TWO local young farmers have won a trip to Kuhn Farm Machinery's world head-quarters and manufacturing plant in France.

Ben Robinson, from Great Smeaton YFC, and Caroline Baker of Stockton YFC, were among four winners in the company's Dream Machine competition.

Held in association with the National Federation of Young Farmers' Clubs (NFYFC), it encouraged young farmers to design an innovative and imaginative new piece of farm machinery that would benefit modern farming systems.

Ben Robinson won the junior (under 16) category with his design for a trailed disc and tine cultivator for use on stony land which negated the need to power harrow.

The machine has two rows of sub-soiling tines, the second of which targets soil compaction caused by tractor wheels, and incorporates a final set of hydraulically operated press wheels which can double-up as transportation wheels.

Caroline Baker won the senior (under 26) class after designing a bale wrapper with an automatic film loading system. As a newly trained tractor driver, the weight of replacement film tubes prevented her from operating a conventional bale wrapper.

Her design solved this by using a revolving film storage conveyor with spring-loaded film holders to make films easy to load. An automated tube replacement system negates the need to load the film tubes into the wrapper by hand, with empty cartridges being automatically discharged and replaced by a full tube from the storage conveyor.

There were two other winners. Benjamin Sell from Brentwood YFC, Essex, won the intermediate (under 21) class by designing a bale spike capable of safely and securely loading or unloading between one and four mini Hesston bales.

Having struggled to unload several hundred bales during last year’s harvest with an inadequate bale spike, he designed the new machine to make the loading and unloading process more efficient. His machine features two lower rows of tine spikes, plus a third, hydraulically operated upper pair of tines which grab and secure a third row of bales.

In the associate (27 years and over) category, Daniel Webber from Withleigh YFC, Devon, designed a 'Rapid Wrap' baler and wrapper combination. It combines a conventional large square baler with an adapted version of Kuhn’s SW 4004 bale wrapper to produce one machine which bales and wraps in one.

His design is aimed at farmers and contractors looking to reduce the costs and time entailed in producing square bale haylage and silage, with an emphasis on maintaining bale quality and shape as part of a non-stop baling and wrapping process.

The winners will be taken on an expenses-paid trip to KUHN’s French headquarters and manufacturing site at Saverne near Strasbourg during October, where they will also present their 'Dream Machine' concepts to the company’s head designers.

Sian Pritchard, managing director of Kuhn Farm Machinery (UK), said: "We have been very impressed by the amount of thought and reasoning that went into the winning entries and look forward to welcoming all four winners to our factory in Saverne. All four show some excellent design features, and it is clear that the winners have a real understanding of the mechanical needs of modern farming systems."