Speed and accuracy all in one

Sep 10, 2014

Farmers introduced to the Vaderstad Tempo high-speed planter at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show

It holds the world record for planting over 750 acres in just under 24 hours – the Vaderstad Tempo high-speed planter made its debut at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show (COFS) in Woodstock, Ont.

“Speed has evolved” is its tagline. The planter can sow seed accurately at speeds up to 10 miles per hour. Tempo doubles efficiency with the same or higher precision, which means farm labour can be used more efficiently.

“We’ve chosen the Canadian Outdoor Farm Show 2014 to introduce Tempo to the market strongly,” said Peter Clarke, president and CEO of Seed Hawk, the company associated with Vaderstad. “It’s built robustly, the frame is robust, the row unit is robust to handle the high speeds, and the pressurized metering system supports the precision at any speed.”

He says that the history of planting technology has mostly been about either speed or precision, not both. And the Tempo planter seeks to bring those two technologies together, noting that speed is the key, but the quality is just as important.

Gustav Nilsson, market developer for Vaderstad said that when the Sweden-based company first introduced the Tempo planter to Europe a couple of years ago, it took approximately seven percent of the market share.

(Photo: Gutsav Nilsson standing with Peter Clarke making a presentation about the Tempo high-speed planter).

To prove to Canadian farmers that Tempo has the capabilities sales representatives say that it does, the company planted a plot at COFS highlighting the different speeds. “We have done the statistics, and we can see that the quality is excellent,” he said adding that there will be farmers who may have doubts, especially when speed is doubled in any machine.

Currently, the smallest planter model has four row units, with the largest being 12, although the makers plan to introduce 16 and 24 row unit models. There is a two-year warranty on the planter.

(Photo: Tempo F8 high-speed planter on display at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show in Woodstock, Ont.)

A closer look at the Tempo planter: Step-by-step examination

Editor’s note: Our writer, Amanda Brodhagen did a walk through with Gustav Nilsson at the farm show to find out how the Tempo planter works. The words below are a transcription of their conversation as they stand looking at the planter. Nilsson explains the key features of the planter from front to back.

If we start from the front here, this is an over pressurized machine, so we also have an option with dry fertilizer. In the front, you have a fan and an integrated alternator because everything here is electric drive. We push down through the main frame, through the pipe for the fertilizer.

We can fold this machine, an eight-row unit down to 10-feet. It’s a very narrow transport. If you look at the linkage here, this is a cast iron parallel linkage, it’s very robust and grease free. We have a spring torsion up to 700 pounds of downforce.

(Photo: Gutsav Nilsson explaining the different parts of the planter).

Row cleaners. This is a jetta row cleaner. It’s a standard interface – so you can put any row cleaner on whatever you prefer. If you go back here to the gauge wheels, and opening disk [a part that the farmer can pick and choose]. They can go with a disk leading edge [the disk is in front of the other one] or v-shape. Here you can choose. You can just switch an axle inside.

We have an electric drive here. No gears, no sprockets, no chains. We have a direct drive electric motor and an over-pressured system. It shoots down the seed like a pea gun. And it shoots 50-meters per second, so it’s going to bounce out if we don’t have the stop wheel. We shoot the seed under the stop wheel and it places the seed in/on the soil. We also count each seed, so we know everything that’s going on in the tractor. We know how many skips or how many doubles [the farmer knows what is happening on each row unit]. There is also an automatic row shutoff.

There are different control systems. We have our standard monitor – an iPad that is controlled wirelessly. You get a special case for it, then you download an application, and use it as your monitor. The farmer can control [his or her] own machine all the statistics and all the data in the iPad. There is also an option to connect to the tractor monitor system if the farmer would prefer not using an iPad.