Farmers keep up with technology

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This article was published 19/01/2024 (609 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s obvious that Bruce Miller and his daughter Sara Tufts have a lot in common as they talk combines, tractors and sprayers while at Manitoba Ag Days in Brandon, but they differ on which brand they like to use — Case IH or John Deere.

“Dad runs a Case, and I run a Deere [John Deere],” Tufts said. “We went from a Case to a Deere, but there’s things I like about both of them. It’s just that they’re different designs.”

Tufts and Miller were among the thousands who browsed through Canada’s largest indoor farm show, which ended yesterday after taking over every inch of the Keystone Centre this week.

More than 550 exhibitors showcased all kinds of equipment farmers would need to seed, spray, swath, cut, combine, harvest, and everything in between.

Father and daughter weren’t necessarily there to buy, but if they were, Tufts knows what to look for.

“Fuel efficiency is a big one now,” Tufts said. “So is cleaning capacity, especially the size of sieves, and the type of threshing that it’s doing.

“Sometimes your feeder house at the front of the combine isn’t always sealed, especially for canola — you always seem to lose more. Same type of thing where it attaches to your feeder house, especially now that there’s lateral tilt.

“There are just more moving parts, so they don’t seal up as well, and that’s why we’re always looking.”

“Sara does all the combining at the Manitoba farm,” said her dad. “And my son farms with me in Saskatchewan, where we are from.

“I think the younger generation is a lot more advanced than the older guys were.”

Over at the Case IH sales area, territory sales manager Darryl Priel agreed that more farmers are more knowledgeable than they ever were.

“Which is a good thing,” Priel said. “So many people have access to all kinds of information online. And when you’re looking at putting equipment to work, you need the know-how to keep it working to make a profit on the farm.

“So, how well it’s built and the technology that goes into it is very important. And it’s extremely important that we put a lot of time and effort into training our people. When the farmer spends $200,000 to $800,000 and over a million dollars for one product, you have to make sure that equipment rolls, and rolls reliably.”

As he looked at the side panel of a New Holland combine on display, Jeff Mayfair said he can dream, but a new machine “isn’t in the cards” for now.

“I’m a New Holland guy, always have been,” Mayfair said. “I like coming to events like this because I usually learn a thing or two and see a bunch of people I don’t usually run into in the winter.

“But I am amazed at the size of some of these machines and how a computer chip will tell you when the hopper is full.”

As committed as Mayfair is about being a “New Holland guy,” Carman’s Sheldon Neufeld feels the same way about Case IH.

“You have to be Case, it’s Case all the way,” Neufeld said as he laughed.

“We’re farming about 2,900 acres at Winkler with soybeans, corn, canola, cereals and some specialty crops like edible beans. With this technology as seed growers, it’s just easier to clean the combine. It’s much simpler, less belts on this one too and more hydraulic and direct drives so it’s very nice. And it also has the reversible feeder house.”

Wearing his collectible John Deere ball cap, which he got in Germany at the world’s largest agricultural trade show, Rick Rutherford doesn’t hesitate when asked which manufacturer he believes is the leader.

“Nothing runs like a Deere,” he said.

“I come from a generational farm and my dad passed away 10 years ago, but when he started farming as a young kid, he took grain to the elevator on a horse and wagon box. And the last season he farmed with us before he died, he was driving an auto steer implement. So, that just makes you think of what happened in his lifetime.”

Rutherford farms south of Winnipeg and like his father, he said he has embraced technology. He runs his combine and grain cart at the same time.

“I control the grain cart by steering it from the combine,” he said. “We’ve been doing that for three years now. The grain cart pulls up beside the combine and I take control of it. I move it up, forwards and backwards.

Rutherford laughed when asked how long he has been farming.

“Long enough to know better,” he said, and added that in today’s world, there’s no question about keeping up with technology on the farm.

“And that’s the exciting part about farming as technology goes along. Because the efficiencies are going up, and that’s what we need in today’s world is more efficiencies, really.”

» mmcdougall@brandonsun.com

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