This is a YouTube video titled "Can the X9 harvest 1000 tonnes in one day? John Deere Harvest X Episode 1" featuring a multi-speaker discussion primarily involving Ben Kelly, Chris Bartlett, Dale Bartlett, and others. The content centers around the challenge of harvesting 1000 tonnes of wheat in a single day using the John Deere X9 combine harvester on the Bartletts' farm in rural Victoria, Australia. The participants discuss the machine's capabilities, farming conditions, logistics, and the impact of weather on the harvest. The video provides insights into modern farming machinery performance and the realities of Australian harvest seasons.
Getting to a thousand tons is going to be a real challenge.
People said they probably couldn't be done. You just get a real buzz, gets your adrenaline going. It appears to be a pretty amazing piece of machinery and been talking about how good it is. I want to see it but tomorrow.
Is really the only shot we've got to get it right.
It's unreal. Yeah. Hungry.
It's a weather place of the game. We've got the machine to do it.
It's the weather. The weather is in charge of everything. It's the most powerful machine I'll ever.
You hear a lot of people talk about it and it is a game changer.
The S series combine is the best selling John Deere harvester of all time. A symbol of reliability and performance. With the release of the X series in 2021 boasting an increase in performance of up to 70% over the S790, the game has been forever changed. It's hard to imagine what impact that staggering performance would have on farm for producers to need to harvest more crop in less time. So In December of 2023, a team from John Deere travelled to the Bartletts farm in rural Victoria to prove the X9's performance on the ground is a real Australian harvest. With a four day window of opportunity, they set out to do the impossible and harvest a thousand tonnes of wheat in a single day with just the X9.
This is our third rain event for the harvest season and it's quite frustrating. We can't really get a good go at it. We just had a thunderstorm this morning, very unexpected, wasn't really forecasted and end up with another 10 mil of rain.
I'd say our grades have probably fallen in the wheat so we've gone from APWASW down to gp, which means less money for our crop, which it would have been nice to have it before the rain event. But that's all part of farming. You don't have it till it's in the bin.
I'm looking forward to getting it out.
I'm keen to see what this can do. It's always good to I suppose to prove what you're talking about, so talk's cheap. But to get a machine into the paddock and do what it says you can do is always pretty satisfying.
It's pretty cold.
I was just saying it's 18 degrees, feels like 12.5. There's puddles on the ground and that's going to mean really tough harvesting conditions. So it's going to be challenging to see if we can pull off what we want to achieve while we're here. But all we can do is adapt. And the best thing we have in Our favour is X9 is designed for tough conditions.
Some people can't work with their brother. I probably say that I can't work without my brother.
If you want to get places, I think you just gotta just band your resources together and work together. I think if you can get along with your brothers, it's very powerful. It is.
So you've both got your strengths and weaknesses and that makes it better combined as a business.
I'm Chris Bartlett from Bartlett Brothers Harvesting.
My name is Dale Bartlett. I'm a partner in Bartlett Brothers harvesting.
We run 6, 7, 70s contract harvesting starting in New South Wales down to Victoria. Dale and I are fifth generation farmers and like, we were always interested in farming and machinery.
Our farm is never big enough, so harvest contracting sort of opened those doors for us.
Our family has actually been farming in the Pimano area for 151 years. They came here to Australia on a sailing ship from England in 1856 and they actually planted one of the first crops in the area.
First crop of wheat on the family.
Farm was in 1872. So this is our 151st crop. It's progressed over the generations of increasing the size of the properties, which Shayl and I, we've sort of continued that on and growing the operation.
So what are the most important factors in harvest?
Staff and machinery and reliability.
Because, like, if your machine's not running, you don't make any money. John Deere machinery has been renowned for reliability. Like, we just love the John Deere gear. They got a great network of dealerships. You got a problem, you can always ring up someone, find out what's going on and get back into the crop as quick as you can.
My name's Ben Kelly and I am the production systems manager at John Deere. So my role at John Deere is to ensure that our products are really suitable for our customers in the market. So I have a team of people who are looking at requirements for the product and then as that product is developed, comes to market and delivers what our customers are looking for. A lot of people believe that the hundred tonnes an hour out of a combine is the real pinnacle and the X9 can achieve that sort of tonnage in the right conditions. So 1000 tonnes is a real challenge. I think it's a, it's a huge benchmark to hit. The main things we want to look at on this is probably the Tonnes per hour. We want to make sure we're maximising those tonnes per hour. That's what it's going to get us to that challenge. The next piece I think we really want to look at is grain loss. Trying to keep it below 1%. Cut height and spread width are really important for next season's seeding. And then the last piece is efficiency. So fuel economy, fuel savings, and we want to be down probably around 20%. So we want to make sure that we're maximising the efficiency of the machine.
To do, you know, a challenge like this, there's a lot of planning, so this is something we've been, you know, working on for quite a while. Obviously we've got to get machines organised, which, you know, there's a lot of. Lot of planning. Before we even get a machine into the paddock.
Lots can go wrong.
You could have a number of things.
Your crops been damaged by the wind.
You could have a machine bog, your.
Head'S dropping off in the ground and that, a head of fire, flooding, fire.
Grain movement, so you can't keep the grain away.
Logistics, you know, trying to take off that many tonnes is really puts the heat on the logistics. Trucks and chaser bins and trying to make sure we can keep up with those sort of tons.
So we had to make sure we had the right machine spec for this, this region. Tractors and chaser bins and all of that machine ordering had to be done. Then, obviously we have to find the right field that's going to make sure we get the best, you know, bang for buck when it comes to optimising performance there.
So it's been a bit of a funny season after such a dry spring and then coming to a wet harvest. It's probably the wettest December harvest days I've seen in my career so far.
This year has been probably one of the best crops we've grown and we've come into December with the worst conditions.
It is achievable, I'm pretty sure, so we'll wait and see.
I don't think the chances are very high because the weather's not here. We need heat on our side and the ground conditions are quite wetter here as well, so I don't know. I think, yeah, it's the weather. The weather is in charge of everything.
That'S farming in Australia. You've got shortening windows. It's getting tougher to do everything. We've got to be optimistic and when we can go, we've got to go hard.
The rules of the challenge brother versus brother. One goes in the S series, one goes in the F series. We'll give you an hour to harvest much crop as you can. Warm.
