The engineers have decided on the most innovative products to reach the North American market in the past year, and 28 of them are tools that prairie farmers use — and that doesn’t include planters and smaller tractors and utility vehicles.
With planters, add another four or five, and if a producer is looking for large-scale tillage in their operations, add another four. As well, add another four or five miscellaneous tools to the list.
For 31 years, an expert panel of American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers members have been given the task of evaluating products that have reached the market in the past year and selecting the top 50 for recognition — the AE50s.
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A large part of the North American ag complex is focused on row crops, U.S. Midwest agricultural business, large-scale dairy, hog and poultry production and the fruit and vegetable sectors. As a result, many of the innovations highlighted by the AE50s often have a much smaller focus for the broad-acre and beef cattle producer. But not this year.
A couple of Canadian-made products are on the list, including repeat innovation award winner MacDon with its new M1240 swather chassis and its electronically variable displacement wheel motors that move the machines from low speed, high torque situations all the way to road speed without the need for shifting ranges, along with other new features.
The Pro-Chop 150 bale processor from Anderson in Quebec is the Swiss Army knife of processors, handling everything from haylage to coarse straw, feeding to bedding, with a range of cutting lengths from none to one inch. It can spread material as far as 52 feet, and a five foot bale chamber helps it handle most bales sizes.
It is a long list of innovative equipment, and to see it, along with the remaining AE50 winners, visit producer.com by entering bit.ly/2mhmmxu into your internet browser. There you can also find our coverage from previous seasons.
