Versatile has introduced four new widths — a 15-foot, 18-foot, 21-foot and 24-foot — to its high-speed disc lineup for model year 2026.

One of the new units, the HS150, was on display at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show 2025 in Woodstock, Ontario.

“What sets us apart is the tilt angle on the Fury HS,” said Leo Reznik, product manager with Versatile. “It has 20 degrees tilt angle, and in combination with the disk angle, creates more disturbance on the soil.”

Reznik added that the new design allows the Fury HS series to chop crop residue better and bury it more into the soil than its competitors.

The disc sizes are 22 and 24-inch on the new HS series of high-speed discs. Reznik said that the combination of disc size and disc orientation creates a very smooth seedbed.

Alongside the HS series, Versatile has also released the Fury R which has a 10-degree tilt angle and is comparable to other high-speed discs.

Reznik said that the Fury is one of the heaviest implements in its class, delivering a down-force of about 1,000 pounds per foot.

“This creates a situation that we don’t need to use a hydraulic pressure on the wings,” said Reznik. “The weight of the implement is enough to keep it engaged with the soil.”

Reznik added that the transport width is about three metres.

Versatile is accepting customer orders for the new Fury models now and will begin manufacturing the units in October 2025.

The Fury is designed and made at Versatile’s manufacturing facility in Winnipeg, Man.

See more Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show coverage on Farmtario’s landing page.

The post Versatile brings updated Fury line of high-speed discs to Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show appeared first on Country Guide.

I also happened upon the Canada pavilion, packed with companies familiar to many of us, including Honey Bee, Mankato, Schulte and Bushel Plus.

The companies say that there’s value in companies from Canada banding together to create more of a splash than they could individually for show attendees from around the world.

There are also some Canadian agriculture companies that are growing quickly.

At Bushel Plus, founder and CEO Marcel Kringe says that his company has grown to 30 employees, as the business diversifies from technology to test harvest loss out the back of the combine, to buying Canadian company Mad Concaves, to training farmers all over the world, from Europe, to Canada, to the United States, to Australia on how to maintain and set their combine for greater productivity.

Not far from the Canada pavilion is another company with a Canadian connection – Vaderstad, which took over Seed Hawk, which manufactures in Langbank, Sask. Vaderstad launched a new seeder at Agritechnica, the Seed Hawk 600-900C.

Chris Bettschen, a Canadian from Saskatchewan, who manages Australia and New Zealand for Vaderstad, says the new seeder will be manufactured at Vaderstad’s  plant in Sweden, but will have components from the Canadian plant. This seeder will have a wider appeal around the world, including in other parts of Canada, than Seed Hawk drills did due to its slimmer available width and new Vaderstad electronics. However, it retains some of the Seed Hawk look – and its well-known openers.

Lots of green

John Deere has one of the largest displays and is organized in a new way, the focus on two production systems in agriculture – one for small grains – think tractors and tillage, planters, fertilizer spreaders, then sprayers and combines. On the other side of the display is livestock equipment.

My tour of John Deere’s display included updates to combine systems, including slope compensation, new belts for draper heads that catch more small-seeded grains and oilseeds, a review of the company’s autonomy plans and a close-up look at its 8R tractor with its E-IVT transmission that produces electricity, which then drives power needs of implements.

John Deere often commands the spotlight with new releases, but that’s not the case this year at Agritechnica.

– John Greig is a senior editor with Glacier FarmMedia. Watch for much more detail on these and many more stories and videos from Agritechnica in our Glacier FarmMedia newspapers and websites.

The post Agritechnica update: Canadian content and a John Deere update appeared first on Country Guide.

He was referring to a number of pressures manufacturers are feeling from global concerns affecting all brands and their customers — farmers in this case. Although he didn’t list those concerns by name, it’s easy to understand what he was referring to: supply disruptions, labour shortages, war, and the need for engineers to come up with powertrain solutions that will allow brands to deliver low- or zero-emissions machinery that can still do the job efficiently.

Showing off the results of that search for ever more efficiency was exactly what the Technology Day event was all about. Prototype and concept machines from the company’s two main brands, Case IH and New Holland, were lined up in fields at the Maricopa County location for attendees to learn about, with product specialists ready to talk about the cutting-edge tech built into them.

“What we’ve tried to do today is give you the opportunity to see our tech portfolio in its fullest, right out here in these fields,” Wine said. “The value is to see what we’re driving, where we’re going with our tech stack and how that’s going to benefit customers.”

‘Tech stack’

In case you haven’t heard it before, the term “tech stack,” which has become one of the buzz phrases in engineering and manufacturing circles these days, refers to the list of automation, connectivity and autonomous features engineers are now cramming into equipment.

Lately, that stack of technology has grown pretty tall at all the brands, because executives believe farmers will see a payback from all the features they offer. And as most brand executives see it, it’s the only way to deal with those brutal difficulties Wine mentioned.

“I think you’re going to see today how we can bring a focus on sustainability and value for our customers at the same time” Wine continued. “In that value, if we think about autonomy and precision, it helps offset some of the concerns we all have about getting the necessary labour. We have solutions that can help people get by with less labour or less-skilled labour.

“You’ll also see today the investments we’re making in sustainable fuels. The ability to drive a negative carbon footprint is very exciting, and it’s coming to life very, very quickly.”

Key to much of the digital wizardry on display, specifically in the autonomous machines, was the influx of technology CNH Industrial acquired when it purchased Raven Technology, and it’s a big part of the reason for the speed at which the company is now forging ahead to deliver next-level technology in Case IH and NH equipment.

“We are fully leveraging the Raven advantage as we accelerate our autonomy programs and enhance our tech stack capabilities, and deliver solutions faster,” echoed Parag Garg, chief digital product officer at CNH Industrial. “In just over a year, we’ve developed and deployed cutting-edge technology to the market that has been scaled across multiple farming operations at an exceptionally fast pace.”

Just how important is that accelerated pace of development in technology for CNH? The company actually spelled it out pretty clearly for the benefit of the financial journalists who also attended the Technology Day.

“CNH Industrial’s full year 2022 agriculture net sales are expected to include an estimated $900 million contribution coming exclusively from precision technology components,” reads the company’s press statement. “We forecast a 10 to 15 per cent annual growth rate across the next two to three years and are aggressively pursuing an estimated US$1 billion in 2023 net sales contribution from precision technology components.”

According to Garg, CNH’s two brands will be improving the connectivity and analytics packages they make available to farmers as well as using Raven’s tech to build on the two brands’ “existing modular architecture.”

Autonomous tillage

So just exactly what machines were company execs prepared to show to the media?

The Case IH Trident 5550 autonomous spreaders were there, but they were unveiled months earlier. However, there was another new fully autonomous project on display, the Case IH tractor capable of conducting tillage operations on its own.

“We’re really excited about it,” Garg told Country Guide. “We had customers utilizing the product last season, so we’re excited to demo that publicly.”

There was also the Driver Assist Harvest Solution driverless grain cart. The combine operator can summon the tractor and grain cart when needed, and can control it as it pulls alongside the combine.

Raven had showcased the driverless grain cart on its website as a project in development for several months prior to the Case IH acquisition, so it’s not surprising to see that system appearing in one of the CNH brands. The autonomous DOT seeder thaoriginally created by Saskatchewan-based SeedMaster was purchased by Raven, and Garg says it remains under development. But there are no firm plans for a release date.

Then there was the NH large square baler that uses LiDAR to scan the swath ahead for size and density, using that data to control the tractor speed and steering as well as adjusting baler settings.

Quick recharge

Tech Day had news on pending global emissions standards. The battery-electric 120-horsepower T4E tractor made its public debut.

“It has a 70-watt battery,” Marc Kermish, chief information and interim chief technology and quality officer, told Country Guide. “It has a dual 24 (battery) pack and will be cooled so we can do high-speed charging. So we can reduce that charge time to about an hour for an 80 per cent recharge. The pack itself will be able to support an e-motor peak of up to about 120 horsepower. A speed of about 40 km/h and a max torque of about 440 Nm (325 foot-pounds). We can get about eight usable hours of time out of that battery.”

To support further development of electric drive technology CNH has opened a new R&D centre in Detroit, Kermish said.

“What we opened in Detroit was our electrification centre, which is where all of our engineering team sits. We have prototyping capability there. We can build prototypes, assemble battery packs, but it’s not an actual manufacturing site. As we near production we’re still sourcing the battery with our design packaging from a third party. We will be manufacturing them in Detroit with a partner called Rousch Industries.”

But an electric drive system isn’t the only cutting edge feature the T4E has built into it. It is also a fully autonomous-capable tractor. But how did the brand come to the decision to incorporate both of those features into the T4E?

“We went out and talked to our customers,” Kermish explained. “It was important to our customers. There’s a premium component as you’re bringing in new technology. Certainly our customers and farmers are sensitive to what those premium prices are. So our basic feedback was, ‘If you’re doing electric just for the sake of electric, and you’re going to charge me a premium for that, I’m not sure I get the same value. My real problem isn’t solving for emissions. The real problem is solving for productivity and input costs.’ It only made sense after getting that customer feedback to add that autonomous feature set.”

Methane and LNG

There was more news on the alternative fuels front. New Holland displayed a pre-production prototype methane- and LNG-fuelled model for its T7 tractor line.

Summing up his address to the crowd, Scott Wine said, “The biggest takeaway I’d like to see is, I think what you’re going to see is how much impressive and incredible capability we currently have.”

That’s a message I keep hearing from all brand executives who’ve been emphasizing it loudly and clearly recently, as each brand showcases it advancing technologies. More technology, they say, will be important to farmers in order to allow them to meet future demands on reducing emissions and inputs while coping with climate change, all while remaining profitable.

But there’s one more reason to turn to high technology, and it may be the strongest driver for manufacturers. One brand executive at another event a while ago made a comment that spelled it out pretty clearly. “All machinery built in the last decade or two can still go out into the field and do the job very satisfactorily,” he said. “Incorporating advanced technology into new equipment is what brands will need to do now and into the future to convince farmers to spend their money on the newest machines.” 

The post CNH shows off its new farm tech appeared first on Country Guide.

That would be a great opportunity to give designers your two cents’ worth as their machine design evolves, not to mention determining if the machine actually adds any real value to your operation.

In fact, that is how all brands have traditionally field-tested prototype equipment, and the Fahlman family was recently given such a chance. The machine they helped evaluate is like very few others that have made their way onto working farms. Case IH and its affiliate Raven brand delivered a Case IH Trident 5550 fully autonomous fertilizer spreader to their farm, and the Fahlmans operated it across about 4,500 acres during the 2022 season.

“This opportunity kind of popped up through conversations with Raven to begin with,” Keenan Fahlman told Country Guide. “One thing led to another. They were looking for on-field experiences with real-world farmers, not more test plot-type things.”

Keenan and his son Brady, who operate a family farm near Holdfast, Sask., remain involved in ongoing field trials of the Trident, and that has given them the opportunity to dive headfirst into the emerging world of autonomous farming.

Thoughts on autonomy

Both were invited to Maricopa County, Arizona, in early December to participate in Case IH’s Technology Day, where the brand publicly introduced several automated and autonomous machine concepts to media. Brady was invited on stage to discuss using the autonomous Trident, what the Fahlmans thought of it, and perhaps more importantly, what they think of the entire concept of autonomous farming.

“When we had the opportunity this year to demo the Trident with the Raven autonomy, we were very excited,” he told the attendees. “I was able to sit in my half-ton this fall and watch that Trident go up and down the field with no one in the cab, and it was the best moment I’ve had in my short farming career.”

However, safety protocol for testing required a person to remain in the cab as a failsafe in case anything went wrong.

As exciting as it was to watch an autonomous field machine working, the realization of what that technology has to offer made a significant impression on Brady and his father. Brady spoke about how it can enhance the operation’s efficiency overall.

“A lot of the conversation around autonomy focuses on labour,” he said. “And it’s true. Seasonal labour for us is hard to find. Autonomy for us is just the next step to improve efficiencies on our farm. If we can get guys out of the cab and we can use the labour we already have more efficiently … such as getting grain off the field more quickly, that’s really what we’re looking for.

“As the equipment has gotten so good and so big, we are more focused on logistics and support of that equipment. When you take guys and put them in the cab for 12 hours, we’re just not using labour that efficiently. That’s a big reason why we want (autonomy) on our farm.”

But will all or even most producers see the value in the near term? Will they be willing to pay what will almost certainly be a premium for autonomous equipment?

Keenan thinks the widespread adoption of emerging autonomous technology by farmers will likely be slow to start, in a way similar to how other advanced features on equipment have eventually become commonplace over his farming career. There will be skepticism at first, but when the advantages become obvious, producers will take to them en masse.

“In the mid-2000s when the first GPS systems came out,” he recalled, “everybody said ‘what a waste of time, that’s what you have a steering wheel for.’”

And he thinks the most efficient way for those who do invest in autonomous machines to integrate them into their operations will be to blend them with existing conventional farming operations.

“It’s not like you’re going to sit in an office and send out a fleet,” he said. “It’s more the ability to have a second or third machine working with you at the same time. That’s what we did, a lot of that type of testing. Using it in combination with what you already have is kind of a nice way to look at it. This is a starting point.”

Getting prepared

Getting ready to use the autonomous Trident required some preparation. Suitable field maps had to be created to determine its operational boundaries. Fields with the fewest obstacles proved to be the easiest to set up for the unmanned machine.

“We had no previous mapping done to match this,” Keenan said. “So we sent out our side-by-side outfitted with the same Slingshot (GPS) system so we could do a pre-map of it. On our farm we talk about making things autonomous-ready, removing rock piles, making certain fields a little more user-friendly for that machinery. The more your fields are not perfect, for example if you have multiple rock piles, water runs, trees — that’s going to limit it. There’s no doubt about that.”

The Fahlmans also used their own Patriot sprayer to create field maps to transfer to the Trident, which allowed it to simply work within those confines while an operator worked in a conventional machine in a nearby field.

“We were able to do the boundaries with it (the Patriot) and send the boundaries to the Trident,” he said “It takes off and goes in the middle and I’m in the other field right beside it. So there’s a lot of simple processes that can be repeatable with that unit.”

Unmanned tillage

At the Case IH Technology Day, brand executives also talked about an autonomous tractor capable of unmanned tillage that they will introduce in the future. Although most Prairie operations are zero till or minimum till these days, Keenan still sees value in what that type of autonomous machine can do.

“Here’s the applications we talked about,” he explained. “For example, we seed a lot of pulses, so we have a unit in the field that’s rolling behind (the drill). We run two drills, so you could have that second unit running (a drill), or pulling the land roller behind you.

“And there are other options. Put it on a set of harrows for those guys that want to harrow. The technology has gotten so good we see a big fit for it down the road in multiple applications.”

Will the Fahlmans buy a machine like the autonomous Trident when Case IH makes one available? The answer, said Keenan, is a definite yes. And Brady is in full agreement.

“We’re all excited about the future, and we’re ready to go,” he told the crowd at the Technology Day. “We’re ready to get the autonomy; we’re ready to get the tech. We want it on our farm. We can see the benefits and how it’s going to help us. We just want it as fast as we can get it. Not even for growth, but to do a better job of what we’re doing right now; autonomy and all this tech to us is necessary.”

The post Putting autonomous machinery to the test appeared first on Country Guide.

“It’s one of those messages — especially in a year like 2022 — where there are growing seasons that bring it to the fore,” says Jake Munroe, soil management specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs . “We did get rains in some areas, but there were others that were really dry throughout the summer, to the point where we’re going to see that impact on yields.”

Munroe believes growers are showing more interest in the subject in response to higher input costs in the past 16 months, particularly for nitrogen. That’s spurred growers to look at alternatives such as biologicals, or how to provide a nitrogen credit to corn from legumes or other cover crops. Those practices can help to do more with less or provide an immediate benefit through savings, but building that long-term resilience takes time and effort.

“That is more the long-term, science-based effort in building cropping system resilience to weather stressors,” says Munroe. “It does not occur overnight but growers who’ve built their soil health through diversified rotations and other BMPs are reaping the benefits, especially where water stress can persist for many weeks.”

Grower interest on the rise

Munroe says growers aren’t asking specifically about improving soil resilience, but more about their land’s efficiency in bringing in more revenue without reducing future productivity. He’s heard of livestock producers wanting to make the best use of their acres with cover crops such as oats or triticale, which can be planted in fall and harvested in the spring. Ultimately, they want to know more about practices that will put more in the feed bunk and more in the pocketbook without harming the soil or long-term productivity.

Munroe says he asked David Hooker about his long-term rotation trials at the University of Guelph’s Ridgetown Campus. Regarding the benefits of rotations longer than three years, Hooker replied that it’s the frequency of small grains in rotation with corn and soybeans that provide the largest benefit. Another possibility comes with alfalfa or alfalfa-grass mixes, which require different management practices — and possibly different machinery — yet their root systems offer soil-building potential.

“There can be benefits for wider rotations in terms of pests and disease, for sure,” says Munroe. “But in soil building, it comes down to the frequency of those fibrous-rooted small grains and perennials in rotation.”

Balancing act

Deb Campbell says it’s a difficult balancing act to manage for both production and soil health, and echoes Munroe’s comment that it’s a long-term process. She says a “systems approach” is the key.

“It could be a diversified crop rotation or cover crops and manures, and an extra list that goes beyond just one or two items to a very multi-dimensional soil health strategy,” says Campbell, a certified crop advisor and owner of Agronomy Advantage. “Producers who have been implementing that for five, six or seven years are starting to gain output from it.”

She adds it’s easy to see the effect of a six-week stretch of no rainfall in well-managed fields. Although there’ll be curling of leaves in the afternoon, plants are still green and growing, while nearby fields that haven’t had those multi-dimensional practices are struggling, especially with one producer she knows.

“He was pulling off 50-plus bushel soybeans in a region of the province with no rain, and his neighbours were doing a tonne (37.5 bushels) to the acre. Soybeans are tied to moisture availability and by extension to water-cycling capacity, which are much better on healthy soils. There’s something going on that’s making 15- and 20-bushel differences, particularly in soybeans.”

Campbell is an advocate of the Farmland Health Checkup implemented by the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association and covering the Lake Erie Agriculture Demonstrating Sustainability watershed. A producer can sit down with a CCA or agrologist and assign measurements to their management practices. The final score shows them where they’re excelling and where they have some weak points to address.

“Producers were quite engaged and it really provided a lot of focus on what’s working and where they could invest more resources to fix some of their challenges,” says Campbell. “It’s tied to soil health, water management and soil management, so making a connection to these higher-stress weather events doesn’t surprise me at all. Whether it’s too much water or not enough, the ability of those soils and the plants to still be productive is what we’re seeing in the fields.”

Campbell says growers who are building healthy soils are willing to pay the added costs for seed, inputs and organic amendments, because they know their soils will benefit. There’s better structure because of deeper rooting and they know there’s something to be gained.

Comparing tillage systems

It’s valuable to have long-term research data on crop rotations, especially since they offer a benchmark based on previous practices. Craig Drury, a research scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Harrow research station, can look back on studies spanning 50 to 60 years. Back then, oats and forages were common crops since soybeans weren’t an option in most parts of Eastern Canada. Like Campbell and Munroe, Drury believes the addition of cereals is the most important factor leading to soil health and resilience. He refers to winter wheat in the same way as a cover crop, reducing the potential for erosion, extending the growing season by capturing sunlight in late fall and early spring and adding to the soil carbon stocks.

Conservation tillage can also be used in conjunction with crop rotations. Drury cites one study at Woodslee that tested three treatments with a three-year rotation. No till, zone till and conventional till were employed with a corn-soybean-winter wheat rotation.

“What was really curious was that the highest soil carbon level of those three systems was with zone tillage, as it had about 12 per cent higher than no till or conventional till,” he says. “It’s like a bank account: the zone till had similar yields and crop residue carbon inputs to the conventional till for most years, because the conditions at planting were very good for the zone till.”

The soil in the zone wasn’t as saturated as no till and temperatures were a bit warmer than no till, enhancing seedbed conditions, with faster emergence similar to conventional till with comparable yields. The zone till had similar inputs as the conventional till but from the output side, the highest decomposition was with the conventional till because with plowing, inverting and mixing the soil, the microbes had easy access to break down the soil carbon and release most of it as carbon dioxide to the air.

“The highest decomposition of plant carbon occurred in the conventional till,” says Drury. “The zone till and no till had lower decomposition of the carbon, so like a bank account, the withdrawals were lower for the zone till and no till while the inputs were higher for the conventional till and zone till. The net result was we started building carbon stocks with the zone till over time.”

Drury says climate change will increase the importance of building soil organic matter. With finely textured soils (clays, clay-loams, loams), higher organic carbon means better structure. It’s that whole process — the way of looking at resilience and trying to come up with ways to start building that carbon back — especially in systems where it’s been lost over time.

The post Longer crop rotations can pay appeared first on Country Guide.

Yet the adoption rate for strip till remains relatively slow, although positive, says Jake Munroe, field crops soil specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA). He and ministry corn specialist Ben Rosser have noticed strip till’s uptake has been varied, but encouraging. 

“It ranged from ‘Yes, there’s a lot of new interest in the last few years,’ to ‘No, it’s pretty much flatlined,’” says Munroe regarding the responses from agronomists across the province. “A lot of the adoption was back in 2015, ’16 and ’17. It’s very regional but I think a fair statement overall for southern Ontario is that there continues to be a modest adoption.” 

Munroe and Rosser were part of a Farm and Food Care Ontario initiative including YouTube videos with five farmer advocates: Mike Cornelissen, Ken Nixon, Gary Deborger, and Warren and Christine Schneckenburger. Munroe says each video features the growers and their rationale for strip-till management, depending on region, soil types or individual goals. 

“For example, does the grower have fertilizer on the planter or have they pulled fertilizer off and are using strip till to replace that? Are they putting phosphorus and potash down in the spring as well as nitrogen? It’s dependent on the grower: some are fall only, some are spring only — especially on lighter soils.” 

Changes and considerations

Mike Cornelissen, a third-generation grower from Watford, Ont., farms with his father George and brother Kyle, who also have poultry. Mike has been using strip till for several years, upgrading his equipment three times as manufacturers rolled out new designs. He’s tested fall and spring strip-till applications and found the soils where he can spring strip till work just as well with no-till corn. By his estimate, he’s one of roughly 10 operations in his area that are strip tilling in the fall. 

With the poultry operation, they also have an ample supply of manure, and supplement it with nutrients from rented barns or manure they purchase. 

“We use strip till as the main source to add our P and K, which has worked very well for us to apply product in variable rates,” says Cornelissen. “In the fall, you have more time to apply fertilizer and can apply it properly to subsurface application. Strip till also works well in cover crops because it can do the tillage in good weather conditions and terminate the cover crop as late as possible to get the most benefit out of it.” 

He’s done many plots comparing conventional versus strip till versus no till, and has one such plot in 2022. As of mid-July, his results hadn’t shown any significant increase in yield. Cornelissen notes they’re getting a yield benefit from the fertilizer in the strip compared to broadcast, but looking at the tillage alone, there’s no real difference. 

It’s a slow-and-steady approach for their farm. Cornelissen says they never make radical changes in their practices, always relying on data gleaned from years of plot data, and they test new tillage units before they make any alterations in their practices. It’s part of a “systems” approach to management. He found strip till was a natural progression because some aspects were already in place with no till. An example he uses is the switch to very large tires on their equipment, realizing they couldn’t use tillage to fix mis- takes from wet falls. 

“Strip till can work for most farms and having a strip tiller that can do both fall and spring will give you options,” says Cornelissen. “But strip till takes work: running a planter isn’t so easy anymore because we’re very focused on keeping on the strip, even with GPS. Everything in the system needs to be thought through.” 

Better understanding

Munroe says that may be the biggest change — the need to understand cause-and-effect. He agrees with Cornelissen’s “thinking through” various figures, including comparing cost of production numbers with previous practices. It’s the best approach with something like strip till because he and other advocates not only want to encourage its adoption because it can improve profitability and enhance soil health and the environment, so they want growers to be successful with it. 

Munroe cites residue management as a starting point for shifting to strip till, something he’s been told by most strip tillers. If a grower is considering moving to strip tilling wheat in preparation for corn, some questions need to be answered. Is the wheat straw being windrowed and sold? Is it being spread? What about the chaff? Is it in a concentrated band? If so, that can cause problems with strip till performance, then the corn stand and, ultimately yield, in that area. 

“Many growers understand that systems approach and the impact of changing one element of the system and having a cascade effect on others,” Munroe adds. “For those thinking about going to strip till, a systems approach means thinking it through and planning before the changes are made.” 

For more information

• OMAFRA is partnering with Soils at Guelph with a strip-tillage demonstration at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show, Sept. 13-15. 
• Farm and Food Care Ontario has strip-till videos on its website. 
• OMAFRA has also created two strip-till factsheets (Publications by Problem and Strip-Tillage in Ontario: Making it Work) with detailed recommendations on equipment, fertilizer and manure) applications.

– This article was originally published in the September 2022 issue of the Corn Guide.

The post Strip till catching on  appeared first on Country Guide.

Guelph-based Linamar announced Wednesday it has an agreement in place worth $260 million to buy 100 per cent of the equity in Salford, which makes fertilizer application and tillage equipment at three plants in Canada and two in the U.S.

Linamar said it expects to finance the deal through its existing credit lines and close the purchase during the second quarter of this year, subject to the usual conditions and regulatory approvals.

Salford will “continue to leverage its established manufacturing and distribution network” and sell its products under the Salford brand, Linamar said.

Salford Group president Geof Gray said combining Linamar’s resources and brand strengths with Salford’s “will enable Salford to compete and innovate at a higher level with greater market coverage, delivering even more value to dealers and farmers.”

Linamar CEO Linda Hasenfratz said the crop nutrition application and tillage segments where Salford operates are “areas we had identified in our agriculture growth strategy as highly attractive segments for future product diversification.”

“Through MacDon, we already have an established market-leading position in the harvesting segment,” Linamar chief operating officer Jim Jarrell said in the same release. “Tillage and crop nutrition are a natural complement to that product portfolio, which will allow us to accelerate sales of all products.”

Salford, founded in 1978 at Salford, Ont., about 35 km east of London, today has manufacturing plants at Salford and nearby Norwich, Ont., as well as sites at Elie, Man., about 35 km west of Winnipeg; Osceola, Iowa, about 80 km south of Des Moines; and Cornelia, Georgia, about 100 km northeast of Atlanta.

The company’s product lines today include tillage equipment, pneumatic and spinner-type fertilizer spreaders and cover crop seeders under the Salford, AerWay and Valmar brands. It’s billed as the only company in North America carrying full lines of surface and sub-surface granular applicators.

Linamar, meanwhile, is no stranger to agriculture, having owned and operated White Farm Equipment and Western Combine in the 1980s. It later shed both those businesses but bought Harvestec in 2015, then took up Winnipeg-based MacDon for about $1.2 billion in 2018. Harvestec corn harvesting header lines have since been rebranded under the MacDon name.

Jarrell said the ag and food sectors are a “key element of our Linamar 2100 strategic roadmap,” which the company laid out following the MacDon takeover. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

The post MacDon owner Linamar to buy Salford appeared first on Country Guide.

A week after the war started, grad rockets — bombs fired via a truck-mounted multiple-launch system — began falling right next door to the fields where contract farmer Yuri worked.

He now drives a tractor in a bulletproof vest and a ballistic helmet provided by his employer — kit he says he’s used to from time spent doing military service. Farmers in the surrounding fields are following suit.

Although shelling in the area has increased in recent weeks, Yuri, 41, and his colleague Oleksii are determined to plough the fields this spring.

“We go out, pass the checkpoints, get to work, drink tea and coffee, put on our vests and go. We fill up (the gas tank) and then go to fields. If there is shelling, we pack up and go to the office,” said Yuri, who gave only his first name.

Oleksii, 43, described the Russian rocket attacks as “scary” but manageable, since they often occur at night. After an attack people check the fields, and if necessary call in experts to help remove rockets and debris.

Ukraine is the world’s fifth-biggest exporter of wheat and in the top three for maize, barley and sunflower seeds. The lack of Ukrainian grain on world markets due to the war has been pushing up food prices around the world.

Last week Ukraine’s agriculture ministry said farmers have sown 2.5 million hectares of spring crops so far this year, 20 per of the expected area, adding the spring sowing area could fall 20 per cent due to the Russian invasion.

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists. Ukraine and the West says this is a false pretext for an unprovoked war of aggression by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The post Ukrainian farmers don bulletproof vests to plough frontline fields appeared first on Country Guide.

Deere plans a low-volume launch this year delivering systems for 12 to 20 machines, and then scaling up, Jahmy Hindman, Deere’s chief technology officer, told Reuters. The company is weighing whether to sell the technology, lease it, or offer it to farmers in a subscription package that could allow for upgrades as hardware and software evolve, he said.

The cameras and computers for automated tilling can be installed on an existing tractor and tiller machine in a day, Hindman said.

Deere and other equipment makers such as Caterpillar have invested heavily in technology to automate off-highway vehicles such as farm tractors and mining machines. In the farm sector, finding workers to operate tractors is a chronic problem made more acute by the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the farm equipment industry, Deere’s commercial launch is a significant step in a journey that has been underway for nearly two decades, beginning with the use of satellite positioning and later hands-free operation with a driver still in the cab. Deere has been testing fully autonomous tractors for three to four years, Hindman said.

While automated tractors do not have to contend with pedestrians, the chaos of urban traffic or highway safety regulations, Hindman said self-driving tractors do need to be able to navigate accurately, avoid obstacles and precisely control equipment such as a tiller.

Deere’s initial automated tractors will use stereo cameras in the front and rear, and can send images of what the cameras see via a smartphone app to a farmer or equipment operator. The operator can take the tractor to a field, swipe the smartphone screen and the machine will start on a programmed path.

The tractor’s computerized vision system will monitor the tiller, which will have mirrors installed on the shanks that churn plant stubble into the ground. If one of the shanks hits a rock and gets tipped up, the change in the reflection from the mirror will be visible to a remote operator.

Deere is working on automating other farm operations, with spraying likely the next target for automation, Hindman said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Joe White.

The post Deere says its robo-tractors are ready to till the fields appeared first on Country Guide.

The agreement will make it easier for CHS’s 75,000 farmer-members to enrol in Bayer’s Carbon Program, an early leader in the drive to encourage farmers to capture carbon by planting off-season crops, tilling the ground less and use fertilizer more efficiently.

It also expands the program from 17 states to 21, the companies said.

The Bayer Carbon Program pays growers up to $9 an acre for planting cover crops and reducing soil tillage. Farmers in the program log their practices on digital platforms to generate a carbon credit.

Agricultural companies use the credits to offset the climate impact of other parts of their businesses or sell them to companies looking to reduce their own carbon footprints.

It is the latest collaboration between large agricultural firms racing to sign up acres for carbon sequestration, or trapping atmosphere warming carbon underground, and environmental credit trading programs.

Some farmers have embraced the carbon programs as a welcome new stream of revenue and a potentially powerful tool to combat climate change. Others have voiced suspicion that companies will collect farming data that will be used to sell them more products.

CHS will pay its members an additional $3 an acre for enrolling in Bayer’s program and purchasing certain products such as “enhanced-efficiency fertilizers.” Payments will be distributed in the fourth quarter of 2022, CHS said.

The post U.S. farm co-op CHS to pay members to enrol in Bayer carbon farming program appeared first on Country Guide.