And to think, when I was a young lad on the farm, we planted all our corn with a 2 row planter and picked that corn with a 1 row picker! Times certainly have changed.
And chances are that thing runs on autopilot too! If they are totally setup, the computer kept track of yield/mapped last year and the fertilizer can be varied accordingly. Also, with those ultra-wide planters, the individual rows speed up/slow down to keep seed spacing consistent when turning/not running in a straight line...also, will shut off rows if there is overlap on an odd shaped/sized field.
My great grandfather would have Had farm on Connecticut river valley; land was rock laden and so steep; he did it with horses as tractor then needed sandbags etc
So you think having a mini fridges with a 12 pack of beer, your days food at your side & your feet propped up making TikTok videos & playing on your phone is making folks soft ??? Lol There are some younger gents around here that refuse to run a combine in manual mode. If the auto track is malfunctioning or the auto header height is not working properly, that machine just sits until a tech shows up to repair it. That machine could be ran in manual mode but the said “operator “ wouldn’t be able to play on their phone & put their feet up, it would also require concentration & efforts Satellite drift & instrument drift can account for up to 3’ of drift over the coarse of a day. Most new planters don’t come with markers, they are a special order option so there is no way to check your alignment. Seed shutoffs are great most of the time but when they malfunction or a gremlin gets in the system they are an enormous PIA.
Hmmm, I don't know about "soft". They're certainly 'smarter'. Something like 80% of farmers now have some sort of post high school educations because of the technical nature of modern farming. Even market gardening requires a bit of business acumen.
btw, does anyone have an idea how many rows get planted with only one round? Hint, it is very close to 100. That's probably about the maximum (or close to it) that we could plant in a day when I was old enough to start planting.
High product demand and fewer people in the industry I would think would make having machinery that works bigger and quicker a necessity.
That's nuts! It looks like something AI would come up with. Did I count 48 seeders? Can't wait to show my dad. This will bring out a few stories for sure!
It looks like a 48 row. A lot of manufacturers are making 30” & 20” row spacing planters The 36 row planters I have seen have independent steering so they can turn without busting stuff up, I would guess that a 48 would a have similar setup. Lots of 12 & 16 rows around here, a few 24 rows.
John Deere DB120. 120’ working width, 48 rows at 30” spacing. None of them around here, our fields are too small for such a monster to operate efficiently. The biggest planters around here are 24 row (60’) wide.
It is funny now thinking of a 20 row planter as small. I've often wondered what it would be like if they still cultivated. How many rows. The first time I cultivated with a 4 row, I though I'd died and went to heaven.
