XtraBlatt Issue 02-2017

The machinery sharing society
“Grass-1” includes two truck-mounted
feed mixer wagons.
around 60 TMRs in operation.” And: “The
subsidisation for purchase of large scale
machinery varies from year to year and
this has led to us selling in one year 20 BiG
Ms and 20 BiG Xs. In another year, however,
sales are maybe only three or four of
each. Thus, sales planning is not easy.”
The farmer-members of Grass-1, incidentally,
together run around 750 cows
milked twice a day through carousel or
herringbone parlours. Robot systems are
not common. The rations for each farm
are mixed in the Grass-1 yard and delivered
via truck-mounted mixer. Also supplied
with this feed are a few customers
that are not members of Grass-1.
The baler-wrapper combination for maize is built by Takakita and allows silage to be wrapped and
deposited directly on farms that have no clamps or silos.
quest for this is already written out. Up
to 50% of the purchase price is subsidised
in Japan because the government wants
to further professionalise dairying and
aid efficiency, and thus increase milk
production. The farm’s own feed mixing
plant together with large-capacity feed
mix wagons were subsidised, the office
building and the silage clamps, however,
were not. In total, around 6 m euros has
been invested in machinery and buildings
since 2015. “The first machinery ring, TMR
for short, was founded in 2001,” recalls
Martin Seggering, who has been working
in the Japanese market, along with several
other regions, for some years. “In the
last five or six years, however, ring numbers
have increased massively, Japan’s
government investing a lot of money in
order to reduce dependency on food imports.
After all, the average milk production
performance, thanks to TMR, has increased
within around 15 years from 7000
– 8000 l to approx. 10,000 l/cow and
year. Above all, this has been due to improved
feed quality and more professionally
conceived and adjusted cow rations.
Nowadays on Hokkaido, there should be
STEEP SLOPES
The Akan TMR, also visited on West Hokkaido,
works with self-propelled machines
from Krone. “We operate three BiG
Xs, types 650 and 700, two working the
whole season through, and one in peak
periods or as substitute machine,” explains
Akan manager Yoshio Masaki. “Akan
belongs to 24 farmers with a total 1500
dairy cows and 760 ha grass plus 260 ha
forage maize.” Contrary to the other
farms we visited, here a pass with the tedder
takes place after the mower. The aim
is to increase dm content from around 25
to some 30%. Here and there, a couple
of wafflers are also used to help dry the
crop. Despite this, special lacto-bacilli
additives are still used with the silage.
According to the manager, the products
are more cost efficient than formic acid.
“At first cut, we harvest around 38 to
40 t/ha, in the second one only some
20 t/ha,” notes Yoshio Masaki. “The
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