Farming smarter with technology
The National Fieldays is an annual fixture in the farming calendar: it draws in thousands of farmers, contractors, and industry professionals from across the country.
Adding to its extensive range of harvesting attachments for its Big X self-propelled harvesters, Krone has introduced a new whole-crop header, said to offer outputs of around 20% more than the existing XDisc 620 unit.
The new XDisc 710, with a cutting width of 7.1 metres, has been developed to utilise the full potential of a powerful forager more efficiently, using cutter-bar technology based on the EasyCut mower technology already employed in the XDisc 620.
In operation, the speed of the 900mm diameter integral feed auger can be optimally adjusted to the intake speed of the forage harvester in three stages, depending on the required cutting length of the crop.
A clever option, available solely for the Big X Series, is the integrated header transport chassis that eliminates the need for a separate transport trailer, so significantly reducing changeover times between paddock or site moves.
The transport chassis is equipped with a single axle on the right-hand side of the header, with the drawbar, with its folding support jack located on the opposite side. In operation, when the hydraulic system has been coupled and the header raised, the driver swivels the drawbar and the axle of the running gear directly from the cab.
In the paddock, both transport kit components hydraulically swivel behind the header, with the process is reversed for transport, before the header trailer is attached to the forage harvester’s tow coupling.
Other XDisc 710 options include vertical side knives, which are also offered on the XDisc 620, raised and lowered individually from the cab, to provide blockage-free cutting when working in tangled or heavily lodged crops.
Federated Farmers president Wayne Langford says the 2025 Fieldays has been one of more positive he has attended.
A fundraiser dinner held in conjunction with Fieldays raised over $300,000 for the Rural Support Trust.
Recent results from its 2024 financial year has seen global farm machinery player John Deere record a significant slump in the profits of its agricultural division over the last year, with a 64% drop in the last quarter of the year, compared to that of 2023.
An agribusiness, helping to turn a long-standing animal welfare and waste issue into a high-value protein stream for the dairy and red meat sector, has picked up a top innovation award at Fieldays.
The Fieldays Innovation Award winners have been announced with Auckland’s Ruminant Biotech taking out the Prototype Award.
Following twelve years of litigation, a conclusion could be in sight of Waikato’s controversial Plan Change 1 (PC1).
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