Meeting tomorrow’s farming challenges today – The Globe

WORTHINGTON — While the ground was still covered in snow earlier this month, the staff at Titan Machinery in Worthington was as busy as ever, gearing up for another planting season that’s just a few months away.

Farmers are already looking for upgraded equipment to help them do their job. Likewise, businesses such as Titan Machinery are on the front lines, looking for ways to address the challenges predicted to arise during the upcoming season.

Titan Machinery salesman Malik Sampson said the business is already stocked up with some of the newest machinery available to farmers to help make the job easier through automation.

“I know that Corey (precision farming specialist Corey Reker) has some grain cart automation going out, I think he’s got half a dozen units for next year,” Sampson shared. “When you’re on the combine, your tractor that’s pulling the grain cart will actually sync up with it and they run in tandem so your grain cart operator doesn’t have to shift, drive (and) worry about the grain cart. The combine operator can fully drive the other unit. That’s probably some of the newest stuff for this next year.”

Sampson said the ability to see data straight from the cab of a tractor or combine is ever-growing and constantly evolving, and noted Prescription Tillage’s machinery via Advanced Farming Systems.

Titan Salesman Dave Brown added that such capabilities will help ease farmers’ work as they prepare to plant and harvest.

“(It’ll) help manage their data,” Dave said. “The input costs are high, labor costs are high. Everything’s about efficiency and it’s a way to track your investments.”

“It’s probably more real-time than it’s ever been,” Sampson added.

Tractor technician Rollie Sandhurst said AFS have also helped technicians such as him with implement repairs.

“The AFS connect (feature) has been one of the big things,” he said of recent advancements in implement repair. “Our laptops sitting in the shop can connect to that unit and see exactly what it’s doing as the customer is driving it. He doesn’t know what’s going on in the back and we can see that physically sitting in the shop here. We can tell him, this is what’s going on, this is his problem or give him an idea of where to look before we have to go out to service the product, which helps us out a lot.”

Samuel Martin / The Globe

For farmers, the advancement in technology available — and the data it produces — can help them earn more money in the long run.

“Anything that can have a return on their investment, anything that makes them money back,” Sampson said on what farmers are most interested in regarding emerging technology. “It used to be that the technology was a feature that was convenient, but now you’re actually seeing a return on what you’re sticking into it.”

While farmers are interested in a lot of the new technology that provides them with more information, they aren’t necessarily as interested in the technology that does the work for them, such as driverless equipment.

“Driverless equipment, I would say no, not around here, besides the grain cart automation,” Sampson said. “As far as a tractor that goes out and tills the field by itself, I’d say we’re at least a couple years away from that yet. I’d say in this part of the country, directly here, there’s less interest in that. When you get out into bigger fields like up towards the northwest of here where you have 1,000 acre fields, it’s more prevalent up there.”

Sandhurst said the most popular selling items currently at Titan in Worthington are axial flow combines and the AFS technology.

“The biggest thing on your field cultivators and your rippers is your connect (feature) to the tractor,” he said. “You can control your depth by your laptop that’s in the tractor. You can watch it instead of having to go back there and measure and adjust here and there. You can see what it’s doing on your 1200 monitor now. It’s a lot easier to set up (from the cab).”

Titan Machinery is also seeing large demand for its track units, Sandhurst added.

“It’s more track units (being) sold than wheel tractors anymore,” he said. “A few years ago, it was the other way around. Now you can’t hardly find a wheel tractor anymore. Everything’s track implements — grain carts, planters. Everything’s for the track.”

Samuel Martin became a reporter for The Globe in September 2023. He has a bachelor’s degree in media studies from the University of Sioux Falls.