Al Meyers started Ag Leader with a dream to make farmers’ lives easier by starting his own business and providing a workplace for other people to innovate and create products within the agricultural market.

Ag Leader, based in Ames, employs more than 280 people throughout the world with other locations in Australia, The Netherlands and Brazil, in addition to field sales staff located at various locations around the world.

“We are a family-owned company. Al still owns 100% of the company,” said Sean Ealy, sales and marketing department director for Ag Leader. “The company really started in his basement. He had a concept. He had an idea on what eventually became the yield monitor. He was a one-man operation. He built it. He designed it. He was the guy that took it to all of the farm shows and sold it.”

At that time, Ealy said, there were others that had the idea of yield monitoring.

-Photo courtesy of Ag Leader
Last July, Ag Leader released their new grain cart connectivity feature called CartACE.

“But Al was the first to really capitalize on the design and bring it to the market,” he said. “We like to say when the data revolution really started in agriculture, Ag Leader was right there, if not an early champion for the data revolution.”

Fast forward 28 years and data is in the forefront of the agricultural industry and Ag Leader has been there every step of the way.

“From the yield monitor, we evolved into a company that really is trying to provide value with technology across all seasons on the farm,” said Ealy. “We like to think we provide a full-farm solution, meaning we are not just a steering company. We are not just a planting company. We have seven product lines and we are seeking to innovate across all of those seven product lines.”

Product lines range from yield monitoring at harvest, to application of chemicals and fertilizer; planting products, displays and more.

What’s new

Ag Leader’s most recently released products include the new SteerCommand® Z2, CartACE† and SureSpeed†.

SteerCommand Z2

In November, Ag Leader announced its addition of guidance and steering products designed and built in-house to its year-round precision farming line-up.

New to the SteerCommand family of guidance and steering products is SteerCommand Z2 automated steering and SteadySteer-assisted steering, designed to provide reliable pass-to-pass autosteer capability and integrate seamlessly with InCommand displays, providing the user with a common experience across all operations.

“Through our year-round and connected InCommand display, our goal is to provide growers with one common user interface that does it all — steers the tractor and connects and controls the other machines across the farm, such as the planter, combine, etc. — and regardless of the age or brand of the equipment,” stated Luke Call, product manager for Ag Leader.

InCommand displays offer year-round functionality and connect every device and operation across the farm. Recent en hancements to the display user interface include automating manual tasks that eat up precious time: One-time vehicle profile setup shared across all connected displays, calibrate and autodetect orientation and fine-tune parameters from the run screen.

Additionally, the new steering hardware components were designed for easy transfer between machines, including a detachable motor drive unit. The system is also upgradable to meet growers’ evolving needs across various equipment and accuracy levels, making going from an entry level guidance system up to an advanced autosteer system economical when the time is right.

“Growers are bringing autosteer technology into every operation. It’s now a must-have versus a nice-to-have for many farms, so the display and steering system need to work together seamlessly and be portable to easily plug-and-play between different machines across the farm,” he added.

Growers can configure a right-fit technology solution at agleader.com or talk to a local independent dealer.

CartACE

In July, Ag Leader, announced after a year of beta testing, it will move forward with a full release of its new grain cart connectivity feature, CartACE. Powered by Ag Leader’s InCommand display, CartACE gives the grain cart operator assistance while unloading on-the-go.

CartACE simplifies the grain cart operator’s job by sharing a live map of the combine’s progress and location through InCommand displays, helping the operator know when and where the combine needs to unload and which part of the field to drive on. The InCommand display in the grain cart automatically generates a guidance line alongside the combine and the operator simply presses a button to engage autosteer. While the operator is still responsible for safe operation of the vehicle, they can now focus their attention on unloading on-the-go. In addition, CartACE now includes a grain tank counter that shares how full the tank is so the tractor driver can anticipate when and where the combine will need to empty. This not only lessens frustration, but also assists in efficiency of the entire harvest operation.

Ealy said CartACE is the first step of what Ag Leaders likes to call “in-field connectivity.”

There are a couple of ways connectivity can be brought to the farm. One way, Ealy said, is through passive connectivity. This is offered through AgFiniti with live maps, fleet tracking.

“We provide information to the grower; we call it passive connectivity because they still have to do something with that information. They still have to make decisions,” he said.

A product like CartACE, he said, is categorized as active connectivity.

“It’s not autonomy. We are trying to take a pain-point on the farm, which is really around that grain cart operator. Oftentimes, growers put anybody who’s available in the grain cart and they may not be a skilled operator and it can be a complex operation,” he said. “We felt we could simplify that operation.”

SureSpeed

Last January, Ag Leader announced its high-speed planting system SureSpeed, to serve row crop farmers with accurate seed placement at speeds up to 12 miles per hour. The meter with integrated delivery system was developed in collaboration with Kinze Manufacturing. Introduction is planned for the 2021 planting season through each company’s respective dealer networks.

“Working with Kinze made sense in many ways because we’re both family-owned companies that put the needs of the farmer first. Leveraging Kinze’s expertise in leading seed meter technology ensured a high-quality product,” said Al Meyers, president of Ag Leader. “Ag Leader strives to provide the highest quality year-round platform in precision farming. SureSpeed broadens our planting portfolio allowing us to meet a wide range of grower needs for planter technology.”

Sure at any speed

The SureSpeed planting system was created with accuracy of seed placement in mind at all speeds from 3 to 12 mph. Many factors can influence planting speed, and when conditions are right to speed up, farmers don’t want to be limited by their ability to accurately place seeds in the ground. The system is designed to accommodate the need of the farmer at any speed without giving up proper seed placement.

Engineered for Accuracy

Every detail of the SureSpeed system was designed to account for superior accuracy at any speed. Unique meter orientation on the row unit allows seed to move seamlessly between the meter and delivery system resulting in accurate seed placement. Additionally, the meter was designed to handle a variety of seed shapes and sizes accurately and without singulator adjustments for hassle-free planting.

Paired with Ag Leader’s hydraulic down force solution, SureForce®, the system provides the highest available force capacity on the market to maintain consistent ground contact and smooth row unit ride with increasing speed in varying conditions.

Industry-leading display

Ag Leader’s SureSpeed planting system is controlled by Ag Leader’s industry-leading display, InCommand† 1200. The InCommand 1200 display provides a window into the planter to view individual row detail with side-by-side planting performance maps. Additionally, InCommand displays help farmers stay connected by instantly sharing live maps, autoswath coverage, guidance lines and more to other displays. View live or historical field maps and summaries from your phone or tablet anytime, anywhere.

“What is important for us and the grower is accuracy at all speeds,” said Ealy. “A lot of growers out there, especially with the weather we have had over the last couple of springs, want to plant faster, because the window to plant continues to shrink — it’s unreliable. It’s unknown, so getting in the field and planting as fast as you can has a lot of value.”

Ealy also pointed out that they realize not every field is conducive to operating at those high speeds. And SureSpeed stands out among the rest with its guaranteed consistency.

“Where other high-speed planting products struggle is offering that same accuracy that an operator might get at 10 or 11 or 12 mph — giving that same accuracy at 3 mph. What we have done with SureSpeed is we can guarantee that grower, no matter what speed they want to go, between 3 mph and 12 mph, we can give them the same accuracy, same spacing, same singulation that they would expect at high speeds.”

Future of Ag Leader

Ealy said there are a lot of things coming down the pipeline over the next three to five years for Ag Leader, which he believes their dealers and customers are going to be very excited about.

“We have a great group of dealers — about 450 dealers in the North America market that we work very closely with. They are great partners. We are just fortunate and we are blessed to have a great dealer network and great people we are able to serve,” he said. “We have a great group of customers. The growers we are able to work with everyday — they know how to weather the kinds of storms we have been going through, whether it is a depressed grain market or COVID. We just look forward to continuing to grow our business and continue to partner with some of the best people in the industry.”

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