John Deere | Total Seeding Solutions

Hi, I'm Ben Kelly from John Deere, Australia, and we're here today to talk to you about our Smarter Together seating solution. We're really excited to take you through a walk around of our brand new C series carts. We have the first one here in Australia behind us, and that's all about accuracy. Then I'm going to walk you through the P600 seating bar, and that's all about precision seed placement. And finally, we'll take a look at our tractor lineup, which is all about unlocking that technology across the entire seeding system and really putting you in control of your seeding operation. Let's go take a look. So let's talk about our tractor lineup for seeding. We've got tractors that range from 230 horsepower all the way up to our industry leading 830 horsepower 9 RX. We offer configurations in two track, four track and wheeled machines. So whatever tractor you need for your seating operation, we've got something that's going to suit that need. But the real key here is technology. Technology is going to unlock the efficiency and productivity of your system and enable you to monitor and manage what's happening from anywhere. So whether it's headland turns on the end where we're automating that headland turn, whether it's managing the precision of the implement behind the machine, or whether it's documenting information so that you can see the performance of different varieties, the performance of different fertilisers, when it comes to the end of harvest, you've captured it all here at seeding time. So here's the P600. This drill is about precision. We've got some key technologies that are going to deliver that precision for us. The first one is Truset. So what Truset does is it really allows the operator to adjust and manage the hydraulic pressure on some key elements of the bar. The first one here is the wings. So we've got our wing downforce here, which allows us in really tough conditions to make sure that those wings are biting into the ground and we're getting consistent seat placement all across the bar. The second element is on our hitch, where we have the ability to manage the pressure on this hitch. And if we're getting into softer country and the front is starting to dig in a little bit, we can take that pressure off and put it onto the rear caster wheels of the bar again, keeping that bar level and getting precision depth control for our seeds. The third component is on our tines where we can manage the pressure on each of Our tines here, the hydraulic downforce that's happening on those tines, again, if we're getting in really tight conditions, we can up that pressure and get a consistent breakout force. And then if we get into softer conditions, we can back that off a little bit as well. As I said, it's all about precision and making sure we get that seed in the right place. Let's have a look at the row unit quickly. So as you can see, not a lot of moving parts here. So very good from a maintenance perspective. And if we get down here and have a look, we've got our fertiliser shank here at the front. That's our, you know, that's going to dig our furrow. And then we have a fixed relationship here to our seed shank. It's 2cm below the seed and 4cm off to the side. And this one's going to cut a little shelf on that burrow and place the seed above the fertiliser. It's really important so that we don't get any seed burn coming off that fertiliser. But also when the seed is emerging, the roots can get down into that fertiliser and we get even emergence across the bar. Here's our quick adjust system. So we have a fixed frame and we set our depth here. Very easy to do. We have spanner on the front, spanner on the back, take the pressure off this spring and then adjust our depth again. Having these all across the bar on every single unit is all about getting consistent depth across the whole bar. The final thing I want to talk about here is our relative flow blockage system. So this is more than just a blockage system. Of course it's going to pick up a block on every single row we have here, but it's really looking at the consistency of flow across this whole tower, making sure we get a consistent amount of product coming through every tower and then again across this whole bar, we're getting consistent amount of seed in the furrow and we're going to give that even emergence across the bar. Here's our brand new C series aircarts. The one behind me is the first one in Australia and we're really excited to bring this to market. As I said at the start, these carts are all about bringing more accuracy to seating. We've got new metering system on here. We also have a new calibration system. But before we get into those, let's talk about the lineup. We've got carts ranging from 350 bushel capacity all the way up to the biggest 850 bushel capacity. So that's around 12,000 litres, up to a 30,000 litre aircart. We've got three tank configurations or four tank configurations and also a liquid option. So whatever you're looking for, we have a configuration that's going to suit that. The key here is we now have three meter centers on all of our carts. So for that CTF market, we're going to have a cart that suits really well. So here's our new EasyCal system. This is all about getting into the field faster. We've got our metering unit here, we've got individual meters. We put our meter in the metering system here. Then we just want to fill our hopper with our material. So we've taken some material as we're loading the bin, pour it in the hopper and we're going to put our bucket on the latch here and hit calibration. So you can see here, the meter is going to prime itself first, then it'll stop. It tears the weight and then it's going to start doing more revolutions. It's going to do a set number of revolutions and measure how much product's been metered out for those revolutions. Once we get that calibration value, it's going to go into the screen here and then directly up to the tractor. So there's no more running backwards and forwards between the tractor and the cart to get our calibration in the machine. All that adds up to a faster calibration, a more accurate meter and more hectares done in the day. Here's our brand new accurate meters. These are going to bring some really good features that you've been looking for. The first one is they're made out of corrosion resistant stainless steel and composite materials. That's going to lower maintenance costs and increase the life of the meter. The second thing I want to talk about is we have up to eight individually controlled meters and that's going to do a few things for us. The first one is curve compensation. So as we're seeding around a curve, the inside meter can now slow down. The outside meter can speed up to make sure we're getting consistent rate across that bar. The second piece of this is Section Command Pro. So that means now as we go across the headland, we can shut off up to eight sections on the bar by just simply stopping the meter. And the third one is high resolution prescriptions. So now with up to eight metering units, we can have eight individual rates across that bar, giving us a higher resolution prescription in the field. All of these features add up to greater accuracy from the meter. So let's talk about blower automation. This is a John Deere exclusive feature, brand new on the C series aircarts. And it's all about making sure we have consistent air delivery right across the bar so the operator in the cab can set the target blower speed that they want. And as conditions change throughout the day, hydraulic oil goes from cold to hot. It's going to maintain that fan speed exactly where that operator wants it. So no more operator having to play with their hydraulic flows. The blower automation is going to do it for them. That means we can have a nice novice operator up to a skilled operator, and we're going to get the same result in the field. So there's a quick walk around of our Smarter Together seeding solution. The brand new C series aircarts, first ones that we have here in Australia is all about accuracy. The P600, all about precision seed placement. And the tractor unlocks all that technology so that you can monitor and manage your seeding operation from anywhere. We're going to have these C series air carts at all the major field days, so if you want to learn more about them, please come along and see our Smarter Together seating solution.