HANOVER, Ger. — Agritechnica, the world’s largest farm machinery show, is nothing like farm shows we see in North America. The equipment shines to a finer gleam, extreme care is paid to lighting – so much blue at New Holland, Red at CaseIH, Green at John Deere and orange at Kubota.
The show is huge – 27 buildings of equipment. Most of the buildings are the size of the AgriPlex at Western Fair in London.
This is where much of the new crop farm technology is showcased first – often as a concept or prototype.
I’ve seen hybrid, electric and methane-powered tractors, but one of the biggest releases of the week an even-bigger capacity combine from New Holland, the CR11.
The engineering of the CR11 won the gold medal in the Agritechnica innovation competition, scoring first out of 218 entries from around the world. New Holland believes that the new CR11 will break the world grain harvesting speed record set by its CR 10.90 combine.
The CR11 adds more horsepower, rising to 775 hp, more threshing, bin holding and unloading capacity.
What impressed the Agritechnica jury is that the company did it without increasing weight and The combine has already been in the field, tested in Western Canada. As Geert Nerinckx, global product manager for CR series combines told me, the New Holland CR11 needs Western Canada and Western Canada needs the CR11.
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I also got to see the mind-bending Nexat in person today. The Nexat machine is a German-designed power unit that hooks into implements, so the machine can do pretty much all functions of crop production, including tillage, planting, fertilizing, spraying and harvesting all while reducing compaction by following dedicated tram lines.
The size of the Nexat is something else. Between two drive engines, it is powered by 1,050 horsepower. The engines drive the wheels electronically, meaning the system is set up for future options, like hydrogen power cells.
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