Reading Time: 4 minutes Any farmer who’s ever worn a hat with a machinery-brand logo on it has likely heard of Belarus tractors, although that doesn’t mean all those farmers ever believed that Belarus really measured up to the top-selling North American-built machines, whether in green, red, blue or yellow. That’s fair enough, because right from their introduction to […] Read more
A new Tier 3 tractor
MTZ Equipment adds the aggressively priced, high-horsepower Kirovets tractors to its lineup
Urban agriculture in Germany
Could Munich’s urban farm be a model for Canada, helping improve quality of life in our cities and narrow the urban-rural divide?
Reading Time: 6 minutes If you have never heard of the now-extinct Schlüter tractor brand, what you need to know is that the company produced some famously unique looking machines during its corporate life. Now, this was the first opportunity I’d ever had to see a working Schlüter tractor, and it came in a city — although still on […] Read more
Where crop spray chemical goes, clean those
When it comes to cleaning sprayers, the tank is just one target. Here are a few tips for better, faster clean-outs
Reading Time: 5 minutes Ken Munro’s sprayer clean-out strategy is to send tank cleaner wherever the chemical goes. “We start at the chemical inductor and go from there,” says Munro, who farms and works at Central Alberta Co-op’s Green Way Agro Centre in Innisfail. Just cleaning the tank isn’t good enough. Sprayer specialist Tom Wolf — @nozzle_guy — echoed […] Read more
John Deere goes shopping
The big green brand is purchasing specialty manufacturers while “balancing” its workforce
Reading Time: 3 minutes In late March, John Deere announced it had taken ownership of yet another speciality equipment manufacturer. It’s becoming a familiar story for the U.S.-based manufacturer. This latest acquisition of Hagie Manufacturing, a U.S. specialty manufacturer of high-clearance sprayers, is one of a couple of purchases that Deere has recently announced. Deere describes the Hagie purchase […] Read more
Farm tractors with global design in mind
AGCO’s new MF utility tractors are designed for worldwide appeal
Reading Time: 3 minutes Back in early 1970, International Harvester released two tractors that made up what it called its Worldwide Series. The idea was to use shared platforms to build tractors that could appeal to farmers in every market where the brand had a presence. They would meet a global need — or that was the hope. Standardized […] Read more
Make room. There’s another farm equipment manufacturer in town
Is there really enough market for two more full-line farm equipment manufacturers?
Reading Time: 6 minutes In a second floor conference room at the Hanover fairgrounds in Germany during the Agritechnica machinery expo in November, a panel of experts got together to present their individual views on the present and future of the agricultural machinery market around the globe. Despite the fact world demand for new machinery has slowed significantly, optimism […] Read more
Sask. rancher charged as missing equipment found
Reading Time: < 1 minute A western Saskatchewan cattle rancher faces charges of theft and possession of stolen goods after the discovery of missing tractors, balers, trucks and other equipment Thursday. Iain Stables, 38, is due in Provincial Court in Saskatoon on April 14 to answer to 29 criminal charges, Saskatoon RCMP said in a release Friday. Saskatoon and Warman […] Read more
How “free” is the free trade in agricultural equipment?
Canadian farm equipment manufacturing got a boost from free trade in 1944. What can we expect from today’s trade agreements?
Reading Time: 6 minutes In the last few years, we’ve heard a lot of passionate political speeches about so-called free trade agreements. It’s a topic that is really more than a century old in this country, going back as far as 1911 when the failed push for “Reciprocity” between Canada and the U.S. made headlines as a hot-button issue. […] Read more
The quality revolution in agricultural machinery
Business has changed. You can’t build a tractor the way they used to. Farmers won’t let you
Reading Time: 6 minutes At first, we all thought he must have been exaggerating. It was 2013 and we were at the Hesston, Kansas combine assembly plant where Hans-Bernd Veltmaat, AGCO’s senior vice-president was discussing the plant’s US$40-million expansion, which included a new state-of-the-art paint system. “This paint centre is a major building block for AGCO,” Veltmaat said. “With […] Read more
Fendt 500 Vario tractors finally arrive in Canada
These long-awaited compact models are meant to appeal to mixed farming operations
Reading Time: 3 minutes It was September 27, 2012, in Marktoberdorf, Germany when executives at AGCO’s Fendt brand gave the world its first official look at their all-new tractor series, the 500 Vario, which offered bigger-than-expected horsepower crammed into a small chassis. During the official launch ceremony a band played as the door at the end of the factory […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
