Livestock Equipment Technology

Machinery News: John Deere Retrofit Kit, Grain Bag Baler, Telehandler Line, Alfalfa Tedder

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 18:07:15 GMT

John Deere Offers New Precision Ag Retrofit Kit

John Deere’s new Precision Essentials kit includes the following hardware (pictured left to right): a G5 or G5Plus universal display, StarFire 7500 receiver, and JDLink M or R modem.

(Photo courtesy of John Deere)

John Deere is the releasing a new precision ag hardware kit – Precision Essentials – that it says will help make advanced precision agriculture technologies accessible to farmers, growers and ranchers.

John Deere says the kit enables machine automation and provides customers the opportunity to manage their entire farm with the John Deere Operations Center. Farmers can install the retrofit kit on legacy John Deere equipment and in mixed fleets.

The Precision Essentials kit requires an annual license with four different licensing options available. Deere says the kits can be customized to fit your operation based on crop type or production system – this includes dairy and livestock operations.

For more information, visit your local John Deere dealer or JohnDeere.com

Loftness Releases 12-Foot Grain Bag Baler

Loftness now offers a 12-Foot grain bag baler that mounts to the 3-point hitch of a tractor and rolls up in 9 to 12 feet.

(Photo courtesy of Loftness. )

Loftness now offers a 12-foot grain bag baler that mounts to the three-point hitch of a tractor and rolls up 9 to 12-foot diameter bags up to 500 feet long.

The company says all functions of the 12-foot grain bag baler are hydraulically controlled, control valve levers are conveniently mounted on the unit for superior visibility of the process and an integral bag tensioner helps to keep bales tight.

The 12-foot grain bag baler is based on a 4-inch-by-4-inch steel tube frame for maximum durability. It requires two hydraulic outlets to operate.

For more information, visit Loftness.com or your local Loftness dealer.

Norden Manufacturing’s new alfalfa tedder hits the market

Norden Manufacturing’s all-new AlfaTed tedder implement.

(Photo courtesy of Norden Manufacturing.)

Norden Manufacturing says its AlfaTed implement can help farmers prepare harvested alfalfa for baling while maintaining quality. The new reel-type tedders offer higher working speeds and a reliable and gentle solution compared to typical rotary tedders, the company says.

The reel on the AlfaTed features six bars of teeth and an improved cam system. Its reel design moves the window of opportunity for tedding to later in the alfalfa dry-down cycle and promotes further dry-down with minimal leaf loss.

Visit the Norden Manufacturing booth at the National Farm Machinery Show next week for more information.

T-L Irrigation Celebrates 70 years in Irrigation Systems Business

T-L Irrigation Co. (Hastings, Neb.,) is celebrating its 70th year of supplying irrigation solutions to farmers. The company was founded in 1955 by LeRoy Thom and is still family owned and operated, with David Thom serving as company president. T-L distributes irrigation machinery and products throughout the U.S. and in 87 countries worldwide.

Starting as a supplier of irrigation equipment, the company took its first step into manufacturing with the purchase of an aluminum pipe tube mill to make pipe for gravity irrigation. In 1969 came the first T-L Irrigation pivot — a novel hydrostatic drive-powered pivot in a marketplace flooded by water, hydraulic and electric-drive systems. The technology continues to be the cornerstone of the extensive T-L product lineup.

According to the company, every piece of T-L Irrigation equipment is tested on Thom family farms and must rise to their standards before the company offers it to farmers.

Click here to read more on the company’s history.

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5 Tech Companies Embracing Electrification, Autonomy

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 22:02:42 GMT

Tractors and robots powered by electrification and autonomously tasked using Artificial Intelligence were without a doubt the main points of emphasis among the handful of farm tech companies exhibiting at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Here’s a brief rundown of what some ag tech and ag tech adjacent companies showed off:

John Deere – After wowing attendees last year with a remotely operated tractor exhibit where users stopped and started a large 8RX tractor doing tillage work thousands of miles away at Deere’s Austin, Texas, test farm, the manufacturer extended its autonomous capabilities across a wider breadth of its machine portfolio to include lower horsepower tractors and autonomous spraying technologies for tree, fruit, and nut growers , as well as an autonomous lawn mower for commercial landscapers and a massive articulated yellow-and-black dump truck for construction firms. Deere also debuted a 130 hp, fully electric battery powered, autonomous-ready concept tractor at the show.

RELATED: John Deere Introducing Next Generation Perception Autonomy Kits

Behold, the hustle and bustle of John Deere’s CES booth:
Kubota – the Japanese firm captured a CES Innovation Award for its KATR robot (video clip below), a four-wheeled all terrain, multi-functional field robot that maintains a level deck across rugged terrain and operates autonomously and in “follow me” mode to help specialty crop producers get more done in a day. However the stars of the show at the Kubota booth, in this author’s humble opinion, were Flash, a plant health imagery solution that uses AI for analysis, and the Smart Plant Imager that bolts onto the top of the KATR robot and enables acquisition of hyperspectral plant health data in real-time. Both products spit back management recommendations to help high value crop growers know where to focus management and labor efforts to make the biggest impacts on yield and quality. Also new this year: the Agri Concept 2.0 autonomous tractor that debuted last year at CES has been outfitted with an operator cab, giving farmers the choice between direct oversight or autonomous tasking.

Spoiler Alert: Those peach baskets don’t fall off or spill. Good job, KATR:
Kioti – the South Korean midsize equipment innovator displayed a multi-functional, modular field robot it is calling the AI Agri Robot RT 100 (pictured top of page). Electrically driven and featuring three driving modes – manual, follow me, and fully autonomous, the helper robot can be outfitted with an orchard spray kit to apply pesticides into the plant canopy as it travels between permanent crop rows. Kioti also showed off a fully electric RX 7340 smart tractor (video clip below) that features integrated soil sensing technology that measures soil moisture, organic matter, and other soil health metrics and sends that data up through the AWS cloud for processing and then back to the grower’s preferred FMIS solution, helping provide the farmer with greater insight into soil conditions in real-time.

That’s an eye-catching small utility tractor, I must say. And it’s “Smart” - beauty and brains:
Caterpillar – The heavy equipment manufacturer kicked off its 100-year anniversary at CES. Like its ag industry brethren, Cat debuted solutions around electrification and autonomy, starting with the center piece of its booth: a gigantic, electrified 55,000-pound Cat 972 Wheel Loader (pictured top of page). Cat also featured its Cat Command autonomous live remote operation capability (video clip below) by having CES attendees sit in a pilot seat and take the controls of an excavator located on a job site in Tijuana Hills, Arizona.

Space-age technology coming soon to a rock quarry near you. Freddy Flintstone and Barney Rubble approved:
The future is here: you can finally put your lazy, do-nothing barn roof to work generating free power from the sun for your electrified machines! Very cool.
(Matthew J. Grassi )

Jackery – With all of the focus on electrification from the ag side at CES, it makes sense to look at what solutions are out there for portable, sustainable power generation and storage. Jackery made a big splash with its lightweight, portable solar generators and collapsible solar panels, and an even bigger hit its solar roof shingle technology (pictured inset). One can imagine a future where growers with electric machines decide to replace their barn roof with solar roof shingles to capture all of that energy from the sun and use it to power power electrified equipment around the farm. Something tells me that Jackery is going to be relevant in the ag world should the shift to electrification continue on at the farm gate.

Stay tuned to AgWeb.com for more ongoing coverage of what we saw and heard at CES 2025 in the days and weeks ahead!

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A Farmer Can Dream, Right? Tesla Robots As the Farm Labor Force of the Future?

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 18:57:14 GMT

With a visual form ripped straight from a skin-crawl inducing robot thriller, Tesla’s new AI-bot, Optimus, is eliciting strong reactions from tech advocates and flip-phone touting technophobes.

Let’s indulge our imaginations for just a second and imagine how a farmer could put one of Musk’s $20,000 helper robots to work around the family farm in, say, the year 2040. I use 2040 because, even though the prototypes in the video below look awesome, it turns out the AI behind it needs more work before any farmer would feel safe setting a squad of them loose on the farm.

Our own Clinton Griffiths was also inspired by Optimus’ unveiling. In his upcoming column in the November issue of Farm Journal, Clinton gets right to the heart of the issue, and that’s whether the bots will pan out on the farm?

The real test, he writes, “will be whether it can keep its glossy finish motoring along regardless of whether or not the field is mud-free.”

I couldn’t agree more, Clinton. Serving up fancy drinks during an unveiling party on a glitzy Hollywood film studio lot is one thing. Standing up to all the dust and heat and tough conditions of your average farm or ranch is a different beast altogether.

In that vein, we offer up the following farm chore list Optimus can take over from here on out.

No, seriously Opti, you don’t need our permission. Just go ahead and take care of these few little things every single day for the rest of time, and we’ll be off, I don’t know, fishing at the lake with the kids, rocking on the front porch, or something.

Farm equipment maintenance tech
Director of crop protection jug disposal
Backpack spraying around-the-clock weed warrior
Chief grain bin inspector
Head ladder climber
Irrigation pivot inspector general
Head high in July crop scout
Pig loader and unloader extraordinaire
Master bottle mixer and calf feeder

Now that you’ve read my list, I’m curious how you would use a robot that walks, talks and moves like a real human (and never gets tired, bored or spends 20 minutes staring at its phone) on your farm? or click

Share your robot wish list by clicking the green “Respond Here” button or click here .

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Big Ideas Born in the Field

Tue, 20 Sep 2022 04:16:40 GMT

Farmers Upfront

The teams at AgLaunch and AgVentures Alliance are assembling a network of farmers from the Mid-South through the Midwest to link together precommercial startups with farmers who can provide their acres, data and insights.

“We’ve all bought something that after we used it, we discovered it wasn’t near what it was thought to be,” says Johnny Dodson, a Tennessee farmer and adviser to AgLaunch. “That’s everything from the electronic gadgets to seed production — it’s all of the above.”

On his farm, Dodson navigates the balance between product promise and real-world potential.

“I know there are a lot of ideas out there. Agriculture is full of ingenuity. We need to not only kick the tires but have dialogue and build trust,” he says.

In this new model, the incubation process for new ideas is proving there is more than bushels to be gained; it’s equity to be shared.

Entrepreneurs benefit from the feedback farmers share for product development. More than two dozen startups have advanced their ideas in this network. In addition, more than $40 million in investment capital has been raised, and more than 100 jobs have been created.

Gaining traction, this new model puts farmers in the driver’s seat.

“We’re catapulting ideas forward through alignment with the farmer,“ says Pete Nelson, executive director at AgLaunch. He says digital and biological technologies need access to farmers to build, prove and scale.

“Fully invigorating the potential for aligned capital from the farm community will take this to the next level,“ he says.

Bankable ideas

One mechanism specifically designed to help springboard technologies closer to farmers is a 2002 farm bill program called Rural Business Investment Company (RBIC), says Matt McKenna, former USDA senior advisor.

USDA licenses newly formed for-profit entities as RBICs, which then use the equity raised to make venture capital investments mostly in smaller businesses.

“There is so much liquidity in the system, but the difficulty comes with scale,” says McKenna, now a principal at Open Prairie, and a board member at Innova, both USDA-certified RBIC funds. “Most investments in rural America are smaller-sized, and RBICs are a vehicle that allow money to find its way to those investments.”

Since its formation, seven RBICs have raised more than $800 million in private capital, primarily from a group of a dozen Farm Credit banks.

The additional benefit of the technology development taking place on farms is the resulting rural economic development.

“We see our small towns fading away,” says Scott Fullen, Tennessee farmer and AgLaunch network member. “What if we can change that? If we can get some of those technology companies to build in our rural incubation network, it can help everyone.”

Think of it as a circular cycle: startups bring ideas to farmers, farmers help startups develop their products, startups raise money and set up headquarters close to their small-town customers.

It’s that proximity to the end user helping fuel this idea. “The closer you are to the farmer, the more likely your idea will find success,” McKenna says.

Businesses Born On the Farm For the Farm

DIY Irrigation App Saves Time, Labor, Fuel and Stress

Nathan Holmes was sick of waking at 2 a.m. in a cold sweat: had he turned off a particular well pump on his farm. Maybe? Maybe not? Weary of fighting a logistical nightmare, Missouri row-crop farmer Holmes initially created a DIY smartphone remedy solely for his operation, and then partnered with a tech company to take the solution to market. The result is PumpTrakr, a simple and low-cost irrigation app that manages pump locations, activity, fuel, maintenance and more.

Read More at AgWeb.com/PumpTrakr

A Digital Solution for Farm Labor Bottlenecks

Kevin Johansen saw a trend — producers were using social media to find part-time help. As a fifth-generation Missouri producer, he had felt the labor pinch himself. Through a little brainstorming, the idea for a mobile app, AgButler, was born. The mission is simple: connect employers to laborers. Johansen and his team connected with a developer and built a demo in September 2018. Favorable reviews and rankings in ag tech competitions, as well as being awarded a grant help seed their finances and business plan. Now available in app stores, AgButler includes jobs in crop, livestock, transportation and construction industries.

Read More at AgWeb.com/AgButler

Manure Opens Doors for Family Farm to Expand

Get a load of this — manure management provided one family with the opportunity to create a new business. Zimmerman Manufacturing started with the clear goal to use manure nutrients better. Raymond Zimmerman of Cantril, Iowa, created the Contour King Swivel for a way to inject manure faster, smarter and more precisely than products without the attachment. The business started in partnership with a local dealer. Today they have dealers from the Midwest to the East Coast.

Read More at AgWeb.com/ZimmermanManufacturing

To hear AgLaunch experts share how you can leverage data, expertise and acres for new technology, visit AgWeb.com/AgLaunch