Ag Tire Talk: IF/VF vs. Standard Tire Technology

Mar 07, 2024

MAXAM:“The development of IF (increased flexion) and VF (very increased flexion) technology is allowing working air pressures to be lowered significantly delivering improved performance and better crop yields.”

BKT:“There are definite advantages in using IF/VF tires and applications where they work and perform much better than standard tires.”

YOKOHAMA OFF HIGHWAY TIRES AMERICA: “That’s because IF and VF Tires can help farmers reduce compaction force on their soils by 20 to 40%, or carry higher loads than conventional radials without increasing compaction.”

MICHELIN: “Independent studies conducted by Harper Adams University and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, both concluded using Michelin (IF/VF) tires, at properly recommended field air pressures, will produce up to an additional 4.31% yield.

YOKOHAMA TWS:“How can tires with IF/VF Technology carry the same load with less air pressure? The answer is because the sidewalls have been redesigned to carry some of the load, whereas standard radial tires use the air pressure to carry the entire load.”

Click here to see more...

Video: Selling Hay for 40 Years: Fritz Trauttmansdorff, Dunlea Farms

Fritz Trauttmansdorff came to Canada from Austria in 1980, bought a 45-cow dairy farm at Jerseyville, and within two years had more hay than he knew what to do with. He sold the quota in 1986, went debt-free, and built a hay business that has kept some of the same customers for forty years. Today Dunlea Farms runs about 2,500 acres — roughly 600 of it hay, the rest IP soybeans and grain corn — and Fritz makes the case that hay isn't the crop you grow when grain doesn't work. It's the crop that makes the grain work.

"If you grow corn, soybeans and wheat, you're on a three-wheeler. If you put hay in the rotation, you're on a four-wheeler."

WHAT WE COVER • Why the hay market moves independently of the Chicago Board — and what that does for farm-level risk
• The real cost of a mistake: five bushels in grain, versus the whole crop in hay
• Getting a second job out of the same iron — planting tractors that mow all summer, tillage tractors that bale
• How a grain farmer can get hay into the rotation without buying a single piece of hay equipment
• Drilling Timothy in the fall and double-cropping soybeans into it the next June
• What it actually takes to go all-in: roughly 500 acres, good sheds, and a baler you didn't buy used
• Local, regional and international hay markets — and choosing which one you're building for
• Why 40-year customer relationships are the asset, not the equipment