New Planting System From Precision

TREMONT, Ill. (DTN) -- On Tuesday, Precision Planting announced its latest product called CornerStone, a fully custom, factory-built planting system. The product unveiling took place during the first day of the company's 31st annual winter conference.

Integrated with the Precision Planting technology, the planting system comes with everything but the planter bar. According to Justin McMenamy, vice president of disruptive products, CornerStone will offer planting performance through ease of in-field use, durability, serviceability and simple adjustments for changing planting conditions.

"The CornerStone planting system for us is the culmination of a decade of research across the globe and across the industry, looking at how we integrate technology into the mechanics of putting a seed into the ground," McMenamy said during a media preview event at the company's Tremont location. "For the first time, from the mounting plate to the tail, it's all Precision Planting. All of our research, all of our learning, built into one system aiming for the maximization of that input dollar into grain."

Compatible with all standard-height 7x7 planter bars, the system will allow farmers to customize their planter with a factory-built system that ships with all components, both mechanical and electronic, already installed. Caleb Schleder, director of technical services and support at Precision Planting, said that CornerStone was designed with features to improve planting performance.

For example, the row unit features trailing gauge wheels that help to reduce shock that can affect planting depth and seed meter performance. The angle of the disc openers has been reduced slightly to improve furrow shape while decreasing wear and stress on components. Cam discs have been incorporated into the planting depth gauge for easy adjustment. A wider shank allows for the routing of harnessing and lines for liquid fertilizer.

McMenamy noted that during the past five years, the price of new equipment has, in many instances, doubled. He said that in surveys that Precision Planting has conducted, more than half of growers indicated that they will never purchase a brand-new planter, opting instead to upgrade and retrofit older equipment.

"Over 50% of the price of a new planter is hardware that doesn't wear out or hardware that looks pretty doggone close to what it looked like 15 or 20 years ago," he said. "As we think about the CornerStone planting system, this is where we're aiming: to bring technology onto the farm that drives the agronomy in a cost-effective way and challenges the status quo of how quickly technology is brought on the farm."

This is Precision Planting's second foray into the production of a row unit. A previous iteration, the 10|10 planter, was in development from 2010-2013 but was never commercialized.

Beta testing of CornerStone will take place this year. With successful field trials this spring, Schleder said the company anticipates the planting system will be commercially available in 2025.

OTHER PRODUCT UPDATES

Precision Planting also announced a new 16-inch display for the company's 20|20 monitor, offering twice as many widget locations.

"It's going to give growers the ability -- as they add more and more technology into their operations and onto each pass -- to view more of that information at one time," he said. "The 16-inch display is compatible with every Gen 3 20|20 that's been sold all the way back to 2018."

With the latest software release, a grower can mount secondary 20|20 displays and interact with them from the primary display. A new five-port ethernet switch is also being beta tested to allow multiple screen combinations.

McMenamy also announced that Panorama, which allows growers to easily view maps, input summaries and agronomic data from their Gen 3 20|20, is now commercially available. The first two application programming interface (API) connections also were revealed. Growers will be able to seamlessly transfer agronomic and farm equipment data from Panorama to their accounts with Climate FieldView or John Deere Operations Center. McMenamy said that Precision Planting continues to work to develop API connections with 10 other data platforms and will announce those as they become finalized.

Jason Jenkins can be reached at jason.jenkins@dtn.com

Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @JasonJenkinsDTN

(c) Copyright 2024 DTN, LLC. All rights reserved.