Grainswest - Tech 2026

Tech 2026 grainswest.com 41 a full granular fertilizer system adapted from air seeder technology. Up to three products can be applied at seeding, including granular, liquid or a combination. Rather than broadcasting nutrients, the system places them precisely in the seed zone. The machine uses precision seeding technology that is factory fitted rather than retrofitted. Bert Badenhorst, technical support person, said the Equalizer is built for large operations and demanding conditions. The Solitair DT drill combination brings a similar philosophy to small grain seeding by integrating seedbed preparation, fertilizer placement and seeding in one pass. Solitair DT is available in widths of four to nine metres with container volumes of up to 5,100 litres. It has made inroads in Western Canada through a series of demos in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Matt Amey, Lemken product specialist, said a customer in Idaho broke the U.S. spring barley yield record in 2025 using the Solitair DT, harvesting 239 bushels per acre, 182 per cent above his county’s average. Amey believes the drill contributed. “The accuracy, the seed bed preparation definitely has an effect on that,” he said. LESS HARVEST LOSS Combine operators have long relied on experience and instinct to manage harvest losses. A new generation of sensing technology is changing this, giving machines the ability to simultaneously predict and measure crop conditions and adjust without operator intervention. John Deere’s predictive ground speed automation, available on its S7 and X9 combines, addresses the gap between what a combine encounters and what the operator anticipates. The system simultaneously draws on two data sources. A predictive yield map, generated from satellite imagery and sent to the machine via the John Deere Operations Center, gives the combine a field-wide assessment of biomass. Four stereo cameras mounted on the cab roof scan the crop up to eight metres beyond the header. They detect standing or lodged crops and adjust ground speed accordingly. The combine also automates its internal settings. The operator sets targets for acceptable grain loss, broken grain and foreign material. Based on these parameters, the machine automatically adjusts concave clearance, chaffer and sieve clearance, cleaning fan speed and rotor speed. Together, the systems deliver a productivity increase of up to 20 per cent, said Jan Kühn, global product marketing manager for conventional combines. A wide variety of crops, including barley and wheat, are supported. From 2027, the predictive ground speed automation technology will also be available for John Deere T5 and T6 combines. Simons said the value of combine automation is in what a machine can detect that an operator can’t. “You can see the extremes of variability in the field, but you don’t pick up the nuances,” he said. “You don’t need 20 years’ experience to operate a million-dollar piece of equipment anymore.” Geringhoff’s Yield EyeQ addresses a problem familiar to most operators at harvest. Often, header losses go undetected. A two-camera system mounted on the draper header photographs the ground behind the cutter bar after each pass, analyzes the imagery and reports the number of kernels, pods or ears that hit the ground. Where drop pans and post-harvest field checks once indicated the scale of crop losses, Yield EyeQ provides a continuous read. The system supports lentils, peas, soybeans and wheat. Geringhoff product manager Hendrik Schneider said Yield EyeQ could be useful to document hail damage for insurance purposes. Yield EyeQ won a silver innovation medal at Agritechnica 2025. Geringhoff ships directly to Canada and has dealers in the East and West. Sometimes a simple design change can hugely impact combine performance. On some makes, this may overload one side of the concave. Winkler, MB-based Thunderstruck Ag Equipment has developed a concave that addresses this issue by varying bar spacing to balance threshing and separating across the entire concave. This reduces grain loss and improves fuel efficiency and separating capacity, said Jeremy Matuszewski, president and founder. In October 2025, Time Magazine named Thunderstruck’s variable bar spacing concave one of the 300 best inventions in the world. BEYOND THE HEADLANDS Many technologies featured at Agritechnica 2025 are not ready for the Canadian market, but two of these stood out as worth watching. The first, Mach’s RadX, uses phased array radar to see through dust and crop residue while it monitors tillage depth and profiles the ground’s surface. The technology is also able to detect plugged and broken shanks. Colin Hurd, the company’s CEO, said the technology is about making implements more self-aware. Mach won an Agritechnica systems and components trophy. The second is JCB’s hydrogen combustion engine that produces water vapour as exhaust, yet offers the same power and torque output as diesel. Just as they adopted diesel, farmers will adopt hydrogen by having fuel delivered directly to the farm, said Jon-Peter McNulty, JCB’s OEM sales and applications manager. While the technology is ready, the Canadian supply chain is not. Simons said hydrogen combustion technology as a whole is still in its development stages. “That’s still very, very early on.” The technologies featured at Agritechnica indicate a move away from fully autonomous equipment to practical applications that allow automation to take on smaller tasks while leaving the operator in the driver’s seat. Each innovation represents one small piece of a larger, data-driven picture still under construction. “We’re at the cutting edge of using the data we are currently collecting in piles,” said Simons. “How we make better business decisions—every piece of technology has a small piece in that.”