Damate switches to differential fertilizers application

14.04.2020
Turkey production

Damate Group, the largest producer of turkey meat in Russia, continues to introduce modern precision farming technologies in crop production. In 2020, the company switches to the differential application of mineral and liquid nitrogen fertilizers.

Damate specialists have planned fertilizing in a differentiated way on an area of ​​more than 12 thousand hectares in fields with winter and spring wheat in the Narovchat, Nizhnelomov, Vadinsk, Spassk, Kolyshley and Mokshansk districts of Penza region. The work will be carried out in optimal agronomic terms and completed in the first half of June.

The inaugural project on differential fertilizers application, previously implemented by Damate in 2019 in the Kolyshley district, has shown its effectiveness. The yield increase on spring wheat crops amounted up to 20%. According to the calculations of the specialists of Damate Group, scaling up the new technology to all fields of the company will reduce the cost of product unit, increase the return on each square meter of land, and reduce the environmental burden globally.

Precision farming technology is an advanced crop productivity management system based on a combination of satellite and computer technologies. One of the features of precision farming is the application of fertilizers in a differentiated way instead of the previously used classical approach.

The main goal of differentiated application is to level crop yields. Specialists of Damate will monitor the fields based on the analysis of satellite images, which helps to assess the condition of the fields and plants at any point. As a result of aerial surveys, special maps will be compiled with an analysis of the landscape, the presence or absence of vegetation in the study area. On the basis of the cards received, technical specifications will be generated for sprayers and spreaders for differentiated fertilizer application.

In the classical technology of crop cultivation, agronomists often encounter a strong thinning or poor seedlings in individual sections of the fields. One of the reasons for this is the uneven distribution of trace elements in the soil over the field area. With the traditional application method, the situation only worsens: some parts of the field have excess fertilizers; the others have nutrient deficiency. The result is small yields and overspending of mineral fertilizers.

It should be reminded, that crop production is one of the important activities of Damate. The land bank of the company is 43.6 thousand hectares in Penza region. Here, Damate implements a project for growing and processing of turkey with a capacity of up 155 thousand tons of products per year. Today, the company provides a growing poultry stock with high-quality feed of its own production.