Pontara Grain is a grain production business using a Controlled Traffic Farming (CTF) system. CTF is a whole system of farming. In our CTF system the key components are:
- permanent wheel tracks (year to year)
- stubble retention
- no cultivation - sowing pass only
- inter-row sowing
- no livestock grazing
We moved to full CTF over a period of 4 years starting with tram-lines when we commenced sowing up-and-back. Initially we used hydraulic disc-markers for guidance, then the disc-markers in conjunction with GPS guidance with an annual subscription for a differential to give 10 cm accuracy.
In 2006 we moved to 2 cm RTK GPS auto-steer with the specific aim of having year-to-year repeatability enabling inter-row sowing.
We also do agricultural contracting:
- sowing
- spraying
- windrowing - SP autosteer
- harvest - 12 m autosteer and yield mapping