When experience speaks - the story of Antonio Abballe

Antonio Abballe, a farmer in the village. Ivanski, from Shumensko, is an Italian whose love in the person of his wife brought to Bulgaria. And the passion in the face of farming is what has kept him here for 30 years. Today, the family business manages 27,000 acres of farmland, growing traditional crops — wheat, barley, sunflower, corn and rapeseed.

“I am satisfied with what I have achieved”, says Antonio Abballe. And he adds:

“The earth wants the shadow of its master.” This means constantly standing near her, walking around the fields, monitoring the development of crops, assessing what they lack, what and when to feed them. To feel the smell of the soil, to give exactly as much as necessary to the plants...

And if you hope that someone else will do this work for you, you will not succeed. I myself read a lot, am interested and apply the novelties. Last but not least, I want to remind you that the earth must be at your heart, you must love it. If you just look at it as a business, it doesn't work.”

And it is precisely because he reads and is very interested that Antonio only bets on the best for his farm. In self-propelled sprayers, this is the French brand Berthoud and their flagship Raptor, which he bought this year from Nick.

“I decided to buy the self-propelled sprayer Berthoud Raptor, since I am Italian and I have quite a few friends and colleagues from Italy who work with such sprayers and are extremely satisfied. I was looking for a sprayer that has great performance, efficiency in operation, thanks to new technologies. For these reasons, I settled on the Raptor model.”

Antonio Abballe: This is currently one of the most advanced sprayers that are on the market.

“The machine works great. It also allows night spraying to be carried out very calmly.The working width of the rods is 36 m, and they are equipped with a spray height control system that maintains the precisely set distance from the sowing.”

The pole height control system is standard equipment for every Berthoud self-propelled sprayer due to the agronomic value it gives farmers — the preparations in a field are applied from the same distance and the size of the drops that reach the leaves are uniform everywhere. But this alone is not enough for quality spraying, precision of work and artificial intelligence in the sprayer itself are needed to give it maximum benefit.

Antonio Abballe: I was most impressed by the fuel consumption.

“In terms of fuel consumption, we have fallen a lot down compared to the previous sprayer. The consumption we have now is about 100 ml per acre. The terms in which we carry out the spraying and the amount of preparations have also changed significantly.The sprayer itself determines where to spray, does not repeat and does not overlap. We report a great saving of preparations for this reason.”

The machine that Antonio owns is special, he also shares, since it has the most advanced systems Spraytronic, which control the flow of each nozzle separately by means of high-frequency pulsations.

Antonio Abballe: This is the latest fashion!

What else does the Berthoud Raptor self-propelled sprayer give?

“I also really like the large clearance height of the sprayer. With this machine we spray crops that reach a height of more than 2 meters. When the situation requires it, we also spray with UAN with the extended nozzlesAgrotopdirectly into the soil without wetting the corn leaves. This was one of the recommendations of the NIK service team and we really see great benefit from it!”

The high performance of the machine is the result of two things, one of them is the pump and the other is the precision farming solutions that are implemented in the machine. Here's what Antonio told us about them:

“The machine has a very high pump flow rate. The pump is called OMEGAThe name also shows that it is productive. I think it's the biggest in self-propelled sprayers ever --550 liters per minute.The machine is very easy to operate and provides excellent control over all options — this is entirely due to the Trimble equipment, which allows easy control of the sectional control and is integrated, directly into the sprayer.”

But apart from the machine, Antonio Abballe is also extremely satisfied with his work with the NIC team:

“On my farm, I have completely trusted the technologies offered by the company NIK and with none of the advice they gave me I was wrong. I use the platform GeoScan, which allows me to monitor crops from a distance and see on a map their vegetation, as well as data on how much it has rained. All navigations, on any one tractor, sprayer or combine, regardless of its brand, are Trimble— it helps me a lot and the mechanics work with ease.

I trust NIK and their lab for soil samples and analyses. So I know what micro and macro elements are in my soil. This helps me in planning the required amounts of fertilizer I need to purchase by looking directly at the fertilization prescription card.

I am extremely pleased with working with NIK team. With them, things always happen very quickly. The moment you call them on any occasion, they immediately send specialistand solve every case.”