John Deere Expands its Attachments Family with New Mulchers and Brush Cutters for Excavators

Jan 06, 2022

MOLINE, IL — John Deere introduces new additions to its attachment family for excavators with the ME36 and ME50 Mulchers, and the RE40 and RE50 Rotary Brush Cutters.

The ME36 and ME50 mulchers are equipped with knife-style cutting teeth on a split ring rotor. The spiral, double helix tool pattern and innovative tool shape allow for fast, efficient cutting for mulch up to 5-inch material. A controlled and metered cutting depth allows the operator to maintain high rotor revolutions per minute (RPM) and a productive mulching rate. The teeth may be sharpened and easily flipped for a fresh cutting edge, extending the tool's life. The mulcher attachments are ideal for right-of-way maintenance and fire/fuel reduction, clearing standing or felled trees and brush along fencerows, roadsides, waterways, and other hard-to-reach places.

The RE40 and RE50 brush cutters bring more versatility for excavators. These brush cutters are ideal for embankment and ditch management, over-fence brush management, rail right-of-way maintenance, and otherwise difficult to reach areas. Three swinging blades mounted to a blade carrier can fell and cut material up to 6 inches in diameter. A heavy-duty hinged debris shield retracts when the head is engaged with trees and brush, exposing the blades, and allowing for aggressive cuts.

The RE40 and RE50 brush cutters directionally beveled blades push material into the head of the cutter, creating fine debris for recycling. The blades are also reversible, so when the leading-edge wears, they can be unbolted and flipped over for a fresh cutting edge. An automatic hydraulic braking system quickly stops the blade rotation after the machine is turned off, so operators can exit the cab.

Equipped with a bolt-on mounting system, the RE cutters offer flexible configuration to a variety of coupling systems. If coupling requirements change, units can be quickly and easily reconfigured.

“Both attachment lines offer customers a means to step into the growing vegetation management segment of machine use,” said Jason Simmons, Project Manager of Global Attachments at John Deere Construction and Forestry Division. The features of the mulchers and cutters deliver value to customers so they can achieve high productivity, uptime and low operating costs. These attachments are tested in the toughest applications, ensuring they will get the job done and are durable enough to last.

The attachments are tested and optimized to work with John Deere excavators, but the mulchers are also compatible with many competitive 5–10 ton excavator models, and the brush cutters are also compatible with many competitive 3–10 ton excavator models.

Source : John Deere

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”