South Africa’s population is fast increasing and at the same time increasing the demand for food. This increases the pressure on researchers and farmers to produce higher volumes of food in a shorter time. Farmers are disturbed that crop production is not viable due to high production costs. Therefore, the major issue with farmers is viability. The focus in crop production from a mechanisation perspective is to reduce machinery input costs.
The Agricultural Research Council, Natural Resources and Engineering (ARC-NRE) has focused its research efforts on specific areas, including conservation agriculture research and development of a ripper planter technology for smallholder farmers and emerging commercial farmers in South Africa.
The ARC has in years continued to support smallholder and procured 15 two-row CA planters and 15 twelve-metre boom sprayers for distribution to emerging CA farmers in 14 sites in four provinces of South Africa (Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Eastern Cape and Kwa-Zulu Natal). Farmer training was conducted annually just before the planting season in 14 sites in the four provinces and North West to equip farmers with adequate skills to calibrate, operate and maintain these implements to enable them to derive maximum service to support their farming operations, to save costs and conserve scarce resources.
The vast majority of arable soils in South Africa have been exposed to many years of conventional soil tillage methods that have resulted in degraded soils with low-quality status. Application of conventional soil tillage methods for many years, with a mould board plough as the most commonly used implement, is a fundamental cause of soil degradation. Rigorous and continuous manipulation of soil destroys soil structure, leading to reduced soil- water-holding capacity, soil fertility and declining population of beneficial soil organisms. The challenge is to restore these soils to be more fertile, biologically balanced, nutritionally healthy and productive.
As conventional production methods have negative effects on all the components of soil quality, the search for alternative systems to ensure better sustainability of the land has become a high priority issue. In addition, most of the production systems are characterised by mono cropping at the expense of more sustainable practices. In this context conservation agriculture (CA), which thrives on three major pillars of minimum or no-tillage, permanent soil cover and crop rotation, is seen as the alternative that can significantly not only improve soil quality but also contribute to more economically viable farming systems that are environmentally friendly and sustainable.
The NRE division has competent researchers that provide technical expertise in the no-till aspect of CA mechanisation especially in the areas of development, testing, calibration, modification, operation, repairs, and maintenance of CA planters and sprayers. Additionally, the Division supports the training of farmers regarding sprayer pre- check, calibration and operation methodology, basic environmental awareness principles, maintenance of sprayers, and safe handling of chemicals. Planter operation and training consist of pre-check of the planter components before planting, basic planting principles; field setting, calibration methodology, and planter maintenance and repairs are taught to farmers.
Conservation agriculture requires a high level of management and switching to this system will take the farmer through various learning phases. A number of suppliers of mechanised agricultural equipment in South Africa have recently started to exploit the demand for no-till planters and with the increase in prices, more need to be done to close the existing gap between developing farmers and farmers that have been practising ca for years. This also brings the need to encourage knowledge sharing and strengthen areas with existing mechanisation centres to enable farmers the opportunity to use equipment as communities.