Customer Testimonials

After hiring a new John Deere S690i combine to give additional combine capacity for last year’s harvest, Norfolk grower Ed Jones of Harold Jones Farms Ltd was so impressed, he bought one to boost his harvesting capacity for the 2009 season.

The ability to hire machinery has long been an attractive proposition for those teetering on the edge of a serious machinery buying dilemma. And for Ed Jones, his expanding harvest workload had become one that couldn’t quite be managed by his 2005 model CTS 9780i with 9.1m header.

“The combine dilemma has been one that I have wrestled with for several seasons,” explains Mr Jones, who currently farms 1500ha from Church Farm, Little Witchingham, near Norwich. “Do we run two, or just hire in some extra capacity to take the pressure off the CTS for a few days?”

That dilemma came to head last season. After hiring an S690i for 10 days through local dealer Ben Burgess (Beeston), and facing the prospect of an expanding workload for the 2009 harvest, Mr Jones bought the S690i, also equipped with a 9.1m header.

“I bought the very model we’d hired for the previous season,” he says. “It was an ’09 model with all the latest updates and has performed faultlessly.” With 1500ha of combinable crops to harvest, the bulk of which is shared between winter wheat and spring barley, Mr Jones wanted capacity to spare. It’s a move intended to alleviate pressure on the farm’s on-floor grain drying facilities.

“Where our CTS could handle 40 hectares a day at a push, the S690i can scythe through 48 hectares a day, no problem,” he says. “The difference is astounding – it’s at least 15 to 20 per cent better, and it’s much kinder on the crop too. We can let moisture content fall to a level that’s much easier to manage in store and then send in the big guns to clear the fields,” he says.

He puts the S690i’s performance down to more horsepower and a new high performance package as standard equipment, which includes a revised separation and cleaning system that is gentler to both grain and straw. There is a new concave configuration too, with a large wire design in the final section, and a new extension to the top sieve to provide better distribution of air across the cleaning shoe, as well as a boost in cleaning capacity.

The combine comes with ProDrive automatic transmission that fully integrates with the HarvestSmart system, to allow the operator to achieve maximum performance from the combine both in the field and on the road, especially on hilly ground or in difficult harvest conditions.

“We also try to buy the highest specification possible,” he says. “We like the add-ons, the technology and the iSolutions package that John Deere offers. It has made harvesting a lot less stressful, and with auto steering, we can maximise our productivity and fill the wide headers with every pass.”

This high specification philosophy also extends to Mr Jones’ tractors and implements. His John Deere fleet includes 8530, 7820, 7530 and 6920 tractors, all of which are equipped with AutoPowr CVT transmissions and, with the exception of the 7820, are equipped with AutoTrac steering; the two 30 Series machines use fully integrated AutoTrac systems, while the older 6920 uses a Universal AutoTrac system.

There’s also a hired-in 6630 tractor, supplied by Ben Burgess, which is used primarily for grain trailers during the peak harvest period, as well as a fully equipped 832i trailed sprayer, equipped with SprayerPro controls.

“It’s taken us five years to get three sets of satellite receivers, which are intended for the combines and the sprayer,” he says. “But when those machines are not working, our tractor drivers will go out of their way to plug these systems into their tractors.

“Our operators really appreciate auto steering,” says Mr Jones. “It’s less tiring for them, and they know that bout widths will always match up. There are no wasted overlaps or tedious short runs to fill in – we’re now getting much more productivity from our kit, as every inch is being fully utilised, and we’re saving precious time, too.

“We’ve found it invaluable for working on-land with a nine-furrow plough, and for min-till using a 4m Discordon and 3m Simba DTX cultivator,” he adds. “There’s no doubt that Deere’s iSolutions have boosted productivity across a wide range of field operations.

“John Deere’s AMS technology has given me the confidence to allow younger operators – including students and harvest help – to handle some of the more demanding and sophisticated tasks,” he says. “I wouldn’t have dreamt of putting an inexperienced operator on the sprayer before, for example – but with AutoTrac steering, SprayerPro and BoomTrac automatic boom controls, the technology has made this possible.

“I know it’s going to be 100 per cent correct, every time, even without tramlines for pre-emergence applications. And working off smart cards, I know my operators just can’t get it wrong, or find themselves in the wrong field – and that’s extremely important when we’ve got over 1500 hectares of ground to cover,” says Mr Jones.

September 2009