Agco’s wealth of expertise used to build Fendt’s ‘truly global planter’

Agco has listened to what farmers want to come up with its latest Fendt seeder, tapping into its worldwide expertise.

The Fendt Momentum toolbar flexes up and down as much as 167.3cm to ensure correct contact with the soil.

A constant theme, when asking farmers what they want when seeding, is the need for speed and accuracy.

Getting the seed into the ground faster and accurately has been the motivation for the latest Fendt seeder, which was designed by tapping into parent company Agco’s wealth of expertise.

Having access to leading technology across multiple locations worldwide has enabled the ag machinery giant to design and build what it calls “a truly global planter”.

Like the Massey Ferguson Ideal header, the Momentum is designed and manufactured using expertise and facilities around the globe to be what it claims “is the most agronomically advanced planter available worldwide”.

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“The idea behind the Momentum was to have a planter that’s a global platform and be built in multiple regions and multiple facilities, shared engineering technology and that was the premise of it,” says Fergal Meehan, Agco’s director of marketing for Australia and New Zealand.

“We’ve built precision planters for many years out of our facility in Kansas, but we’ve never had a truly global planter for broadacre farming all around the world.

“The Momentum was designed to plant multiple crops in many different regions and conditions around the world. That was the objective when we started off.”

Fergal says Agco harnessed the knowledge of its global engineering team, as it did with the Ideal.

“We used that expertise from Europe for the electronic side, North America and South America on the engineering and design side. And there’s been a lot of feedback from customers who we’ve asked what did they really want from it.”

In North America, farmers have a critical window in spring for planting soya beans and corn when it’s dry enough.

The Momentum is designed to consistently place every seed at the optimum depth and spacing.

“They need to get seed into the ground as quickly as possible so they can maximise sunlight and good weather on the crop,” Fergal says. “So there’s a very tight window, and the key message from broadacre customers was ‘we want to operate at high speed, better efficiency and better accuracy’, which is a massive thing.”

The Momentum is designed to consistently place every seed at the optimum depth and spacing regardless of variations in soil type, moisture, residue levels, terrain or operating speed.

It is built to help minimise compaction and eliminate pinch rows, as well as reduce the frequency of downtime for refills or configuration changes and cleanout when switching crops.

In the past farmers had large, extremely wide machines up to 24m, but the big problem was maximum speed was governed by the ground conditions and as operators sped up, accuracy in placing the seed reduced.

“When your speed increases, that gap between planted seeds starts to vary and you get doubles, where two fall out together, and then you’ll have a bigger gap, then you’ll have one and a big gap then two and three,” Fergal says.

Agco purchased Precision Planting from Monsanto in 2017, and Fergal says it inherited the world-renowned technology for precision planters – the Speed Tube.

“It’s a little conveyor unit that takes the seed from the metering unit and places it in the ground, so that way the spacing and planting is excellent – 99 per cent,” he says.

“Instead of bouncing off the walls it conveys the seed down and places it. So by doing that we can greatly increase our speed.

“With the Momentum equipped with Precision Planting technology, we can do up to 16km/h, which is extremely quick and twice the speed you would in a conventional planter.”

While it’s important to have seed accuracy, so too is contact on the ground. With wide planters, if the ground is undulating, it’s difficult for the row units to all be in contact with the ground at the same time.

So the Momentum has a contouring tool bar. Essentially that means the tool bar with the row unit attached to it always contacts the ground regardless of the undulations.

The toolbar flexes up and down as much as 167.3cm to follow the contour of the field and ensure the row units properly engage with the soil.

The planter’s patented sensor-controlled hydraulic system monitors the angle of the row-unit parallel arms to automatically adjust toolbar height, keeping the arms level and the row units properly engaged with the soil as ground conditions and terrain change.

“So you drive over a contoured bank, each seed will still be planted at the correct depth instead of the row unit lifting out of the ground and the seed dropping on top of it,” Fergal says.

Innovative technology balances loads across the planter depending how much is in it.

Agco says it also listened to feedback about compaction, because when planters are full of seed and fertiliser, they are heavy and affect the compaction it has on the crop.

The Momentum’s weight-management system is an innovative technology that can balance loads across the planter depending how much was in it.

“We’ve come up with the staggered wheel placement of the Momentum and it also has a tyre inflation monitor on it,” Fergal says.

“Based on how much weight is on the machine it can adjust the air pressure up and down to minimise that compaction.”

The wheels are positioned in the same path as the tractor tyres, limiting compaction. The in-line tandem wheels also provide the flotation advantage of tracks and the high road speed of tyres.

Wing wheels can be placed according to customer preference, but are typically on the end of each wing, to run outside the last row unit. This puts wing wheels in the same path on each pass through the field, reducing overall compaction without sacrificing row numbers or spacing.

In Australia, Fergal says, there’s not a great deal of broadacre farmers using precision planting, but he says Agco has had a lot of interest from customers who’ve seen the Momentum overseas.

“We’ve had quite a deal of interest from people who want new precision planters in a more broadacre style and one of the key crops that come up is canola,” Fergal says.

“Canola’s a very expensive seed and sensitive to inaccurate placement and uneven emergence if it’s not put in right.”

Agco plans to have an evaluation unit Down Under in early September with a Momentum in southeast Australia before moving it west for some canola trials.

Depending on the evaluation and feedback from customers, Agco expects it to be available for retail order in autumn.

The Momentum will be available with the full suite of technology from all the Precision Planting equipment to the tyre-inflation system, weight-management system and liquid and granular fertiliser options.

There are eight models that include 16, 24, 32, 36 and 48-row configurations with row spacings of 38, 51, 56 and 76cm, all available with liquid fertiliser. It will be available here in 12m and 18m widths, with various row spacings.

The Momentum transports at 4.3m wide and when folded up, the drawbar extends and the sections come forward to fold neatly behind the tractor.

“It’s a departure from what we’re used to because people have tried it before with precision planting of broadacre crops, with some success, but it’s never taken off over here. But I think as the technology improves and the variety of crops expands it gives us new opportunities,” Fergal says. “Ultimately, down the line, the utopia would be to plant stuff like wheat or barley, which is an irregular shaped seed, with the precision planter.”

PRICE: Withheld

DETAILS: fendt.com.au