Infrastructure grants of between £25,000 and £250,000 to help farmers improve slurry storage should not overlook the importance of mixers and pumps – according to Landia.
Following the recent comments made by John Tydeman of Tramspread about offsetting the huge cost of managing slurry by improving its value as a fertiliser to reduce bought-in products, Landia agree that a more homogenised product provides significant benefits.
Paul Davies from Landia commented: “As farms continue to increase in size, managing slurry really needs 3-phase automation, rather than the labour and fuel costs of having to use a tractor.
“John (Tydeman) is right to state that when handling slurry, one should try to reduce wear on equipment, and that a decent separator to remove fibres will certainly improve capacity, but with or especially without a separator, a good quality mixing set up is a must.
“Not just in the agriculture industry, it is often considered that ‘any old mixer will do,’ but I would urge farmers lucky enough to be awarded a grant to place more importance on specifying a robust mixer that will last. Likewise, a perfectly good pump often gets the blame for an inefficient slurry process, when the addition of a mixer to a slurry pit is all that is needed.”
The new grants that are aimed at helping farmers improve the use of organic nutrients to boost productivity and reduce pollution, also (for the first time) offer help towards investing in a slurry separator.
“This is a positive step forward,” added Landia’s Paul Davies. “Separators can help make slurry easier to store, and move around the farm, but again, please don’t think of the separator in isolation. We’ve just helped a farmer with a new system for pumping slurry from the reception pit up to the separator, because he was having to fix his existing slurry pump every week. It was a perfectly good pump for ‘slurry’, but not for sand-laden slurry. You need a much tougher pump, and the right set-up, so it is not all about the separator.
Landia worked closely with the farmer to emphasise the need to keep the sand-laden slurry moving as quickly as possible and whilst as fresh as possible.
“When a reception pit is too large,” continued Davies, “and the sand-laden slurry too spread out, a pump can easily become overwhelmed because the second stage of the process becomes far too heavy with sand.
“Not everyone uses sand as bedding of course, but working with vastly experienced suppliers such as Midland Slurry Systems, we can see first-hand just how important the right pumps and mixers are to the success of a separator.”
