. Another smaller cover crop seeder here, then we get into another Grassland Harrow, but this one was developed to go on a skid steer.
A guy looking to do erosion control work, food plots, landscape seeding, this is a great solution, do every type of seed out of that one hopper, and you're not disturbing the soil too much or anything like that, and you get great seed to soil contact with that cultipacker.
Noah Newman:
That seems like it's a key to establishing cover crop, is the seed to soil contact, right?
Cameron White:
Exactly. A lot of guys fly on cover crops, or they're broadcasting them, but you lack that one thing, and that's seed to soil contact. We're not really trying to disturb that soil, we just want to lay it right on top. Cultipacker does its work, makes sure it presses everything down, then you get good germination out of that.
Noah Newman:
It sounds like you were talking about earlier, you have equipment for, if there's a cover cropper in Texas or a cover cropper on the East Coast, it seems like you have a wide arsenal of equipment that could fit specific operations.
Cameron White:
Exactly. The guy that may have a six foot vertical tillage piece that he's looking to get into cover crops, we have a PS 200, a smaller capacity hopper. Then, where we started, we have the PS 1600, which is for that guy looking to cover a lot of acreage very quickly, we do that. Here is just our cultipacker with a seeder on it, so the guy that's looking to get away without disturbing the soil at all, now he is just putting the seed right before that cultipacker, and again, good seed to soil contact. APV also offers a wide variety of products. We're really known for our seeders, but we even get into the organic stuff for the guy that's looking to get away from chemicals, herbicides, pesticides. We have organic operations with our timed weeders. A farmer can run this between his row crops and actually pull out or cover up about 95% of the weed material there.
Chemical prices are through the roof, gas prices are through the roof, so with one pass you're getting rid of about 95% of your weed material there, and it's laying on top of the soil, which we know is good, because you're introducing that organic material right back into the soil. It helps with nitrogen fixation and everything like that. This is a great tool to get away from a lot of those higher input cost of fertilizer or chemicals.
Noah Newman:
Got you. Well, a little bit more about yourself. How did you get started with APV? Do you come from a farming background?
Cameron White:
I did grow up on a farm, went to college, got my bachelor's in animal science, but it was one of those things that vet or pharmaceutical jobs weren't available, so I wanted to do the next best thing, and if I'm raising cattle, I've got to have a good grass stand. If I'm raising pigs, I've got to have good corn or soybeans. It came into the field of now, how do I get this material out there? APV, actually OEMs for a lot of well known companies over in Europe, Pottinger, Kuhn, Amazon. All these other companies are using us to really get that product out there efficiently. With APV, it was a great fit for what we were trying to do, really try and give back to the environment, be self-sustaining and all these type things. I really clicked with their message, their attitude. It was a great fit. Going back to that OEM, I worked for Pottinger for a little bit, here in the US, and we OEM for them over in Europe. I knew about APV, it was a good fit, and it's a great team.
We're a small team. We only have three employees here in the States, but we're continuously growing. We have a great showing here at the Farm Progress Show this year, and we hope to see you at a next show.
Noah Newman:
Yeah, it seems like you're just scratching the surface at APV. Where do you see the cover crop equipment business going in the next five to 10 years?
Cameron White:
People are going to have to start planting cover crops. We only have a certain amount of soil on the earth. There's no more coming in. If we can protect that for longer, again, governments are giving grants, stipulations to go out and have these farmers plant cover crops. Once that becomes a well practiced thing, I see this business completely getting away from a lot of chemicals, pesticides, and herbicides, doing it in a more natural way with cover crops. I think in the next five to 10 years, we'll see a total increase in cover crop planting. I mean, if you look back five years ago, we've already made strides and bounds from where we were then. It's becoming a practice that everybody's using. I see it being a big application.
Noah Newman:
Back to the action in just a bit. Right now, let's take some time to thank our sponsor, Verdesian Life Sciences. At Verdesian Life Sciences, we believe that supplying healthy water and soil for the next generation is just as important as supplying efficient nutrients for every crop farmers grow. For us, sustainability and profitability go hand in hand. That's why we call ourselves The Nutrient Use Efficiency People. We have dedicated ourselves to providing prescriptive nutrient use efficiency solutions that improve plant uptake and reduce fertilizer losses, helping preserve the environment and make the most of your investment. Learn more at vlsci.com. Up next, we pay a visit to Yetter Farm Equipment Regional Sales Manager, Andy Thompson, standing by with a look at the Cover Crop Devastator. Yeah, Andy. We're standing here with the Cover Crop Devastator, probably of interest to a lot of our readers and listeners. Tell us a little bit about it.
Andy Thompson:
Yeah. The 5500 Cover Crop Devastator, really, how this started for us is we make the 5000 Series Devastator to go on corn heads, and we actually had farmers starting to buy those and put them on their planter, then they were actually using them to roll the cover crops. That's what opened it up for us, then we started visiting that a little bit more and gaining more experience with that. We've made a few changes to this to make it specific for the cover crops' rollers. The main significance there is we actually have this chevron pattern of this flat bar, the crimper, that goes all the way across the rollers. That's a little bit different than what we do on the corn heads, otherwise it's all the same parts. Really, what we're doing with this is we're making them in three different sizes, a 48 inch roller, a 60 inch roller, and a 90 inch roller.
We're basically customizing this, and if somebody says, "I have a 20 foot machine, or 30, or a 40 foot machine," we're able to go through, do the math on that and decide, "Okay, we're going to need this many 60s and this many 90s," or whatever. We're going to bolt them on there in this form or this fashion. We're still learning on that a little bit and trying to decide the different brackets we need to be able to do that. A lot of calls that we get are people that want to put them on planters, and certainly we understand that, but we've seen with rolling cover crops over the last handful of years that we're learning a little bit more that maybe rolling and planting may not always be the best time for both applications. Really, instead of putting them on the planters, we're actually doing more of them, where we're retrofitting them, putting them onto existing tool bars, whether that be three point tool bars, old cultivator, row crop cultivators, whatever, or on some planter tool bars, where we actually take the row units off and we just utilize the toolbar.
We're trying to make them more applicable to be able to do that with, but the significance of the Cover Crop Devastator from Yetter is actually the size of it. If we take a look at this, what we actually see, this will, actually, spring back when we're in the field. A lot of times we actually see this bar that actually starts to press the cover crop over. Once we start to press that over a little bit, then the roller itself, the chevron pattern comes along, then that's actually what's doing the crimping action. We have gotten a fantastic kill on cereal rye and even on some other cover crops as well. Just the size of this and the action that we get from that has actually been a blessing in disguise and is working very, very well.
Noah Newman:
From one Andy to another, the podcast rolls on with Andy Unverferth, who tells us all about the Unverferth Cover Crop Seeder. Take it away, Andy.
Andy Unverferth:
Hi, this is Andy Unverferth, Marketing Manager for Unverferth Manufacturing. We are featuring our Unverferth Cover Crop Seeder. Farmers gave us a lot of feedback with planting cover crops, where using a drill was very expensive and time consuming, and spreading along with a spreader, then working into the soil also required a second pass through the field, didn't always create the nice even stand that you'd like to see out of your cover crops, so we introduced the Cover Crop Seeder that can be mounted on our Unverferth Rolling Harrow Soil Conditioner. Essentially, what this tool is doing is it's using an air delivery system to deliver cover crop seed out to deflectors that spreads the cover crop seed evenly across the soil. Then, our rolling baskets or our basket drum combination of the Rolling Harrow can work that seed into the soil to create a nice even stand of cover crops. As guys look more into soil health and ways to prevent erosion and all the benefits that cover crops can provide, we've seen a lot more demand for more efficient ways to plant the crop.
How do we get the cover crop seed into the ground maybe quicker, a little less expensive? That's where the Cover Crop Seeder is a really good fit for that market.
Noah Newman:
We've got one more stop on our tour of the Farm Progress Show. Let's swing by the Mandako booth. Mark Lussier gives us the scoop on the Mandako Cover Crop Crimper. Here's Mark.
Mark Lussier:
Hey, good morning everyone. Mark Lussier here with Mandako. I'd like to talk to you a little bit about our Cover Crop Crimper here. We started Cover Crop Crimper about five years ago as cover crops become more of a thing. This is our Inline version. It's 20' wide. This hitch folds around, so it's under 8' wide going around the road, so it's a narrow transport option. We use a 36 inch diameter drum, half inch thick with a three eighths thick paddle on it in the chevron design. This machine is heavy. It's about 530 pounds a foot. We build it to the same specs as our 3-Plex and 5-Plex Landrollers, four by eight tubing, three eighths thick gusseted corners. Lots of places, it's gusseted. It's well built, three inch shaft, three inch bearing. We don't neck it down at the bearing, because there's a support plate about 18 inches inside. You can't see it, but it's about 18 inches inside there, so it's not a stub shaft. We build these Cover Crop Crimpers anywhere from six feet to 42 feet. 42 feet would be in our three section model.
Check out our website mandako.com for more information.
Noah Newman:
All right, that'll wrap things up. Thanks once again to Mark Lussier, Cameron White, Andy Thompson, and Andy Unverferth for joining us on this Farm Progress Show Edition of Cover Crop Strategies. Also, thank our sponsor for Verdesian Life Sciences. Head to vlsci.com for everything they have to offer, and thanks to you, as always, for listening. I'm Noah Newman, and until next time, remember, for all things cover crops and all the videos from the conversations you just heard in this podcast, head to covercropstrategies.com.
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