Small grain farmer Justin Yirsa recently made the move to automate his planting process near Big Sandy in north central Montana.
He's working with software through Sabanto, an Illinois-based technology company that retrofits existing tractors with automation that allows the machines to pull seeder drills and other compatible attachments.
“You don’t have to sit on a tractor for 14 hours a day,” said Yirsa.
It saves time, but it isn’t entirely hands-off.
Sabanto chief operating officer Cory Spaetti said the company calibrates the technology, programs the system and times its actions for any given farm and task. He said ideally automation like this shifts the labor from in-the-seat driving to “prepping the tractor, prepping the implement and prepping the fields that the machine is going to work in.”
Yirsa said they’re starting with one tractor, but his goal is to add more.
“It’s the fleet mentality that gets this really going,” said Yirsa.
He said once a farmer is already there programming a machine, adding several on is around the same amount of work.
