I grew up on a ranch located in the southern United States. For as long as I can remember, my father has raised beef cattle. Every summer, he has the arduous task of baling cutting and arranging hay into bales. Because of the hot humid weather in our part of the country, my father particularly dreaded this summer chore when I was young. His hay baler didn’t contain an air conditioner in it. Thankfully, he has recently acquired a hay baler with this convenience. Now, he can cut his hay down without even breaking a sweat. If you’re thinking about getting into the cattle business, consider opting for an air conditioned hay baler immediately. On this blog, you will discover the advantages of buying a new state-of-the-art hay baler with a built-in air conditioning system.
Working in Comfort
Runoff Isn't A Good Thing In Agriculture
Luis Harvey
When you normally think of runoff, you think of water cascading off a roof or down a lawn to a storm drain. You want water to run off in those conditions as letting the water pool on the roof or the lawn would be damaging. In agriculture, it's very different. Runoff steals nutrients and contributes to crop dehydration and death, and contributes to agricultural pollution farther away. Laser grading allows farmers to make the land as level as possible to minimize runoff. If you're one of the many urbanites who have tried to start a farm, you need to grade the land properly, which means ensuring it's as flat as can be before you start tilling. A laser-grading machine, which creates a map of the land's surface using a laser sight and then sends this data to a computer controlling a field grader, makes this a lot easier to do.
Making Water Stay Where It Is
On a farm, the crops need water, and in areas experiencing drought or those that are in normally low-rainfall zones, any water that hits the ground needs to stay where you put it. That water needs to reach plant roots; it will do that only if it has enough time to soak into the soil, but runoff carries the water away too quickly. So, that land has to be as level as you can make it to reduce the ability of the water to flow away from the crops. If you level by sight, you could accidentally leave a slight grade or uneven areas that allow water to pool where you don't want it to. Laser-grading machines, however, transmit the laser's data seamlessly to the field grader, allowing the field grader to automatically cut away and level ground that had an incline that might have been too subtle for you to see.
Avoiding Cross-Contamination or Pollution
A third benefit of using laser-grading machines when you grade the soil for planting is that the precision of the machine helps keep pesticides and herbicides in place. Not only can runoff carry these substances away from the farm, but even a moderate amount of runoff can cause the pesticides and herbicides to shift and possibly pool around a section of cropland. In other words, you might distribute a pesticide evenly, but runoff can force some of that pesticide to settle near other plants. Instead of potentially leaving a slight grade when grading without laser guidance, use the laser-grading machine to ensure that land is flat.
If you're going to have crops planted in the ground, be it in a small urban farm taking over an empty lot or on a large farm out in the country that you've just moved to, get that laser grading machine. There are already enough uncertainties in growing crops, and laser grading can eliminate uncertainty about your irrigation reaching the plants it needs to reach.
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