John Deere and Bauer Built Manufacturing have teamed up to build the largest planter ever offered by Deere - a 120-foot, 48-row, 30-inch-row spacing machine that will allow growers to plant up to 1,200 acres in a 10- to 12-hour day.
The planter, which can be folded down to 14 feet 8 inches wide for transport and comes with all the latest high-tech bells and whistles Deere has to offer, will be available in limited supplies later this season, according to Deere officials.
“The DB120 sets an all-new standard in the large-frame planter market,” said Rob Rippchen, division manager, marketing, John Deere Seeding. “When hitched to one of our 9030 Series tractors equipped with a GreenStar guidance system, you've got a row-crop planting solution that's 30 percent more productive than our 36-row, DB90 planter.”
Depending on field conditions, Rippchen estimates the DB120, which is being built at Bauer's Paton, Iowa, manufacturing facility, can plant 90 to 100 acres per hour when operating at 5 to 5.5 mph. Deere's other technological advances make the planter feasible, he said.
“If it wasn't for auto guidance and our new RowCommand units that allow you to turn off sections of planters, I doubt we would have built this planter,” Rippchen told ag editors attending a briefing at the Commodity Classic in Grapevine, Texas. (The RowCommand units allow growers to avoid overplanting when they reach the edge of a field.)
The DB120 is a front-fold, 5-section flex-frame planter with CCS RefugePlus bulk-fill, and Pro-Series XP row units that deliver built-in productivity and precision producers have been requesting. The new planters are outfitted with John Deere seeding technology including 125-bushel seed capacity, SeedStar 2 monitoring and variable-rate seed drives, and pneumatic down force.
“This new planter also comes standard with John Deere RowCommand, a planter row unit on/off system that helps you reduce seed input costs and eliminate the yield drag associated with double planting in corn,” says Rippchen.
Front-mounted row cleaners or coulters are optional. John Deere dealers will begin to take orders for DB120 planters later this summer.