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Take a drive past any Pukekohe onion patch and you get the impression that growing vegetables in the Franklin region is a walk in the park. Pukekohe has a deserved reputation for being one of New Zealand’s agricultural hot-spots. It has rich volcanic soil, a warm climate, and regular rainfall. With such good growing conditions, you could be excused for thinking that farmers simply throw the seeds on the ground and leave nature to do the rest.
Simon Wilcox of A.S. Wilcox and Sons is very serious about growing vegetables, but this suggestion cultivates a laugh. “It’s a bit different to that,” he says. “The unique aspect of our operation in Pukekohe is niche market early production potatoes. We do a lot of planting during the winter months, and then harvest those spuds in the spring when the rest of the country is busy planting. So, we plant in fairly poor soil conditions, and then we harvest those tubers out of sodden soil. We’re on heavy volcanic clay, so trying to extract root crops out of that can be pretty challenging.”
A.S. Wilcox and Sons have been using John Deere Agricultural Management Solutions (AMS) for several years now. “We use the GPS for the early part of the crop - cultivation, forming the bed, and then planting,” continues Simon. “If you don’t have a good driver you soon make a mess of the paddock.”
“That’s what initially steered us down the GPS track. It was getting harder and harder to find guys in the labour pool with the skills to drive straight in a vegetable row crop situation. Onions, for example, are spread right across the bed, and if you don’t keep the tractor dead straight down the row, you’re soon drilling onions into the wheel tracks.”
“We work on a 68 inch bed, that’s the wheel centres of the tractor. We might be going across the same wheel track four or five times, so it’s pretty critical that we drive the same line each time. That’s been the big advantage for us, the repeatability of being able to come back to the same spot time and time again.”
A.S. Wilcox and Sons are also experimenting with controlled traffic farming, using RTK accuracy and guidance to return to the same point season after season. “We’re got established wheel tracks that have been set down for the last couple of years,” says Simon. “We used to take a broad acre type cultivation process in the past, which means driving over the entire paddock. Now, we have roadways and gardens. The wheel tracks are the roads, and the bits in the middle are the gardens. The gardens haven’t been driven on for two years.”
“We’re seeing real advantages in terms of our soil structure. We don’t have to worry about compaction on the roads - the more compaction the better - especially for driving through the winter months when it’s really wet. And then you get a more friable soil structure in the gardens.”
“We haven’t analysed it cent for cent across the whole farm, but we’ve seen cost savings. We used to mark out two beds at a time, now we mark out three while we power harrow. So we’re marking out an extra bed and taking a tractor pass out of the operation.”
“Even the best driver can’t drive at 100% accuracy all the time, there’s always a bit of slippage. The RTK gives 2.5 cm accuracy, and the tractor steers itself. That thing keeps driving 24 hours a day. A man is not capable of driving 24 hours a day and can’t compete with that level of efficiency. It’s good.”
   
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