Fendt, who released the Momentum planter at last year’s Commodity Classic, debuted the latest updates at this year’s show with a focus on dry fertilizer applications.
The Momentum planter has features designed to put more money in the farmer’s pocket including in-line tandem wheels, as opposed to side by side, which therefore eliminates pinch-rows. Additionally, Fendt highlights their weight distribution technology, which allows the user to carry upwards of 1,000 gallons of liquid fertilizer.
This year, Fendt has expanded its customer base by now offering a dry fertilizer option, one that would allow the farmer to carry 170 cubic feet of dry fertilizer, which would equal roughly 8,000 pounds of urea, in the newly designed tank.
Arthur Santos, with Fendt, talks about why dry fertilizer perhaps wasn’t a popular choice with producers previously, and how they’ve worked to solve that problem.
“Over the years, dry fertilizer has been basically been left by the way-side and why? Why have growers moved away from dry? It’s because it hasn’t been accurate. And one of the most most important things we worked on this is the accuracy of the fertilizer, the displacement and the distribution in a row by row control.”
Carrying this much product may have farmers raising an eyebrow as the natural question of ‘won’t that much weight affect my overall yield?’ pops into their mind; but Santos says they’ve left no stone unturned and have done trials to test their Momentum planter against the competition.
“We had two neutral research entities, the Precision Planting PTI farm and Ohio State University, run in numerous trials, planting the same seed in the same field the same day, Momentum and competition planters that are lighter and carrying less capacity. And we have beaten them six bushels an acre consistently over two years in two different states.”
To date, Santos says the majority of the usage has been focused on corn crops south of the border; however, through trials, they have had very favourable results with canola crops as well with the first few customers reaping the financial benefits from the precision planting and advanced weight distribution with the Fendt Momentum planter.
Additionally, Fendt has taken into consideration the vast differences in topography when looking at North America as a whole. Through these considerations, they have equipped the Momentum planter with three floating tubers that flow, or hover, with the machine. Therefore, for those farmers whose terrain isn’t as flat as the prairies, these tubers are fluctuating regardless where the chassis is, and they are guaranteeing consistent planting depth.
Although Santos did not give specific pricing for the dry fertilizer option, stating it fluctuates based on the number of rows the customer wants. He did say, however, that the price point is very comparable to that of the liquid fertilizer option that has been on the market now for over a year.
For more information on the Fendt Momentum planter, click here to look back at the launch from last year.
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