The Need for Speed, Driving New Planters

Kinzie planter

At the National Farm Machinery Show last week, the Kinze planters were getting a lot of attention. Eric Broadbent, Kinze director of North America sales, says speed is the key feature of their new planter, “We have developed our True Speed, high speed seed meter with a delivery tube, all the way to the trench.”

He added that is just the beginning of the improvements to the new planters, all designed for speed. “True Speed enables farmers to double the acres they plant in a day while maintaining precise singulation and seed spacing with various seed shapes and sizes at speeds from 3 to 12 miles per hour.”  True Speed is controlled by Kinze’s Blue Vantage display, which is optimized for planters and offers a highly intuitive user interface. True Speed is paired with Kinze’s True Depth hydraulic downforce, which provides instant row unit response to field conditions. This allows continual ground contact to be maintained for consistent accuracy at all speeds.

But speed is not the only trend that is being seen in planters; farmers also want scalability and flexibility. “Farmers may not want to upgrade their planter and move from a 16 row or 24 row planter, but want to be able to cover more ground more quickly,“ said Broadbent. “Staying with smaller planters that can work faster is an option many are considering, given the tight financial conditions in agriculture today.”

Speed involves not just getting the crop planted faster; switching crops quickly is also something farmers were asking for. ”When you are in the field, the last thing you want to do is arm wrestle with your seed disc.  With our planter,  you can do this in about a minute per row — it is very quick and easy.” Kinze’s new 4905 planter for corn and soybeans will be available for the 2021 season, and it’s new 4705 planter will be available for the 2021 planting season in a 24-row 30-inch configuration.

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