Everyone loves a potato. It is a versatile treat that can be easily prepared in any form: in a salad, baked, fried, as chips, wedges, or mashed potatoes. However, potato farming is a different ball game.

Most potato farmers plant under irrigation, preparing special beds for the planting season, where potatoes are placed on top to allow the roots and tubers enough room to grow.

As essential as these beds are for farmers, they also create significant challenges. Due to the height of the beds, water runs off during irrigation, costing farmers a lot of money.

Fortunately, for all the farmers of this staple food, Jannie Myburgh from Myburgh Equipment is ready with the solution: Myburgh Equipment’s dam maker is specifically designed to overcome this problem.

This is what a potato field looks like with proper beds and dams that keep the water where the plants need it and can fully utilise it!

If Myburgh Equipment does not already have the solution, they make it.

Jannie explains that the concept comes from the Netherlands. “It is a machine designed to create small dams between the potato beds to prevent water from running off. This machine creates dams between the beds to catch the water.”

The Americans are currently using the same concept. They call it the “dam ditcher”.

Jannie further explains that the original versions of the machine looked like a wheel with fins on it. It made very small holes in the ground. That is why they started with a much more aggressive version of the implement.

“Our machine is much more aggressive. We call it the controlled dam maker. It has three blades that push the soil forward like a bulldozer. The soil is loosened so that the wheel can climb over the bank.”

This is how the dam maker literally makes … dams! When the potatoes are irrigated, these dams catch the water. If you can keep that water from running off quickly, the farmer saves an astronomical amount of money.

In the original design, the dams were 400 mm wide, 600 mm long, and between 150 and 200 mm deep. “That is big; it is a dam!” Jannie asserts.

Myburgh Equipment’s dam maker in action.

For more information on the controlled dam maker or any other useful equipment, feel free to contact Myburgh Equipment today. Visit their website at www.mtoer.co.za, send an e-mail to mybtoer@gmail.com, or call (+27)82-417-0175.