The team at Farmgard is committed to helping customers do more in the paddock while saving more in the hip pocket, with Celli’s range of cultivation equipment
Farmgard is the national distributor of Celli equipment across Australia, boasting a near endless line of cultivation-specific equipment.
The range includes rotary hoes – the bread and butter of the Celli product line – as well as power harrows, deep rippers and spike rotors.
Together, the two brands share a long and storied history, dating back to Farmgard’s founding in New Zealand over 40 years ago, before reaching a new agreement in 2017 when Farmgard became the exclusive Australian distributor of Celli equipment.
Since then, Farmgard has steadily grown the Celli brand around the country, however it’s another development which continues to turn heads among farmers and horticulturalists Down Under.
The combovator bed-forming system was first developed in-house by Farmgard in 2017 with a New Zealand customer before it was promoted in Australia one year later.
The machine combines soil cultivation and raised bed formation in one unit as a retrofittable attachment to any piece of equipment in the Celli cultivation range.
Farmgard Australia managing director Scott Capper says while combovator is relatively new to the market, it’s been widely enjoyed by the many that have bought it.
“It’s a uniquely designed bed former attachment which will attach to any of Celli’s cultivation range – be that a power harrow, a spikes rotor or a rotary hoe. It’s really taken off in the Australian market and something that is still quite new in the last three to four years,” Capper says.
“It’s something we’re really pushing to anyone wanting to bed form in Australia, starting at the top of Australia with sugarcane growers – which is grown on mounds – coming down to any vegetable production, be it beans or salad vegetables.
“We’re selling the models from to the top to the bottom of Australia in the eastern seaboard where it rains, and where they grow food.”
The combovators are uniquely designed and customised by Farmgard to suit individual farmer needs and are mounted to the tailgate system of the power harrow or rotary hoe.
“The unique part of the system is that everyone’s going to have different bed heights or different bed sizes and it’s easy and cheap to change so that it will bolt on.”
Other features of the combovator bed forming system – which are suitable for use on tractors of between 250 and 450 horsepower (186-335kW) – include a Z-link triple hydraulic control system which controls depth, tilth and consolidation, teflon or hardox liners which make the system capable of operating in any soil types, and central locking pins which ensure beds are even at all times.
The bed former system can also lift while attached for standard use of the rotary hoe, power harrow or stone burier.
But the benefits of the combovator attachment aren’t limited to its versatile two-in-one function with other cultivation equipment. Capper says the system could save farmers as much as $10,000 from the initial purchase.
As he explains, farmers purchasing cultivation equipment often perform expensive and time-consuming modifications, however that process is now taken out of the farmers’ hands to be performed by Farmgard at a significantly smaller cost.
“Rather than what a lot of growers or anyone wanting to bed from generally does, they make a bespoke piece of machinery or they buy a rotary how off the shelf and then they spend $30 grand on modifying it,” he says.
“What we’ve done is we’ve taken the standard rotary hoe and made that bed former that will attach on the back. So, we can go to a grower and say, look, we can provide your bed former and it’s going to save you $10 grand rather than making your own one.
“If they want to sell the machine in a few years’ time, they can remove the bed former and sell it as a standard rotary hoe. Rather than at the end of its life being becoming a piece of scrap metal, it’s something that they can actually sell of value.”
As well as the combovator, Capper says Farmgard now offers the Celli branded air seeder attachment which can be retrofitted on the power harrows and rotary tillers, with the company able to offer a ‘one-pass’ cultivation and seeder package that includes both the seeder and harrow equipment.
Farmgard has dealers in every Australian state as well as distribution hubs in Melbourne and Brisbane.
For more information on the combovator bed forming system and other equipment in the Celli cultivation range, visit Farmgard’s website.