Reading Time: 5 minutes Anyone who has operated or worked on repairing machinery has from time to time cursed the engineer who came up with an awkward design, or when fighting with a part that is nearly impossible to remove and replace when it fails. But what if one of the major brands knocked on your door and asked […] Read more
Putting autonomous machinery to the test
Saskatchewan farmers get a chance for a season with an autonomous fertilizer spreader
Searching for farm improvement? Try online learning
The internet adds more mid-career education choices for your business
Reading Time: 5 minutes One drawback to living on a farm is that unless the farm is within easy driving distance of a major centre — and most aren’t — it can be tough to access post-secondary education and farm at the same time. Over the last few decades, however, the internet has changed everything by bringing educational programs […] Read more
The energy transition for tractors has already begun
Hydrogen is emerging as a potential diesel fuel replacement
Reading Time: 5 minutes This fall at the annual Bauma construction machinery show in Munich, Germany, Volvo Penta, a longtime engine supplier to the industrial and marine industries, unveiled its new eight-litre, dual-fuel hydrogen engine. The company claims the use of renewable hydrogen as a fuel means its new engine will reduce CO2 emissions by up to 80 per […] Read more
Should we pay more attention to European tractor competitions?
Comparing apples to apples with North American machinery brands
Reading Time: 5 minutes Here in North America, many producers have a favourite farm machinery brand and wouldn’t think of buying anything else. Often there may be some practical reasons behind that choice. Parts and service availability, proximity to a dealer or maintaining a relationship with a dealer can pay dividends. But those factors can sometimes result in producers […] Read more
The right side
What does it take to be seen to be working toward a healthier world? The globe’s machinery makers have an answer
Reading Time: 5 minutes Agriculture is becoming the target of fringe activist groups. No, let me re-state that. Agriculture is already the target of these groups. The reasons are many and varied but they’re almost always linked to the same basic problem — knee-jerk responses to complex issues — like the feeling that Canada’s high-tech, high-science agriculture has got […] Read more
Manufacturers brace for a changing climate
Machinery brands prepare for a future of uncertainty due to global warming
Reading Time: 5 minutes The images in early October were stunning. Hurricane Fiona had sent a record-breaking ocean storm surge against Newfoundland coastal communities, leaving death and devastation in its wake. It’s the kind of event climate scientists have warned would occur more frequently due to global warming. At the same time, across the globe record flooding was wreaking […] Read more
Virtual testing for real world conditions
Manufacturers turn to computer technology to validate new machine designs
Reading Time: 6 minutes A few years ago I was interviewing a retired engineer who had worked at Massey Ferguson. We were talking about his involvement in testing prototypes, and he recalled how a group of employees would have to take shifts running newly designed machines over the “bump track” behind the engineering centre. That was a track with […] Read more
The race toward precision agriculture
AGCO believes new environmental regs will shove farmers to invest more in precision ag
Reading Time: 6 minutes In mid-July farmers in the Netherlands turned out en masse to block highways, an airport and various food distribution routes. Those acts of civil disobedience were sparked by resistance to the European Union’s “Green New Deal,” which establishes a host of new environmental regulations that Dutch farmers think will significantly affect their production methods. It’s […] Read more
The diversity gap
The slow progress by equipment manufacturers on racial and ethnic diversity is in marked contrast to their success with women
Reading Time: 6 minutes Canada’s population is becoming increasingly diverse. Statistics Canada estimates that immigrants made up roughly 22 per cent of the population in 2016, and our country expects to welcome over 400,000 more per year until 2024. This will almost certainly result in a continually growing percentage of visible minorities among Canada’s working age people over the […] Read more
How about lunch?
Here’s a management tip from the big companies. Invest a little more to make lunchtime really worth coming to work for
Reading Time: 5 minutes We’ve all seen that famous old white-knuckle photograph. There’s a group of ironworkers having lunch sitting untethered on a steel girder way up in mid-air, dozens of floors above the street during construction of the Empire State Building. It must get the award for the most sparsely outfitted lunchroom ever. In recent years, by contrast, […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
