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: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

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