![Michael Horsch, Schwandorf, Germany, says there are lots of very professional farmers in Australia. Michael Horsch, Schwandorf, Germany, says there are lots of very professional farmers in Australia.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-agfeed/2066335.jpg/r0_0_1024_1536_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
GERMAN machinery manufacturer Horsch continues to make inroads in the international market with its state-of-the-art products.
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According to Michael Horsch, who founded the company in 1979, Horsch has been working on singulating wheat and designing a new sprayer.
Singulating allows accurate placement of a single seed, something not yet achieved with wheat.
About 50 farmers turned out to hear Mr Horsch speak on-farm at Bongeen, on the Darling Downs, Queensland, last week.
Horsch has seven factories worldwide and produces mainly seeding and tillage equipment.
Mr Horsch said the fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for much of his company's success.
"There's always something lucky in life that happens and in my life the lucky thing that happened was 1990," he said.
"Eastern Europe was completely locked up and in 1990 it was opened.
"Where I lived was the end of the world until then because we were right next to the border of the Czech Republic and West Germany.
"Obviously when the wall came down there were lots of co-operative farms and they were looking for new equipment - that was the chance for our company to grow like mad."
Mr Horsch said close to 70 per cent of world grain production took place in a band in the northern hemisphere between latitude 45 degrees to 55 degrees.
The similarity in harvesting dates within that band, he said, could be used as an indicator of world market prices.
Mr Horsch said his company has spent eight years developing the technology to singulate wheat.
"You can singulate corn, soybeans, sorghum, sunflowers, but nobody yet has singulated wheat," he said.
"We have developed the technology to also singulate wheat for it to be able to grow higher yields and make better use of new varieties.
"It's absolutely exciting - we have been working so hard on this for many years and now we have cracked it."
Mr Horsch said the electrically-driven singulating module was adaptable to air seeders and shot seeds in the ground at speeds of up to 100 seeds a second.
He showed attendees examples of wheat seed that was planted four centimetres apart, on 15cm rows and at a speed of 12 kilometres an hour.
As well as the increases in yield, Mr Horsch said the plants could cope more effectively with heat and water stress.
"Each single plant has four strong tillers; each tiller has a strong root system," he said.
"The more evenly they are created, the less they fight each other and the less they fight, the stronger each single plant is."
Mr Horsch also spoke about his company's new self-propelled sprayer.
The sprayer has no springs, no suspension system and is not linked to the main chassis, instead it has a single oscillating point for the boom.
"Guess what happens when you combine simple factors such as a nozzle every 25cm, 80 degree flat plan nozzles and a sprayer running 30cm above the ground?" he said.
"Your effectiveness when applying any chemical goes up by at least twofold."
Mr Horsch said there was no scientific argument behind having a nozzle spaced every 50cm on a boom.
"The difference between 25cm and 50cm is huge in terms of wind drift and as a consequence in terms of how much product ends up on the crop.
"A simple 80 degree nozzle can produce, with the right pressure, up to 90pc to 95pc accuracy with 200 micron droplets.
"A 110 degree nozzle never gets above 60pc. With 110 degree nozzles the droplets produced are either too big or too small but never in the right place."
Mr Horsch said the one key similarity about farming worldwide was it was becoming more and more professional.
"I'm always interested in Australia - it's a country I think where there are lots of very professional farmers," he said.
"Farmers who have learned how to work under tough conditions - both weather and market conditions, they also have a great attention to detail."