The agricultural machinery manufacturer Claydon recently welcomed fifty agri-students from the University of Helsinki, in Finland, as they took a nine-day tour of six cities and numerous farms in the UK. The visit to Claydon’s Suffolk factory was prompted after student Niil Salo read an article on the Claydon Opti-Till machine, in the Finnish agricultural publication ‘Maatalous’.
The University of Helsinki operates research and educational programmes in agriculture, food production and forestry, from the Viikki Campus and 155ha Viiki Research Farm.
During their visit to Claydon, the students learnt about direct strip seeding and how it could help Finnish farmers to better use the limited time that is available to establish autumn and spring-sown crops.
Alongside a tour of the Claydon family’s 325ha arable farm, the students were shown Claydon Evolution mounted and Hybrid-T trailed drills, straw harrows, TerraBlade inter-row hoes and TerraStar light rotary cultivators being manufactured.
Jacob Darby, Claydon’s export territory manager for Scandinavia, said: “Though many of the students are from the largest, most progressive farms in Finland, they had not heard of Claydon or Opti-Till as we do not currently have a distributor in the country.
“Most still use the same techniques as their fathers and grandfathers, but that is changing. Increasing economic pressures, more variable weather, and a greater emphasis on establishing crops in the autumn, to increase yields, requires a more timely, effective approach. The benefits of Opti-Till were immediately apparent, with some [students] already planning to adopt the Claydon System.”
“We came to England to learn more about the country’s agriculture and culture, and definitely achieved that,” said student, Niil Salo.