I'm guessing that video is taken in the US since she is planting corn. Here is another video from Southern Saskatchewan. People might be interested in the equipment being used. Mike is quite an character. He works on a big operation, I think over 20k acres. The equipment he is using costs a fair bit of cash. The seeding system (para-link hoe drill) and tractor to pull it likely costs between 500k and 1m CAD. They have multiple units like that.
The video doesn't show too much of it but Mike's equipment a bunch of technology on it as well. Some of the stuff:
- auto section control: turns off/on seed & fertilizer automatically to minimize overlaps and prevent skips. On large machines (e.g. 80 ft) the cost of overlap is quite significant. The seed and fertilizer is carried by a pneumatic system and optimally tuning the system is a bit tricky (he shows a bit of that)
- auto rate control/variable rate control: with variable rate, the field is split into many zones and the applied rate of seed and fertilizer is optimized. That's a whole topic into itself, I won't explain here.
- population/blockage monitoring: this system monitors seed and fertilizer flow in the pneumatic delivery system and will alert the operator is something is wrong (blocked run, rate to high or low). That's the "Agtron" system he is talking about.
- I don't know if his para-link drill has it but there is a variable packing system available. That will monitor packer (the wheel behind the seed opener) and adjust packing pressure depending on field conditions. Wet areas of the field will need less down pressure compared to dry areas
- As is typical these days, GPS mapping, guidance. He has two different screens showing the map. The Deere screen doesn't show the individual on/off sections of the drill and so it shows more overlap. The Topcon screen (comes with drill) shows the sections.
- The system for controlling the metering on the drill is fairly advanced. For planters, it is typically more advanced yet (corn seed is really expensive and so very precisely metering it and placing it is key). On the Bourgault drill he is using, there is a variable speed hydraulic motor on the metering system with a feedback control loop to control the rate. Early in the video he is calibrating those meters so the system knows the mass-flow feedrate of the meter (e.g. RPM of meter -> lbs/min of material). That feedrate will be converted to a per-unit-area application rate. The variable rate prescription map will provide input to the rate controller.
Just some info in case people are interested. Running a profitable farm is a challenge and most farmers are aggressive in adopting any new technology that will help them get an edge.
> Here is another video from Southern Saskatchewan
You know he's from Saskatchewan because he pronounces Bourgault correctly! Are you from around here? I'm in Regina with a family farm about an hour north of here.
Yeah, I grew up not far from St. Brieux and the Bourgault plant. My father was one of the first farmers in the area to start using a "new fangled" air seeder system. That was back in the early 1980s. The machines have gotten a lot larger, more complicated and way more expensive since then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM5ZBNzvKz4
The video doesn't show too much of it but Mike's equipment a bunch of technology on it as well. Some of the stuff:
- auto section control: turns off/on seed & fertilizer automatically to minimize overlaps and prevent skips. On large machines (e.g. 80 ft) the cost of overlap is quite significant. The seed and fertilizer is carried by a pneumatic system and optimally tuning the system is a bit tricky (he shows a bit of that)
- auto rate control/variable rate control: with variable rate, the field is split into many zones and the applied rate of seed and fertilizer is optimized. That's a whole topic into itself, I won't explain here.
- population/blockage monitoring: this system monitors seed and fertilizer flow in the pneumatic delivery system and will alert the operator is something is wrong (blocked run, rate to high or low). That's the "Agtron" system he is talking about.
- I don't know if his para-link drill has it but there is a variable packing system available. That will monitor packer (the wheel behind the seed opener) and adjust packing pressure depending on field conditions. Wet areas of the field will need less down pressure compared to dry areas
- As is typical these days, GPS mapping, guidance. He has two different screens showing the map. The Deere screen doesn't show the individual on/off sections of the drill and so it shows more overlap. The Topcon screen (comes with drill) shows the sections.
- The system for controlling the metering on the drill is fairly advanced. For planters, it is typically more advanced yet (corn seed is really expensive and so very precisely metering it and placing it is key). On the Bourgault drill he is using, there is a variable speed hydraulic motor on the metering system with a feedback control loop to control the rate. Early in the video he is calibrating those meters so the system knows the mass-flow feedrate of the meter (e.g. RPM of meter -> lbs/min of material). That feedrate will be converted to a per-unit-area application rate. The variable rate prescription map will provide input to the rate controller.
Just some info in case people are interested. Running a profitable farm is a challenge and most farmers are aggressive in adopting any new technology that will help them get an edge.