John Deere has put one of its most efficient and intelligent machines to the Australian harvest test, to achieve a 1000-tonne challenge in a single day as part of a dedicated four-part docuseries that has attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers from across the globe.
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"Harvest X" captures the journey of a John Deere X9 1100 harvester striving towards the goal in a wheat crop in Victoria's Wimmera region last December, the entire process having been recoded on camera and under the watchful eyes of fifth-generation farmers and contractors, Chris and Dale Bartlett.
Bartlett Brothers Harvesting runs a fleet including John Deere S-Series harvesters, with the brothers also continuing the 150-year-old family tradition of growing wheat at Pimpinio and nearby Dimboola, where Harvest X took place.
The 2023-24 harvest season was one of the toughest in recent memory and as the X9 arrived Chris was sceptical it would be able to harvest 1000 tonnes in a day given highly challenging conditions.
"I'm keen to see what this X9 can do," he said at the harvest.
It was one of the best crops the family had grown, but he said come December and the conditions were terrible.
His brother, Dale, said it was probably the wettest December he had seen in his career.
With a four-day window set aside for the attempt, the challenge got off to a shaky start with the first day rained out.
On day two, temperatures soared into the high 30s (degrees Celsius), helping to dry out the crop, but it triggered a fire ban for day three, again stalling the attempt.
The John Deere team, led by production systems manager, Ben Kelly, launched into the challenge on the final day, with John Deere 8RX 370 and 9R 490 tractors and chaser bins supporting the effort.
He said 1000 tonnes was a huge benchmark to hit.
"The main things we want to look at are maximising the tonnes per hour, keeping grain loss below one per cent, maintaining a good cut height and spread width for next season's seeding, and achieving efficiency and fuel economy because the X9 not only has a greater capacity than the S790, it also uses 20 per cent less fuel," Mr Kelly said.
The Harvest X journey was published to John Deere's social media channels in four instalments across April and May 2024 and to date the series had recorded more than 650,000 views.
Harvest X data:
- Tonnes harvested: 1000
- Throughput: 72t/hr
- Harvesting time: 13:53.12
- Total time: 15:03,04 (including downtime)
- Average yield: 5.1t/ha
- Average moisture: 10.2pc
- Area harvested: 196ha
- Losses: 0.7pc
- Productivity: 14.1ha/hr
- Total fuel: 1598L
- Fuel efficiency: 1.6t/L
- Fuel per hectare: 8.2L/ha
- Temperature range: 13.1 to 23.8 degrees Celsius
- Humidity range: 48pc-92pc
