Innovative decade ahead for farmers

DECATUR, Ill. — AGCO aims to be the most farmer-focused company in the industry.

“Most companies here are product-focused, but we’re trying to help our organization understand the farmer,” said Eric Hansotia, chairman and CEO of AGCO. “We are talking to farmers about their biggest pain points, what they are struggling with and what they are excited about.”

Those types of conversations result in a much bigger perspective, said Hansotia from the AGCO exhibit area at the Farm Progress Show.

“Then you can go back and solve problems with product or data,” he said.

“We think the next decade is going to be the most innovative decade in the history of agriculture,” Hansotia said. “So, we doubled our engineering budget, we bought six tech companies and last year we brought Trimble’s ag assets into PTx.”

“The retrofit strategy of PTx means instead of selling it on a new piece of machinery, we sell it to any farmer of any brand,” he said.

“We want to serve every farmer. Regardless of who they have bought from in the past, we want to help them and give them new capabilities to that piece of machinery.”

PTx

“Precision Planting Panorama is a companion web and mobile app to the 20/20 monitor,” said Bryce Baker, North America tactical marketing lead for Precision Planting. “It is focused on deep agronomic analysis of information coming off the field and machine to help farmers dive into how improvements can be made through maps, reports, graphs or yield comparisons.”

The latest addition to Panorama is PassMaster.

“PassMaster allows coverage sharing between multiple machines running 20/20 monitors, not only swath control, but also map sharing,” Baker said.

“I’m excited to introduce FarmENGAGE, which is our farm operations management platform that is designed to connect the entire fleet and help farmers manage fieldwork across the farm,” said Cory Buchs, senior director, product management for FarmENGAGE.

“What’s unique about FarmENGAGE is instead of targeting one brand of equipment, we are focused on the full mixed fleet,” Buchs said.

“We support connections to our PTx portfolio, as well as directly connecting to our AGCO machines, and we also support connections to John Deere, Case IH and New Holland equipment, enabling farmers to use factory-installed technology on those machines.”

Farmers have the ability to go through their full task management cycles.

“They can plan work, create guidance lines, boundaries and variable rate prescriptions,” Buchs said. “They can deploy that to any machine in the field, ensuring the operator has the right data for the job.”

FarmENGAGE can be taken one step further to create a work order.

“That includes all the details about the job — the configuration of the machine and the data to complete the job correctly,” Buchs said. “The operator selects the work order and the machine will be configured for them which takes the complexity out of the operators’ hands and removes the opportunity for error.”

These tools lose some of their power if a farmer doesn’t have an adequate internet connection.

“We are excited to announce compatibility with Starlink to provide farmers who typically struggle with connectivity to be able to have a satellite-based connection,” Baker said. “This will be available through PTx dealers in the coming months.”

Fendt

Also at the AGCO booth, Fendt celebrated the 30-year anniversary of the introduction of the 926 Vario, that featured a continuously variable transmission.

“This tractor changed agriculture and now there are over 460,000 Vario CVT transmissions in the world today,” said David Soliday, senior marketing manager for Fendt.

“This was the first Fendt tractor ever sold in the U.S. and we found it,” Soliday said. “It will be living at our Fendt Lodge in Jackson, Minnesota, for all to see.”

The Fendt 1000 Vario Gen4 tractor series was launched at the show, including four models — 1040, 1044, 1048 and 1052.

“The 12.4L MAN engine is known for fuel efficiency and this tractor has adaptive power, so you are able to adjust the horsepower,” Soliday said. “You can run at 520 horsepower, but if your implement will not handle that, you are able to adjust down to 400 horsepower in the cab with a push of a button for better fuel efficiency.”

The new 360-degree Vision and Ultra Vision LED lighting system has up to 120,500 lumens of output.

“These lights have pods so you can control them all at once or individually,” Soliday said. “You can turnoff certain pods so you don’t blind the combine operator.”

“We now offer a dry fertilizer option for the 30-foot Momentum planter,” added Arthur Santos, Fendt marketing manager. “This completes the family of Momentum planter models that have dry and liquid fertilizer, to give farmers the option to choose what fits their operations.”

In 2020, Fendt unveiled the Fendt Momentum planter in Illinois.

“In five years since then, we have won every agronomy trial where it matters the most — yield,” Santos said.

“I am proud to present to you the Fendt Optimum planter, our first stack-fold planting system,” he said. “With this planter, Fendt is bringing the most advanced planter in the industry to a new range of farmers.”

Fendt planters are designed to give three things to farmers.

“They create the best environment for seed placement, they deliver the perfect seed placement and they offer farmers the best efficiency and flexibility,” Santos said.

Each main feature of the Optimum planter starts with the toolbar.

“We have four hinge points that allow the toolbar to flex and move to place the row unit exactly where it needs to be,” Santos said. “That allows the precision technology to do what it does best.”

Farmers can also choose an optional vertical contouring hitch for the mounted planter.

“Pre-selling for the Optimum planter will start during the second half of 2026,” Santos said.