John Deere Introduces New Planter Technologies to Maximize Efficiency

Mar 13, 2025

OLATHE, Kansas — John Deere (NYSE: DE) announced today new planter technologies designed to make the planting process more efficient, giving farmers an edge in getting the crop in during tight windows due to weather and other conditions. Three new technologies — seed-level sensing, fertilizer-level sensing and active vacuum automation — give farmers more information needed to keep planters running.

Seed-Level Sensing

This logistics improvement provides farmers with a more accurate look at the level of seed remaining in the tank. Currently, farmers estimate time to empty based on previous experience or general visual indicators and often have to stop and manually check the seed levels remaining in the tank. Seed-level sensing places a sensor in the tank that can measure the volume of seed left in the tank, which is then provided to the operator in the cab and the John Deere Operations Center^™. This new feature provides more accurate information on when and where to have seed tenders available for tank refills. This feature is available on model year 2026 planters or as a precision upgrade for certain models back to model year 2022.

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Video: Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Indoor sheep farming in winter at pre-lambing time requires that, at Ewetopia Farms, we need to clean out the barns and manure in order to keep the sheep pens clean, dry and fresh for the pregnant ewes to stay healthy while indoors in confinement. In today’s vlog, we put fresh bedding into all of the barns and we remove manure from the first groups of ewes due to lamb so that they are all ready for lambs being born in the next few days. Also, in preparation for lambing, we moved one of the sorting chutes to the Coveralls with the replacement ewe lambs. This allows us to do sorting and vaccines more easily with them while the barnyard is snow covered and hard to move sheep safely around in. Additionally, it frees up space for the second groups of pregnant ewes where the chute was initially.