Initially Agco made the somewhat surprising decision to introduce it first for John Deere 8R tractors, rather than one of its own. Now the system is compatible with the Fendt 900 Series tractors as well.

Tillage capability goes commercial

When OutRun was first shown, Agco said it would eventually expand the system’s capabilities to include autonomous tillage. This year, that system becomes commercially available on the Fendt 900 tractors. This fall, it will also be available on the larger 1000 Series Fendts.

“We started with the 900 Series first,” says Brandon Montgomery, Fendt’s brand manager. “It’s available in the grain cart version and tillage. Our next phase is the 1000 Series.”

Montgomery said the 1000 Series will come unlocked from the factory for OutRun, so customers can order it with the system, but the remaining components will need to be physically installed at the dealership. Those parts will be available this fall.

Works with any implement

The system can handle implements with working widths up to about 55 feet, a limitation tied to the vision range of the camera system the tractors use to navigate. However, there are no restrictions on which implements are used or from which manufacturer — the system works with any tillage implement from any brand.

The post Agco’s OutRun autonomous tillage system now commercially available for Fendt 900 tractors appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Today, many more producers in Manitoba have turned to tile drainage in an effort to maximize productivity or, like Rutherford, address chronic water management issues on their land. The practice has also attracted significant research dollars into best management practices and impacts to local hydrology, nutrient and sediment runoff.

At that time though, tile drainage was relatively new in the Red River Valley. Rutherford — no stranger to testing new approaches on his farm near Grosse Isle, Man., which hosts EMILI’s Innovation Farms — was willing to give it a try.

“It’s got great surface drainage, but because of the discharge area … the problem we were running into is we had an area in the field that salt content keeps increasing on us and lowering productivity,” Rutherford said at a Manitoba 4R Day earlier this summer.

When weighing the financial pros and cons of tile drainage, it was suggested to the farmer that installing tile would come with a two or three year timeline before productivity returned to that part in his field. In reality, it took about four times longer than that.

“It was probably anywhere from eight to 10 years till we got to the level that we were anticipating at the start,” said Rutherford. “So, you know, in a project like this, it’s all about return on investment.”

“We probably invested about $1,500 an acre at the time. So to go through that many years without any return on investment, the whole project has been interesting for us.”

Alternative approaches

At the time he installed it, tile was one of the few methods presented to deal with Rutherford’s soil salinity issues, but there’s one low-tech technology discussed at the 4R Day caught his attention.

“This mole plow that was talked about this morning, it’s just making a cavern, basically in the same place that you would put the drain tile,” said Rutherford.

This type of plow would essentially cut a channel into the ground where water could flow away from the parts of his field prone to excess moisture.

Investing in such a tool would eliminate long-term infrastructure costs, other than the initial cost of the plow itself.

“We don’t own one yet, but we look at that as an option, maybe because of the investment cost per acre,” said Rutherford.

“If we could take the $30(000) or $40,000 that a mole plow is worth and put it over a vast amount of acres, we think that it probably would have a better ROI (return on investment) than starting to put more drain tile in the ground today.”

The post VIDEO: Tile drainage benefits may take longer than farmers think appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Marla Riekman, soil fertility specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, talks about reducing the effects of soil erosion from tillage. (Recorded at Crop Diagnostic School 2025 in Carman, Man.)

The post VIDEO: Minimizing soil erosion from tillage appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Versatile has introduced four new widths — a 15-foot, 18-foot, 21-foot and 24-foot — to its high-speed disc lineup for model year 2026.

One of the new units, the HS150, was on display at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show 2025 in Woodstock, Ontario.

“What sets us apart is the tilt angle on the Fury HS,” said Leo Reznik, product manager with Versatile. “It has 20 degrees tilt angle, and in combination with the disk angle, creates more disturbance on the soil.”

Reznik added that the new design allows the Fury HS series to chop crop residue better and bury it more into the soil than its competitors.

The disc sizes are 22 and 24-inch on the new HS series of high-speed discs. Reznik said that the combination of disc size and disc orientation creates a very smooth seedbed.

Alongside the HS series, Versatile has also released the Fury R which has a 10-degree tilt angle and is comparable to other high-speed discs.

Reznik said that the Fury is one of the heaviest implements in its class, delivering a down-force of about 1,000 pounds per foot.

“This creates a situation that we don’t need to use a hydraulic pressure on the wings,” said Reznik. “The weight of the implement is enough to keep it engaged with the soil.”

Reznik added that the transport width is about three metres.

Versatile is accepting customer orders for the new Fury models now and will begin manufacturing the units in October 2025.

The Fury is designed and made at Versatile’s manufacturing facility in Winnipeg, Man.

See more Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show coverage on Farmtario’s landing page.

The post Versatile brings updated Fury line of high-speed discs to Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Since then, the system has seen a few changes.

“We’ve taken that system and converted it to look at it as an autonomy platform,” says Dinen Subramaniam, product launch manager for Outrun at PTx Trimble.

“So instead of a tillage and grain cart product, we’re really thinking about it as you buy one Outrun intelligent system and then you extend it for different tasks.”

The company expects to expand its use to other field operations in the future.

WHY IT MATTERS: Innovations around autonomous farm equipment are among the technological advances promising more efficient and productive farming in the future.

At this stage, Outrun is still focused on applications using John Deere 8R tractors, and is available in limited release for pulling a grain cart in the field this year.

In August, the company expects to announce limited release of the tillage application with both uses expanding to work with Fendt 900 Series tractors as well as the Deeres.

“The tillage system and the offering for the Fendt 900 series, we’ll start beginning (at the Farm Progress Show in Illinois in late August) for customer use in 2026,” says Subramaniam.

“Right now, our support is for the John Deere 8R with IVTs. We may also catch the 1000 Series (Fendt) tractors next year, but that’s up in the air.”

There have been technical changes to Outrun as a result of a year’s worth of field trials. It now uses the Nav 900 GPS and RTK system from PTx Trimble. The vehicle-to-vehicle communications system has also changed.

“Previously, the two systems communicated over an independent radio system,” he says.

“We’re now communicating over Starlink. So the two are connected, but farmers can also log in and see how things are going.”

When Outrun was first shown to the media last year, Agco executives said they expected to sell the system to farmers on a subscription basis with costs dependent on how many hours or acres each subscriber used it for.

However, Subramaniam now says the company has rethought that and decided to go with a more conventional subscription model with a fixed per-year fee.

“We had a usage-based model previously, but we’ve shifted our plan to a more traditional model as of this spring.

“Right now, the the hardware components will be a one-time cost, somewhere in the range of $50,000 to $60,000. Then an annual service cost of $15,000 per year. That includes correction for the receivers, satellite connection through Starlink, AI compute costs, cloud costs and everything else. There are no additional costs.”

The development of Outrun can trace its engineering origins to 2013, when some of the basic technologies were initially developed. Since then, those systems have been refined and improved. Dedicated work on the Outrun project began in 2018.

“All of that technology has come along to the point in 2018 when we started specifically working on the system,” says Subramaniam.

“We were building on top of the 90 per cent of the iceberg you don’t really see.

“It really is a relatively long story of development and team building, lessons learned, all to the point of getting this product out in a mature capacity.”

As a recognition of the engineering team’s achievement in creating the system, Outrun has garnered a few engineering awards over the past year, starting with an AE50 award from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers in the U.S.

“We were selected for the Davidson Award out of that, and there were only three honourees,” he adds.

“And recently we were selected for the Fast Company World Changing Ideas award as well.”

While many farmers may not be aware of the significance of an engineering team raking in awards like that, Subramaniam says is makes a big difference to the people working on the project.

“It is really important. It’s a tough problem we’re tackling. From a morale point of view, it’s great for the team to be recognized that way. It’s important to recognize these awards are also focused on the story and potential, the difference (it makes) in communities and farmers’ lives around the world. I think that part is very gratifying as well.”

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WHY IT MATTERS: Canadian Agricultural Safety Week takes place March 16-22. With spring seeding around the corner, farm safety experts are warning farmers to be more aware of the risks during their day-to-day operations, such as changing out shovels and openers.

Morag Marjerison is a farm safety consultant at Keystone Agricultural Producers and has also farmed for much of her life.

“Things can go wrong. There are things you need to consider beforehand,” she said.

Working on and operating machinery is an identified point of risk for producers — metal and moving parts can be unkind to human body parts when they get in the way. Going in well-prepared and with safety in mind can help farmers and farm workers prevent serious injury, or even death when working on machinery, Majerison noted.

The Canadian Agricultural Injury Reporting website noted 624 fatalities related to agriculture from 2011 to 2022 in Canada, with around 62 lives lost each year. Around 54 per cent of these fatalities were related to machinery.

When it comes to changing openers for cultivators and air seeders, the risk is more likely to involve bruises or stitches than funerals, but that doesn’t mean safety should take a back seat this spring.

“There are sharp lips of metal, and so there is the potential for banging your head, getting cuts, that kind of thing, because sometimes the edges of them are pretty sharp,” Marjerison said.

Best practices to avoid injury

Best practice when working on machinery in general includes providing safety instructions for all workers (anyone operating the machinery should get a refresher each year). Manufacturers also often warn against modifying the equipment, pointing to the risk of impairing not only safety but also the performance of the equipment.

It’s also important to have first aid kits and fire extinguishers on hand in areas where machinery is housed or being worked on, and to make sure that everyone on site knows how to use them. When removing foreign objects from machines, the area should be cleared of all people.

Operators should wear tight and belted clothing to avoid getting tangled in moving parts. Sturdy, rough-soled work shoes and protective equipment for hearing, eyes, hair, hands and head are also recommended.

“Another thing that often I’ve heard farmers say is when they’re clattering about the machinery, knocking off shovels or whatever, bits of debris go into people’s eyes. There’s rust on there; there’s dirt on there and when you’re hitting things with a hammer, of course, it flies everywhere,” Marjerison said.

Marjerison also pointed to the importance of footware specific to working on the cultivator or seeder.

“When the shovel finally comes loose and drops off, it often lands on people’s feet. A big lump of metal landing on your foot is not fun. Gloves are also a good idea when we’re banging lumps of sharp metal around.”

Keep farm equipment maintenance safe

General rules for farm machinery maintenace include making sure that engines are stopped and all controls are placed in neutral, with the parking brake set and the ignition key removed before servicing. All moving parts must stop before servicing as well.

“I have heard about people getting themselves caught up in machinery because the spring has snapped back and trapped their hand, and then not being able to free themselves,” Marjerison said.

People working on farm machinery should also always have a means of communication — most times a cell phone — on their person at all times, Marjerison added.

“Typically, what happens a lot is [people] may have the cell phone with them, but it’s up in the tractor cab, and if you’re attached to a piece of equipment, you can’t get it.”

If work is going on away from the main farmyard, it’s important that others know where someone is working and what time to expect them back, in case an emergency does take place.

“Have somebody checking in on you from time to time, because if you did, for example, either get caught up in machinery or you banged your head hard enough that you didn’t feel good enough to drive back, is somebody going to come and look for you? Does somebody know what you’re doing and where you are?” Marjerison said.

People who are just starting out in agriculture — especially children — should always have a more experienced person working with them, she added.

The post Working on farm machinery? Keep maintenance safe this spring appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

For this year’s cereals, it might have been a question of the straw market versus nutrient value in the straw. Other crops, such as corn and sunflower residue, are frustrating to work with and have a less established market if removed.

Decisions also depend on soil type, cropping rotation and overall preferences, said Morgan Cott, a special crops agronomy extension specialist with the Manitoba Crop Alliance.

“Every farmer is going to be a little different depending on what kind of soil he has, if he has lighter soil versus heavier soil,” she said.

Why it matters: Recycling nutrients for the next crop is great, but not if residue becomes a headache in the next seeding season.

Manitoba’s notorious wind is often a factor in whether residue is left on fields to mitigate erosion.

“We do see a lot of field work, obviously, happening in the fall time after everything is off the field,” Cott said. “But whether someone’s just going to harrow or if they’re actually going to till up this heavy residue just depends on the guy and what their needs are in the spring.”

Corn and sunflower residues are among the most problematic, but between the two, sunflowers are significantly easier, she said. Their stalks are lighter and shatter more easily. Management also depends on crop plans for next year.

Soil moisture has been a bigger factor in recent years, given the streak of dry growing seasons. Drier conditions push preferences toward reduced tillage and snow catch from residue.

Residue management for soybeans presents a different challenge. That crop leaves relatively little residue compared to corn or cereals.

For soybeans, soil management should take priority, said Dennis Lange, provincial pulse specialist with Manitoba Agriculture. The key concern should be minimizing soil erosion, particularly on lighter soils that may blow in the wind if worked too aggressively in the fall.

“Some will kind of maybe heavy harrow the straw, to spread it out in the fall after harvest, mainly because sometimes in spring, the straw becomes a bit rank,” Lange said.

Harrowing can also make straw easier to manage in the following spring.

For lighter soils, risk of soil erosion sometimes leads producers to leave the field untouched, opting instead to direct seed into remaining residue in the spring.

“That’s an option for some soils,” Lange said.

The post Chalking up wins on stubble management appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

I also happened upon the Canada pavilion, packed with companies familiar to many of us, including Honey Bee, Mankato, Schulte and Bushel Plus.

The companies say that there’s value in companies from Canada banding together to create more of a splash than they could individually for show attendees from around the world.

There are also some Canadian agriculture companies that are growing quickly.

At Bushel Plus, founder and CEO Marcel Kringe says that his company has grown to 30 employees, as the business diversifies from technology to test harvest loss out the back of the combine, to buying Canadian company Mad Concaves, to training farmers all over the world, from Europe, to Canada, to the United States, to Australia on how to maintain and set their combine for greater productivity.

Not far from the Canada pavilion is another company with a Canadian connection – Vaderstad, which took over Seed Hawk, which manufactures in Langbank, Sask. Vaderstad launched a new seeder at Agritechnica, the Seed Hawk 600-900C.

Chris Bettschen, a Canadian from Saskatchewan, who manages Australia and New Zealand for Vaderstad, says the new seeder will be manufactured at Vaderstad’s  plant in Sweden, but will have components from the Canadian plant. This seeder will have a wider appeal around the world, including in other parts of Canada, than Seed Hawk drills did due to its slimmer available width and new Vaderstad electronics. However, it retains some of the Seed Hawk look – and its well-known openers.

Lots of green

John Deere has one of the largest displays and is organized in a new way, the focus on two production systems in agriculture – one for small grains – think tractors and tillage, planters, fertilizer spreaders, then sprayers and combines. On the other side of the display is livestock equipment.

My tour of John Deere’s display included updates to combine systems, including slope compensation, new belts for draper heads that catch more small-seeded grains and oilseeds, a review of the company’s autonomy plans and a close-up look at its 8R tractor with its E-IVT transmission that produces electricity, which then drives power needs of implements.

John Deere often commands the spotlight with new releases, but that’s not the case this year at Agritechnica.

– John Greig is a senior editor with Glacier FarmMedia. Watch for much more detail on these and many more stories and videos from Agritechnica in our Glacier FarmMedia newspapers and websites.

The post Agritechnica update: Canadian content and a John Deere update appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

“We don’t really have a sledgehammer-type problem-solving option to control weeds, so we have to use many little hammers,” said Middleton, quoting weed ecologist Eric Gallandt, who coined the phrase at the 2012 Canadian Organic Science Conference.

Why it matters: Conserving moisture and controlling weeds organically can be at loggerheads if rain is sparse.

In the fall, those “little hammers” include tillage, grazing and cover crops. Collectively, the goal is to find the right mix that will protect moisture reserves and boost soil health.

“We try to be as judicious as possible in deciding on the tool that will give us the best balance between the control we’re looking for and the least amount of disruption to the soil,” said Middleton from his mixed organic farm north of Edmonton.

Grazing weed-intensive areas is a big part of Middleton’s post-harvest weed management. What goes into the cow is supplemented by cutting perennials off at the top and trampling weed- or perennial-heavy areas.

“Anything that is still green and growing, the cattle will graze off,” he said. “You have to do anything you can do to deplete the reserves that perennial plant uses to carry itself through the winter to survive.”

Middleton sets up his fall weed management at harvest by using a chaff catcher on his harvester. There may still be weed seed in that chaff that he doesn’t want to disperse, so he has an unusual solution.

The farmer runs chaff through a blower and dust collector, dropping it “on top of the straw swath as though we’re going to bale it…Instead of the chaff first being spread on the ground before the straw falls on the ground, we instead drop the straw first and then put the chaff on top of the 12-inch row.”

The straw and chaff mixture is then picked up and used as bedding for the cattle or left in the swath for the cows to eat.

“We use that as low-grade swath grazing. The cows go in, they clean up whatever else is growing in the field and we essentially control the rate at which they graze across the field.”

It’s a win-win. Middleton gets weed control and the cattle get extended grazing.

Middleton thinks of the process in terms of regenerative agriculture. That philosophy includes livestock integration as one of its pillars.

“By putting cattle out on the land, not only do we get a revenue from the grazing of the cattle but they are also helping us deplete the carbohydrate or energy reserves of perennials. And they’re also getting food value from some of what might be the weed seed bank that is in that chaff.”

Tillage

The need for tillage is often considered a weakness of organic systems. However, the use of organic inputs, cover crops and perennial forages tend to cancel out the negative effects of the practice, in Middleton’s view.

He argues that tillage can be used post-harvest to stimulate weed seed germination. These weeds will freeze and be killed by winter, leaving more space and resources for crops in the spring.

Moisture preservation is an ongoing battle for farmers this year, and an issue often raised as an organic challenge in drought years.

Middleton isn’t concerned, despite the critical drought that has gripped parts of his province. His areas usually gets enough snow cover to recharge moisture, he said.

Cover crops

Cover crops provide competition for weeds in the organic farming model and bring in soil nutrients.

At the same time, the short Prairie growing season has been a historical challenge for the practice, compared to areas of the U.S., where a post-harvest cover has more time to grow and do its job.

“What we find is that if there’s going to be a full cover crop, it is most likely either a very cost-effective seed, like an annual that’s going to die [in winter] or you’re doing it behind an early-harvested crop, something that silaged off or it was a winter cereal that was harvested in early August and you’ve got a length of time,” Middleton said.

If a producer wants a fall cover crop that lives through the winter, typical choices include fall rye, triticale or winter wheat to be harvested the following season.

The bottom line, however, is that planting a cover crop has to come with a return on investment. “It’s a short growing season and we’re constantly challenged. If you’re going to plant something there, what is the actual economic benefit that you’re going to get to offset the cost of that seed?”

– This article was originally published at the Alberta Farmer Express.

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Why it matters: Bio-strip till broadens the concept of a cover crop, clearing rows for planting and allowing crops to grow after a terminated cover crop blend.

McDonald, a crop innovation specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, learned of bio-strip tilling from southern Ontario farmers Lawrence Hogan and Steve Howard.

It’s a complex regimen requiring constant adjustments and monitoring.

“It’s an ongoing system and you have to be flexible and ready to react to what the spring looks like relative to the amount of cover crop growth and weather conditions,” McDonald said. “You talk to these guys – like Nick, Lawrence and Steve – and they’re excited about this.”

Stokman, who farms near Strathroy in southwestern Ontario, started bio-strip tilling in 2020 after decades as a no-tiller. He had also experimented with vertical and strip till.

Then he heard about Hogan and Howard, along with research by Laura Van Eerd and Josh Nasielski from the University of Guelph, and decided to learn more.

Bio-strip till systems revolve around two cover crop recipes seeded into a field as bands of “wheel rows versus corn rows.”

The wheel row recipe has overwintering species that offer living roots and nutrients for both the soil biome and the new corn crop.

The cover crop in the corn row will terminate with winter frost, and the remaining above-ground residue can be pushed away where the corn seed will be planted in spring.

A row-cleaning implement with two sets of planter row cleaners per corn row is pulled through the field prior to planting, resulting in a seed bed that’s been “tilled” by plants.

Living plants in the wheel row define where implements will travel so the area where corn is planted sees almost no traffic. The living plants also offer better weight-carrying capacity than tilled ground and reduce the potential for soil compaction.

The cover crops are terminated with herbicide before or after corn planting, depending on the year and level of growth.

“No-till wheat into soybean stubble works perfectly and no-till beans into corn stubble works really well,” said Stokman, who supervised the Strathmere Lodge Research Farm in Strathroy for 31 years.

“But that no-till corn into wheat stubble or a fairly heavy cover crop can be a little iffy. I’ve tried different things to get a little black dirt in the springtime so it warms up quicker and doesn’t take as long to dry out.”

Impediments

Bio-strip tilling is not a simple process, but Stokman and McDonald say the biggest challenge is mindset, especially getting past the previous status quo of aggressive tillage.

Defining soil health, or even measuring it, is another difficult concept. After 30 years in no-till, Stokman thought he had healthy soils, but learned they weren’t as good as he thought courtesy of the Yield Enhancement Network project in wheat.

“The first year of bio-strip tilling [2020], I had tillage radish and I like what it did, but I was concerned about the effect on the mycorrhizal fungi,” said Stokman.

“But I talked to Laura Van Eerd and she said there’s enough other material with my oats in the wheel track and that it shouldn’t be a concern. The big leaves tend to shade out some of the weeds and it really breaks down nicely over the winter.”

For his third year with the practice in 2022, he planted a modified cover crop recipe, seeding forage peas (one part), Austrian winter peas (half part), fababeans (one and a half parts) and sunflowers (half part). This year, he dropped the Austrian winter peas, moving them to the wheel track and replacing them with tillage radish in the corn row.

Row cleaner expense

McDonald said growers need only replace their tillage implements with a row cleaner. A good tractor, sprayer, planter and combine make up the list of equipment most growers have already.

“So much of this is about residue management and so many people believe that can only be done with tillage implements,” said McDonald. “What I’m trying to say is that residue management is a system of combine set-up and technology—about managing cover crops and about the planter.”

Row cleaners can be built for roughly $2,500 per unit, depending on the availability of parts. For his own unit, Stokman found a row cultivator, used brackets from some Yetter row cleaners and retooled some spider wheels he purchased at auction.

McDonald notes a grower from east-central Ontario paid $15,000 for a six-row unit earlier this year.

Still, champions of the practice say the savings in time and fuel are undeniable, and those who’ve adopted the system stand by it.

“The responses I’m hearing back from those others are all positive,” McDonald said. “Their yields are as good or better than their conventional-till neighbours, their time is less, their costs are less and their time factor in terms of planting and harvest are no different than anyone else.

“It’s just that they’re not spending time plowing and money tilling and maintaining tillage implements and additional tractors.”

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