Oct 2nd Contd

We visited Kees Huizinga's farm north of Uman. Kees (pronounced Case) came to the Ukraine from Denmark, after spending a year in Russia. He has been here for 10 years and has built his business from cropping 1000ha in the first year to now cropping 10,000ha. He is also  in the process of building a 3500 head dairy heard and also has an extensive piggery. He likes his technology and is a well organised farm businessman.

Below is a 24m precision planter for sowing maze, also has a couple of smaller ones. The maze is sown on 500mm spacings

One of four 42m 13,000L spray rigs they run on the property. They are only spraying at 12km an hour though so productivity is not real good. They couldnt believe that we spray at 32k/h with the JD 4940.

A seeder for sowing Sugarbeet

They can hold 100,000 L of diesel on farm.

The Chaser truck for filling the sprayers

In Ukraine you really need a good workshop so most repairs can be done in house. To have a good engineer on staff only costs about AU$6000.   

At peak times they have up to 300 staff on their payroll. To manage this many people you need a good system. The planner below has machines down the side, staff accross the top. The color designates the operation. When the staff member clocks on he puts his name where he will be working.