Crop tour Rene Haijer
Specialization in a cultivation takes you further
De Boerenbusiness Crop tour eight plots with yellow seed onions will follow this year. The participating growers take us along with the growth from sowing to harvest and the decisions in cultivation. In this series of company reports we introduce them. In the fourth part: René Haaijer from Veelerveen (Gr).
Arable farming and contracting company Haaijer is located in the south of Groningen. If you are talking about contracting company Haaijer in the northeast of the country, they are recognized and found within a radius of 60 kilometers around Veelerveen. While Haijer is less active in the other crops, onion cultivation gets full attention. With its 3 sowing machines, planter and 4 harvesters, Haaijer does not have to sit still and there is a lot of capacity.
Haaijer has a total of 80 hectares and also rents land for seed onions. He has a crop plan with starch potatoes (1 in 2), beets (1 in 3), onions (1 in 7) and fills the rest with grain. As a contractor, Haaijer sows and harvests a total of 600 hectares within a radius of 60 kilometers.
Intensive construction plan
Haaijer's arable farm uses an intensive construction plan. Haaijer says that this is necessary to be able to achieve a balance. He is increasingly dealing with beet cyst nematodes and is trying to control this with other crops. In addition to his own plots, around 35 hectares are rented for the onions. Many types of onions grow on this: yellow, red, pink, seed and onion sets. Only the pink onions are primed.
Seedbeds at 2 meters
Because contracting company Haaijer focuses on onion cultivation, the mechanization is also designed for this. For example, seed onions are grown at 2 meters with 7 rows on a bed, a combination that few onion growers know. This combination comes from the past, when they also sowed sugar beet and chicory in contract work in the area. These used to be grown in rows of 50 centimeters, so that 2 meters now offers a solution and a somewhat higher capacity than 1,50 meters. A seed bed of 2,25 and 3 meters is too big for Haaijer, because they have an extensive network, which means they drive a lot on the roads. Another side effect is that they like to work with light tractors.
They stopped sowing sugar beets and chicory early because their machines did not have the latest updates and their acreage was relatively small. Because it is not possible to drive in the potatoes with this track width of 2 meters, some growers where Haaijer sows have an extra sprayer for onions only. Haaijer himself does not have to take this into account, because he outsources all the work of the potatoes, beets and grains, including spraying. This allows him to focus on the onions and the contract work he does on 600 hectares.
But Haaijer also has its own plots with onions, such as the crop tour plot where the rows of onions are now clearly visible. The onions are looking good, but according to him they have suffered some hail damage. Suppressing weeds on the plot is also a challenge. For example, herbicides have already been sprayed twice. This plot, where sugar beet was grown last year, was sown in the spring and sown on 12 March. So the onions have been on their way for over a month now.
retention strategy
Haaijer has storage for 1.600 tons on his farm, which, together with external storage, is often enough to get all onions behind the shelf, depending on the yield. The onions in the external storage will be sent out before Christmas. There is no fixed strategy for the onions that are stored on the company's own farm. The pink and onion sets leave the field and already have a boss before the harvest, the yellow and red onions are grown freely. The potatoes are stored outside on a hump and charged until they are processed into starch.
The machine shed
The groundwater in the area is of good quality and Haaijer has no problems getting the reel out of the shed, but wants the onions to take care of themselves later in the season: "At a certain point you have to give them time, if they towards the end you knock them flat with sprinkling". The soil types on which the onions are grown differ considerably. There are onions on sand, but also on clay plots. During the season it is therefore possible that it will dust on one plot and the other will suffer from a crust. Haaijer is not easily concerned about the crust: "It's unbelievable how such a small plant can pierce through a crust".
Robin Winter
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