I recently purchased a 1000 acres in Africa to grow corn. As of now it is bushy with thousands of 12"to18" caliber root balls with multiple 4" trees per root. I was thinking about a dozer but what a mess that could make and I also thought about a chain loader but someone recently told me they thought a skidsteer with a grubber to pop the roots out. Skids would be a lot cheaper to ship but will they do the job. We have lots of labor on the ground but if anyone has ideas about the best machine I would appreciate the advice. For the most part we will burn the piles we create. Thank you
Yair . . . I have cleared many thousands of acres ready for the plow and cannot understand your concern about making a mess with a dozer. On a job such as yours we would chain it with a couple of dozers, rake it with 30 foot wide stick-rakes, undercut the roots with a cutter-bar then clean up with a pin wheel . . . and, looking around the internet there are quite a few contractors in different parts of Africa doing it like that. Below are a few links to sites that may be of interest http://www.savannahglobal.com/500_series.html http://www.homan.com.au/Stickrakes/Stickrakes.html http://www.savannahequipment.com.au/HTMLEmail/BladePlow.html http://www.multifarmingsystems.com.au/rake.php All the best with your project. Cheers.
Welcome to the Forums widows!:drinkup You have an interesting project, keep us posted. I was going to suggest Scrub would be the one to give the best advice on this subject but he already chimed in. I couldn't imagine clearing 1000 acres with a skid steer, by the time you finished we'll be growing something other than corn or eating those "food pills" we saw in the 80's science fiction movies..
Thank you both for your response. It sounds like I need to sit down with Scrub and learn. We can actual clear 10 acres a day with our crew, negating the stumps. That's why I was thinking about a skid to simply uproot stumps. Planting season is next march so we have some time and to buy and transport Dozers is very costly. I'm all ears and may need to chat with Scrub over a beer but I just saw where your located and decided that would be a very expensive beer.
Yair . . . windows . It sounds an interesting project and lots of folks on here will be able to offer suggestions and ideas. What equipment are you using to achieve the ten acres per day? That is a considerable achievement but a lot of work remains if you have yet to deal with stumps. I spent a few seasons clearing peanut country in PNG with a little Massey dozer so, quite apart from the large scale machine based operations I have some concept of many human hands making light work. (he grins) As always, a picture is better than a thousand words and it would be interesting to see the type of country and your progress to date Details of soil types, your proposed tillage depths, and machinery you intend to use for cultivation would be of interest and would probably get some responses from the farming people who contribute to this site. Please keep the thread rolling as you will find a wealth of knowledge here from all around the world. It's a shame the tyranny of distance forces a rain check on that beer. (he grins again) Cheers.
There ya go Scrub Puller.... That job is just a plane ticket away and you would be back in action mate Thats interesting and quite a project widows. Heard a little about US farmers investing in land overseas & sounds like it may be a good investment in the future as populations grow and we all need to eat. Found this article in http://cornandsoybeandigest.com/issues/learning-hard-way-farming-africa http://africaatlantic.com/leadership/kristopher-klokkenga/ http://africaatlantic.com/farming/ I favor a dozer & K/G blade for most clearing jobs. Also use an excavator and skidloader at times. I work mostly by myself and it sounds like you have alot of help as far as hand labor goes. I realy dont know what to tell ya? If its just smaller stumps now and then scattered apart over a large area and your crew is clearing 10 acres a day of the small brush and given it's a remote area I might go with a 4 x 4 rubber tire loader- backhoe with foam filled tires to eliminate flat tires. Could dig out stumps & move pretty quick to the next one plus use the loader to push up piles . :beatsme good luck with the project .
I was just thinking that if you can utilize some of the equipment that you will need for farming anyway that perhaps attachments for the farm tractors may be viable, although not as quick as what Scrub suggested.
Yair . . . Oxbow . That's exactly what I was thinking when I asked the O/P about the equipment he intended to farm with. On virgin country for the first few crops tines probably won't be an option and perhaps for initial workings (say) off-sets and a D7 sized dozer may be appropriate . . . depending on the country that size tractor would probably be very suitable for stacking brush and ripping stumps. It could be sold and replaced with rubber when the development phase is complete. Everyone has their own ideas about how to do a given job and no single way is "right". Depth of pockets govern many of our decisions. Sometimes though it's a mistake "not to use enough gun" as Robert Ruark would say. If the O/P were to miss out on planting acreage next season because of inadequate machinery or methods it could cost him dearly . . . a fact of which I think he is very much aware. Cheers.
Found a few more articles on farming in Africa. I'm guessing the first picture on this page might be an example of what the ground looks like. Left side of the road cleared & right side with trees. www.npr.org/2012/06/15/155095598/african-land-fertile-ground-for-crops-and-investors Second article Farmer Wallie Hardie tells his story of the endeavor. He mentions clearing costs around $1,200 acre and as widows said shipping equipment & supplys can be a problem as it's pretty remote . http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/12/27/business/midwest-farmers-operations-africa
Yair . . . looks like not a lot has changed and this link may be of interest to you widows . These blokes are operating using the same methods we were fifty years ago . . . . http://www.smops.co.mz/en/ It is pretty informative site and worth sitting down for a few minutes to enjoy the slide-show . . . it's the first time for many years I've seen the use of chain. The country in the promos and on td25c's links has me drooling. You can work that stuff 24/7 and for chaining I reckon you could work on near fifty acres an hour with a couple of D9g equivalents. Back in the seventies' we were on fifty dollars an hour for the Gees and most of that light country worked out around a couple of bucks an acre to get it on the ground, The same tractors with adequate rakes should stack between six and ten acres hour and pretty much the same for root plough or heavy discing. . . depends a lot on soil and moisture. The prices would go up as tractor size came down and I reckon that outfit working out of Maputo have got their equipment sussed . . . D9 sized rigs with bad roads and bridges would be a pain to shift around. Cheers
$1200 an acre, but if they sold the wood as firewood I bet it would be a profit. Must have a big crew to do 10 acres a day, WOW! One of my friends does land clearing and 10 acres would be several days to a week of work all depending on how think it's wooded. That's with tree harvester, skidder, etc. 1-2 guys.
What are you doing with the current trees your clearing? Burning? Your going to have hell trying to burn a bunch of root balls by themselves, because of the dirt mixed with them.
Yair . . . Dozerboy . I was thinking the same thing. If the O/P has cleared country by chopping and burning he may have a bit of an issue with stumps left in the ground. Having said that, with decent sized floating stick rakes it is no big deal to muster up stumps and, if necessary rattle them a quarter mile. In general though I imagine the African timber would be much the same as here in Australia and root ball dirt is seldom a problem . . . or not at all a problem in that small timber savannah country. If possible I like to work the piles or windrows hot and flaming and the heat and rolling and tumbling in front of a thirty foot rake flat out in second gear soon gets rid of dirt. If the heaps go cold it is no big deal as there is usually a bit of hot stuff in there that will brew up with the stoking. If you have a minute check out the link I posted up thread on Homan stick rakes. That style of rake is worked floating on the surface and you can imagine the amount of burning timber you can drift along with that. It is a very interesting sight to see a large tractor working hot fires at night. Cheers.
Yes Scrub Smops looks more than capable of handling any land clearing job www.smops.co.mz/en/ I can only guess that in this thread they may be employing minimum or No-Till farming techniques so smaller roots left in the ground may not be an issue. It sounds like they are just conserned with getting the bigger root balls out & to the burnpile. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming Dont know? Just my guess .:beatsme Did find this interesting website... Gives allot of info on land management overall with a section on land clearing ideas & equipment from chaining on down to hand tools listing links to manufacturers http://reveg-catalog.tamu.edu/04-Mechanical.htm
Hey scrub I don't about fifty years ago but that's the same method we use today. True and tried methods always work.when we got stuck into virgin country we,d prob chain it first or if it,s got scattered big trees would pop them out with dozer. Rake into windrows and burn. Pedrick rake what's left and blade plow. Knock it down with a set of offsets and put ac tyne ripper or root lifting ripper thru it .Then runover it with three point linkage harrows windowing roots and sticks and you pretty much got 90 percent of the timber.:tong
Widows back. We lost a good friend, one in a million man so we just buried him. I want to send this email to you first and then go back and look at all the links that many of you sent. Let me answer a few questions asked. We employ 100 men a day in groups of 10. Each group can take an acre of bush out, nothing else. We pay each man $5.00 a day and we could employ 100 more as they wait in line for a job. So 10 acres cost us $500.00 just to remove the trees ready to burn. Fuel here is $7.00 a gallon so hauling wood to Kampala would not be profitable. A few areas I dug had 18" of top soil and there are two growing seasons. The dirt is red and digs like butter. Let me figure out how to send some pictures later. Some suggested using the farm equipment that we will eventually need and we agree. You can rent a Cat dozer d6 brand new here for 15k a month and a chain loader for 9k a month. If we continue just with our Manuel laborers we could take the bush out in 16 weeks or four months. Our seed needs to be in the ground late March early April but honestly we'd be happy if we got 200 acres planted by that time just for a test run. Our next plant starts July/aug. so we have some time. We have not selected our cultivating machinery yet but it will be limited, as Scrub said, to the depth of pocket. My ag guy, a native Ugandan, said that they don't care about anything deeper than 6" so it doesn't appear that we are pulling everything out of the ground just stumps....14-20 inch stumps. That's why we were thinking skids with grabbers and just pop a stump out every 5 min or less. Skids could be put into containers but dozers and farm equipment have to be placed on skids and tax issues etc... Thanks.
Yair . . . 8k bill . So true what you say. The machinery changes but trees and dirt remain constant . . . there is not much point in reinventing the wheel. I hope the O/P continues with this thread as it would be interesting to see how his project evolves. Cheers.
Sorry to hear about the loss of your friend widows. Thats pretty much how I envisioned the job with a large crew cutting the small brush stacking & burning it. Clearing 10 acres a day at $500 with the 100 man crew may be the best way to go under the circumstance. I'll probably stick with my first thought of using a rubber tire backhoe on the stumps plus be handy on other utility tasks later on.Probably have to remove rops cab & possibly front bucket to fit it in the container. Small dozer would also fit in a shipping container . Found this JD 550 highlift combo at www.machinerytrader.com/listingsdetail/detail.aspx?OHID=9582167 Those riggs were popular at one time in my area & got the job done. Interesting project widows & Best of luck with it.
Yair . . . Woops don't know what happened there, my #17 post didn't go up when intended . . . it was a reply to the #15 post. Pleased to see you back widows . My condolences for the loss of your friend and colleague. Your operation sounds not unlike the PNG job I mentioned where we had many hands chopping and stacking and I ripped the large stumps with the ** dozer. After clearing the land was ploughed with two and three furrow linkage disk ploughs on ** 35's and 65's . . . the tractors were leased to local villagers to contract grow the peanuts, it ended up quite a large operation with fifty or sixty tractors. I think td25c offers good advise. I believe for this sort of duty a small dozer would be more effective than a skid. Having said that there are several threads on here where folks have equipped bobcats and so on for grubbing mesquite so some of them may chime in with their thoughts. As mentioned please keep us all posted as this is an interesting thread. Cheers
I don 't know the local trees or soil, but are you sure a grapple on a skidsteer will just pop a 14-20" stump out of the ground?! They definitely wouldn't here, you'd have to do a bit of digging. Most of the 14-20" stumps here would take a bite or two of soil loosening to pull them with a 20 ton trackhoe.
Yair . . . mitch504 . I feel we may be talking at cross purposes and it is very hard to envisage the scale of the problem without pictures. Reading back through the thread in the original post widows told us he had thousands of rootballs with multiple four inch stems on each. I could be wrong but it seems to me they may be cutting the stems off fourteen to twenty inches above the ground. As you say it is extremely doubtful a skid could remove such a stump in five minutes . . . they certainly won't "pop out" if they are as I imagine. In my opinion the most cost effective way of dealing with such stumps would be a one hundred and fifty hp dozer with a horizontal cutter bar fixed between the outer tines of a ripper, such a tractor will undercut the stump and take it out in second gear. As has been mentioned by others it is still a major job to get rid of all the stumps and, in my experience it would be much easier to burn them with the top growth. I would suggest to widows he hold off on the burning until they have found a satisfactory method of dealing with the stump problem. Cheers.
Widows, IMO your better off doing it right and at least put a cutter bar through and cutting everything off at 6" to 8". ThenUsing your cheap labour to stick pick would give you ground that would be safe to put any tyned implement in.sounds like your soil is a sandy loam and a d6 would easily do it. All the best Bill
My guess was that he was talking about medium sized trunks that had been cut, and sprouted multiple 4" stems. I'd be using that cheap labor to limb the poles and stack them for future use. Buy a couple dozen solar panels, DC blowers, and 5' lengths of 3" round duct, and make myself some mini stump burners.
Yeah.. Stump grinder might also be an option . Grind down to needed depth & move on to the next one . Shaver MFG makes a 3 point grinder for use on a farm tractor. www.shavermfg.com/stump-grinders This dealer in Denver , Colorado lists the model SHSC-50 at $7,056 www.beavervalleysupply.com/sectionb/shaversb.htm
Yes, medium trunks with multiple 4" calipers growing. I will try to get some photos but its real jungle and most of the large trees were harvested years before we got there. If you walk up to the bush from the road you literally cannot step 5' into the bush without a panga. I like the idea of a horizontal cutter bar that Scrub mentioned. There is also mention of the US Banks not allowing international wires over 50k per month to leave the country. Has anyone heard that? I'm not sure how that effects us unless we attempt to purchase a Dozer there. Scrub, what did you think of the idea to lease? 15 per month. If all the bush is gone and you use the horizontal cutter how many acres a day would you say the dozer could do? Would you try to find a dozer here and ship and if so can we find a dozer for under 100k? Used machinery there, say a Cat D6 sells for 220k used and 340 new. Can we find a used machine that would do this project? Thanks for everyone's help.
. Here's the first picture. Any large trees we had planned to leave.
still trying to get a video of the stump.
That does look pretty thick in the pictures widows. Trees dont look that big for a dozer. Pretty amazed the 100 man crew can clear 10 acres a day just taking out the bush around the bigger trees. If I was going to buy a larger dozer for that job ....... Pretty hard to go wrong with an older Cat D7G. Very reliable and have stood the test of time. A guy could have alot of fun on that job with a Rome K/G blade www.machinerytrader.com/listingsdetail/detail.aspx?OHID=8941721
last picture. I can't seem to get a video to attach. This is an old logging road I'm walking on otherwise you would get through.
Yair . . . Thanks for pictures widows and I must say your country is not quite as I imagined . . . but incidentally I have been told that some of that red soil in Uganda will grow a four inch nail into a crowbar! (he grins) You obviously realise that any comments here can only be very general in nature and, although you will probably find some of the techniques mentioned (by myself and others) confronting, unaffordable, or, at best, confusing and out of the question, they will all have been offered with the very best of intent. One of things we probably don't understand are your climatic conditions. Such country here in Queensland is generically called "vine scrub" and, in the old days in the high country behind Cairns (in far north) was hand slashed with cane knives and axes in during the first part of the dry season. The fallen material was left in place forming a dense mat and allowed to dry out as long as possible. If they got the timing right it was burned just before "the wet". The land for the most part was being cleared for grazing and the intense fires that resulted from the mass of vegetation often resulted in country that could be sown to pasture. Unused to fire, the rainforest species never recovered and the remaining stumps and logs rotted and disintegrated over the years. I realise you don't have years but it seems to me that in your situation the employment of local labour is a cost effective option and I would imagine will assist in establishing good will and co-operation . . . there is nothing like a paid job when few such jobs exist. If your hand clearing crews were to just slash and fall, would an initial burn with no heaping or stacking be an option? Such a procedure reduces the volume of material that needs to be handled and (possibly) provides the option of raking with agricultural tractors. I obviously don't know the scale at which you wish to operate the farming operation . . . that is to say, many smaller tractors or a couple of larger ones, it all makes a difference to methods. An eighty to one hundred HP 4x4 tractor with a decent rake mounted to the loader frame is a fairly potent weapon and when a patch was finished could plow with a decent set of heavy off-sets that (I imagine) in that soil would pull out a lot of stumps and be pretty much impervious to damage. I am thinking Rome or Towner Armstrong style plows. I have doubts about the effectiveness of chaining in country as shown beside the road. I small dense brush such as that it tends to slide up and over unless specially weighted into a "prickle chain" with sections of railway line welded to the links . . . clearly not an option. The Dozer lease deal sounds a little strange, how many hours are you allowed per month? The cutter barring will be expensive and probably say three acres an hour would be the best you could expect. The between ripper tines cutter is at its best when on the back of a rake tractor and used intermittently for under cutting stumps that have been hit with the rake. In your country, undercutting relatively shallow I imagine any given tractor would pull a cutter wider than the tines and the equipment becomes more complex to fabricate . . . it is all a matter of trial and error and for your situation may be a little difficult to arrange. Texas and New Zealand style roller choppers are another option that would work to establish a burn mat of vegetation but, as mentioned it all comes back to cost of acquiring/fabricating the equipment. My thoughts here are a bit disjointed but it's coming up to daylight here and I really have to run. I find your project extremely interesting and would like to continue the conversation if you feel the random thoughts of myself and others here of value. Cheers.
When I looked at those pictures the fist thing that came to my mind was a hydro-ax. But I'm sure that's not a option so how about a high hp ctl with a brush hog and that stump popping attachment? I know when we do smaller land clearing jobs (say less the 10 acres ) we go in and knock down all the small stuff with a ct332 and a brush hog then knock down and burn all the larger trees.
Yair . . . buckfever . I have heard in the U.S. there are very heavy duty "brush hogs" that are as I understand it a horizontal rotary mower with blades mounted on what in effect is a flywheel . . . a similar lighter duty version is called a "slasher" over here and is mainly used on grass and regrowth to about two inches diameter. How heavy timber can your heavy duty units handle? They may be another option for some areas for, as you know the timber can change. I imagine the vegetation would be fairly soft and sappy and such a devise could be quite effective in places on the back of a 100HP tractor with a "four in one" on front . . . widows head will be spinning with all these strange ideas. (grin) Cheers.
The story has been traveling the internet but it looks to be just jacking the fees up on their customers. http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahto...re-transfers-no-limits-on-withdrawals-either/
I know I can't be the only one wondering how those folks are working for $5 a day?! I have a hard time finding workers at $10/hr.
Yair. . . ValleyFirewood . I have no firsthand knowledge of the economy in widows region of Africa but going on my experiences in PNG there is every chance those folks will be seeing five dollars a day as quite reasonable pay. Living where and how we do it is very difficult for us to get our heads around the way of native village life. I lived in villages for several years, it cost little to live and my needs and wants were few. Truth be known, I found it quite appealing. I had a comfortable thatched hut, plenty of good tucker, and there always seemed to be a procession of pretty doe-eyed girls who were having trouble with their cassette-tapes and wondered if I could maybe "fixim'". One of the biggest village expenses was batteries and they came in by box load carried twenty miles on women's heads. Out of interest I think the minimum adult pay in Australia is around eighteen dollars per hour. Cheers.
Different economic system, cost of living and standard of living. In my area I don't really want someone that is willing to work for $10 per hour...
Same thing here CM. Our green laborers start at 14 an hour and get a review ( and raise if they qualify) after 6 months with a option of health insurance. The shame of it is that with overtime a man can make 40k plus working for use and it is still hard to find good workers. SCRUB the hydro-ax looks like a rubber-tire loader on steriods with a mower that will take upto 4" hardwood timber all day long. The smaller ones on say a 100 hp CTL are just like you said, good for thick brush and smaller 2" trees. But they sure do beat the hell out of a machete and pitch fork.
Let me clarify my $10 per hour statement - I wouldn't want an equipment operator that would work for $10 per hour. I run a small crew and we double and triple duty pretty much everything from silt fence, grouting manholes, running equipment, shoveling, etc. I don't have any general laborers on board but when the time comes and the work load gets better, I would start green laborers out at $10-11 per hour and go from there. It gets back to the local economy and cost of living, I would assume your cost of living is higher in PA than AL but it seems like we're not that far off.
We do the same thing CM. The longer you work for us the more we will teach you and the more you can make. We don't hire dedicated laborers or operators either. Everyone has to be willing to do what's nessasary to get the job done. If that means your pushing a wheel-burro or working a shovel that's what has to be done.
A smaller HydroAx is good for anything under 6" and even a few 6"s is ok. The problem with a Hydro is there a bit to maintain and what to do with the chips? There will be a lot too. You can rake them up ok, but if you get them up before a rain it takes for ever to dry out. I like a dozer myself. I don't know you really need a big one. A few d4s would work that just fine.
The best way to clear it somewhat depends on how it's going to be farmed. Looking at the pictures it really doesn't look that bad.
Hypotheticaly speaking if you ground everything up couldn't you just plow the wood chips in with the topsoil and let them rot?
The decomposition of the wood chips ties up all the nitrogen in the soil for a few years.
Yair . . . You beat me to it mitch504 . The country would need heavy applications of nitrogenous fertiliser and lime/dolomite to balance ph . . . probably very expensive in Africa. With tropical species I believe the mass of a given shrub or tree below the ground can be similar to that above. This is one of the reasons that when preparing land for farming it is an advantage to remove as much as the root mass as possible and why it is desirable to burn the vegetation mass in place if possible. Cheers.
Look at that, I learned something today. I would of thought letting the wood rot would be good for the soil and help with future planting. Good thing I'm a operator not a farmer.
If one had the time it would amend the soil and add nutrients but like Mitch said it takes time and steals the nitrogen in the process. I learned that one in my Organic Gardening class at Auburn, easiest 4 hour A I got.:tong
Ag work is just like all work, the best have usually started at the bottom and know the work from top to bottom. In this case the bottom is knowing how to farm What most people in construction don't understand about agricultural clearing is the clearing isn't the end game...it's the beginning of a long process.
It seems this thread has been inactive for a while, but I would like to know how things are going there in Uganda?
Thought about this thread after hearing about the land confiscation & violence the farmers put up with ...... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5443599/White-South-African-farmers-removed-land.html
Years ago...in the mid/late 90's I worked with a bunch of south African farmers that came over here to study our farming practices. Great bunch of guys with a work ethic that would not quit. I really hope things are going ok for them, and hope to see them all again. I would trade 500 of our "muslim refugees" for two or three of these guys.
That's my understanding as well RZ . Those Farmers are pretty sharp & resourceful producing food in adverse conditions . Hope you buddy's are ok as well . My first thought was import the farmers to the States & let South Africa figure out how to feed itself ............
There is no way I would be allowed to tell the stories I was told here. These guys had 20' electrified fences around their farms... To keep out the wildlife and the lowlife...
That alone would be enough to know I'm in the wrong neighborhood . I'm out of this place ...... You guys figure out how to feed yourself on your own time ...
if it was just stumps some are using the pull grinder that has like a cat c18 that grinds like 18" deep turns everything in