Agco, the maker of machinery brands including Massey Ferguson, Fendt, Challenger and Valtra, said Monday it has bought Winnipeg-based JCA Technologies for an undisclosed sum.

JCA specializes in designing and producing electronic systems and developing software to automate and control equipment for OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) in sectors including agriculture, construction and mining.

The company, which started as JCA Electronics in 2002 and rebranded in 2020, today also maintains a U.S. office in Lincoln, Nebraska.

JCA’s products today include the tablet-based Vireo precision ag system, the Eagle autonomous equipment system and the Falcon and Oriole controller systems, among others.

Among JCA’s developments is the control system supporting the Canadian-made DOT autonomous ag equipment platform, which was rebranded as OMNiPower after its acquisition in 2020 by South Dakota-based Raven Industries.

Raven and its product lines were in turn taken over last year by Agco’s OEM rival CNH Industrial, the maker of Case IH and New Holland ag equipment.

“The purchase of JCA is another important addition to our precision agriculture capabilities,” Agco CEO Eric Hansotia said Monday in a release.

JCA, he said, is “one of the most advanced developers of autonomous machine technologies for off-road OEMs, and this acquisition will accelerate Agco’s delivery of machine automation and autonomous systems that improve farmer productivity.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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CNH Industrial on Monday announced a friendly all-cash agreement to buy up all shares in Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Raven Industries for about US$2.1 billion (C$2.62 billion).

The deal values Nasdaq-traded Raven at US$58 per share, which CNH said represents a premium of 33.6 per cent to the shares’ four-week volume-weighted average.

CNH, in a release, noted Raven’s status as “a global technology partner for key strategic (original equipment manufacturers), agriculture retailers and dealers.”

“Raven has been a pioneer in precision agriculture for decades, and their deep product experience, customer-driven software expertise and engineering acumen offer a significant boost to our capabilities,” CNH Industrial CEO Scott Wine said in Monday’s release.

“The combination of Raven’s technologies and CNH Industrial’s strong current and new product portfolio will provide our customers with novel, connected technologies, allowing them to be more productive and efficient.”

As for Raven’s manufacturing presence in the U.S., Sioux Falls “is and will continue to be a true centre of excellence,” Wine said.

CNH and Raven, he said, will “collaborate in bringing our customers more integrated precision and autonomous solutions, not only to improve productivity and profitability, but also promote more sustainable solutions and environmental stewardship” and create “a stronger business for our employees, dealer network, and customers.”

The proposed deal is expected to close is expected to occur in the fourth quarter of this year, pending the usual closing conditions including approvals from regulators and Raven shareholders.

The deal comes just weeks after Raven announced a partnership with farm equipment maker Agco, chemical company BASF and engineering, tech and tool firm Bosch to collaborate on targeted spraying technology.

The deal would also give CNH control of the Canadian-developed DOT autonomous ag equipment system, which Raven took over last year and recently rebranded under the name OMNiPower. Raven in November last year also set up a new Canadian headquarters for its “Applied Technology” precision ag business at Emerald Park, Sask., just east of Regina.

Raven’s precision ag arm is one of three units in the company, also including high-performance specialty films and its Aerostar aerospace technology business.

Raven’s engineered films and Aerostar segments are “industry leaders” in those sectors, CNH said, adding it “believes they represent attractive independent businesses with excellent near and long-term potential.”

Thus, CNH said it would conduct a “strategic review” of those two businesses “to best position them for future success and maximize shareholder value.”

Combined, Raven’s three units generated US$348.4 million in net sales for the year ending Jan. 31. CNH said it expects the deal to generate about US$400 million in “run-rate revenue synergies” by calendar 2025, producing US$150 million of incremental EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization).

“Our relationship with CNH Industrial has expanded over decades, and we have a deep respect for one another and a shared commitment to transform agriculture practices across the world,” Raven CEO Dan Rykhus said in the same release. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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South Dakota-based Raven on May 12 launched the OMNi brand for its autonomous platform, rebranding DOT as OMNiPower and the AutoCart system as OMNiDrive.

All of Raven’s intelligent autonomous products for the ag industry will be branded with the OMNi prefix as “part of one connected ecosystem,” the company said.

OMNiPower — developed by Regina-based DOT Technology before Raven took control of the firm in 2019 — is a self-propelled, driverless diesel-powered platform built to support interchangeable implements for multiple farm applications across all growing seasons.

The OMNiDrive aftermarket technology kit, which came to Raven through its 2019 acquisition of Iowa-based Smart Ag and its AutoCart technology, is meant to repurpose existing tractors as autonomous machines — including Case IH Magnum CVT, New Holland CVT and John Deere 8Rs Powershift and IVT models.

OMNiDrive is billed as “the first farming application that allows the farmer to monitor and operate a driverless tractor from the cab of the harvester.”

The system allows the harvester to offload on-the-go, then return the tractor and grain cart to a predetermined unloading area with no need for a second driver, Raven said.

OMNiDrive is a “significant growth platform and we are actively working with OEM partners to release compatibility on additional tractors and implements,” Dominic Walkes, Raven’s director of strategic initiatives, said in the company’s release.

The OMNi brand name comes from the English-language combining form denoting “all,” Raven said. The brand “enables holistic, hands-free precision; it gives the farmer total control of their time and maximizes operational productivity and efficiency,” Nick Langerock, Raven’s director of strategic marketing, said in the same release.

“We understand the importance of quickly scaling and adopting new power platforms, farming applications, and implements into purpose-built autonomous agricultural machines,” Walkes said.

“We are excited about the opportunities rolling out under the OMNi prefix as it ties our entire portfolio together and helps to provide the entire solution from top to bottom for the farmer.” –– Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Sioux Falls, S.D. precision agriculture manufacturer Raven Industries announced last week it has closed its deal to buy majority ownership in Regina-based DOT Technology Corp. for an undisclosed sum.

DOT said the deal will allow it to “further capitalize on its position as a leader in the autonomous agriculture sector, providing farmers a real way to address labour shortages, high equipment cost and rising operational expenses.”

DOT’s principal product — which has made waves in the farm equipment sector since its unveiling at Ag in Motion in 2017 — is a U-shaped, self-guiding, diesel-powered platform, built to handle various farm implements and use path planning technology to complete field tasks.

About 10 of the DOT units operated in Prairie fields in 2019, and a demo unit made its first appearance in the East in September, at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show, where it handled a prototype planter as well as a seeder and dry fertilizer spreader.

Raven said its investment will be set up under its Raven Applied Technology division, “in support of its strategic growth platform, Raven Autonomy.”

DOT’s founder Norbert Beaujot said the deal with Raven “greatly accelerates DOT’s speed to market, as well as the quality of the system, for farmers who are seeking a path to autonomy.”

Raven “has been a critical partner in helping to get DOT to where we are today,” said Beaujot, who previously set up seeding systems manufacturer SeedMaster in the Regina area in 2002.

Raven and DOT have been working closely since May last year as the DOT platform was outfitted with Raven’s tech, including steering, guidance and propulsion.

“Over the last year and a half of collaborating with DOT, Raven has come to understand the value and uniqueness of the DOT platform,” Raven CEO Dan Rykhus said. “By investing in DOT’s growth, we believe we have the ability to lead in the next revolution of production agriculture.”

Through the deal, Raven said, it “will leverage the respective strengths of each entity to drive commercialization and adoption efforts of autonomy in agriculture.”

Billing itself as the market leader in steering, guidance and machine control technology, Raven said DOT will bring its “field path planning, user control experience, machine safety and remote communication software” to their “unique relationship.”

Raven, with DOT, “will accelerate the development of precision agriculture technology from semi-autonomous to fully-autonomous solutions.”

“The amount of interest DOT has here in Canada, the U.S. and globally is staggering,” DOT CEO Robert Saik said. “Raven’s involvement means our ability to provide a path to autonomy for farmers and implement manufacturers is now much stronger.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The precision ag system, designed by Dot Technology Corp., attracted considerable attention going through its paces during the annual ag showcase, held outside Woodstock, Ont. The demonstrations took place as part of a partnership with Corteva Agriscience.

The U-shaped model is manufactured to incorporate “Dot-ready” implements, with only a few designs currently available: the SeedMaster Ultra DSR (Dot Single Rank) 30-foot seeder, the SeedMaster row-crop planter, a Pattison Connect PLU 120-foot sprayer and a New Leader NL5000 G5 spreader.

Growers in Western Canada are well acquainted with the Dot A-U1 platform but the reactions from those attending Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show were a pleasant surprise to Dot Technology CEO Rob Saik. He had texts and e-mails from eastern growers expressing interest in seeing and learning more about its potential.

“The response has been incredible — really good,” said Saik, noting most growers are looking for ‘economy of scale’ or the cost-efficiency of the technology.

“Out west, we’re looking for scale, where we have to have two or three DOTs working simultaneously in the field. Here (in Eastern Canada), one DOT could satisfy most farmers that are in that 2,000- to 2,500-acre range.”

Interest in the East is sufficient, added Saik, that he and his team are trying to restructure their plans to get a Dot unit available for demonstrations in the spring of 2020.

The technology is marketed to save time and fuel and reduce pollution, with a mobile, diesel-powered engine, capable of reducing overall costs by 20 per cent.

The Dot A-U1 effectively surrounds a specially designed implement and operates via an on-frame computer that is fed detailed mapping requirements. An operator can monitor the unit’s progress and can assume control using a tablet specifically configured for the unit.

Although currently designed for four implements, Saik stated that interest is coming from different manufacturers about newer configurations.

As he pointed out, smaller, more specialized implements such as a rock picker or land roller might be ideal candidates for such innovation, along with the better-known names in farm equipment.

“DOT gives them the strategy,” said Saik, following a brief presentation on the unit. “The companies can come on as a Dot-Ready implement manufacturer and we make that available to them like another option on a Swiss Army knife.”

Current pricing on the Dot A-U1 Power Platform is US$260,000.

— Ralph Pearce is a field editor for Country Guide at St. Marys, Ont.

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The company is launching its new prototype planter at the show adding a critical piece to the implements that can be mated to the Canadian-made Dot autonomous farming power platform.

The show will be the eastern Canadian debut of Dot. It also has a 30-foot Ultra DSR seeder from Seedmaster, Pattison Liquid System’s 120-foot Connect PLU120 sprayer and a New Leader 5G precision fertilizer spreader available.

SeedMaster’s Dot-Ready planter prototype was designed using SeedMaster Manufacturing’s technology and the row crop expertise of Frank Prince of Capricorn Bay Ltd. It features a 12-row unit with 30-inch spacing and currently offers two tank configurations: one 50-bushel seed tank with two 425-gallon liquid tanks, and two 50-bushel seed tanks with one 425-gallon liquid tank.

With a focus on versatility, the planter lends itself to easy adjustments and servicing, the company said. The planter features electric variable rate vacuum seed meters and variable rate liquid fertilizer options.

“When Dot first launched, we had many farmers asking when they would see an autonomous planter added to our lineup,” says Norbert Beaujot, founder of SeedMaster Manufacturing and Dot Technology Corp. “We are proud to now have a product for those farmers and we see a bright future for SeedMaster’s Dot-Ready product offerings.”

Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show attendees can see a demonstration of the new SeedMaster planter as well as the SeedMaster Ultra DSR and New Leader G5 spreader at The Evolution of Farming Demonstration presented by Corteva Agriscience. Demos will occur daily at 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. from Sept. 10-12.

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DOT will be accompanied by many members of the company’s Autonomous Farming team, along with CEO of DOT Farm Solutions, Robert Saik.

Why It matters: The showcase will give farmers an idea of what is coming in crop automation.

DOT was invented by Norbert Beaujot, owner of Regina-based seeding equipment manufacturer SeedMaster.

The first prototype of DOT was released in 2017 at the Ag In Motion show at Langham, Sask.

The trip to Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show brings a lot of excitement for DOT and for Canadian farmers.

“This will be DOT’s first time in Ontario, it is also the first time that we will be signalling to the row crop marketplace that DOT is getting ready for row crop farming,” says Saik.

Currently DOT is manufactured strictly for broad acre, dry land agriculture such as canola, wheat and barley.

The robot is a “U”-shaped platform powered by a 173-hp, tier-4 Cummins engine with four hydrostatically driven wheels providing power and traction.

“The ‘U’ shape (makes) DOT capable of seeding and providing seeding operations. Then you can connect to a 120-ft. Pattison connect sprayer, decouple and connect to a new Litre 16 section precision spin spreader.”

The DOT team is currently in discussion with land roller companies and they are excited to announce a brand-new DOT ready implement to the marketplace for row croppers.

In 2018, the company focused on developing DOT-ready implements. This year the focus was on commercialization, which it hopes to wrap up in 2020.

“We have about half a dozen DOTs in the marketplace and we are also pulling more DOTS off the assembly line right now with one DOT situated in the U.S.”

Robert Saik says agriculture is changing as it continuously moves through different eras, and DOT is a perfect example of the era agriculture is in right now: convergence.

“DOT is changing the face of farming and it’s based on a lot of macro-economic issues or trends that are happening beginning with the extreme shortages of labour at the farm level,” says Saik.

Farmers are finding it difficult to find quality labour, leading to more adoption of automation to make up for it.

“We have seen that in the dairy sector and we are going to see that in the crop sector.”

DOT will be at COFS for all three days. The Evolution in Farming Demonstration will take place at 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. each day in the West Demo Field.

—-

Food 5.0

On Sept. 9, Robert Saik, CEO of DOT Farming Solutions, will be presenting topics discussed in his new book “Food 5.0, How we Feed the Future” at the Oxford County SCIA meeting taking place in the Special Events tent at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show.

The book focuses on the five iterations of agriculture, including the era of muscle, machine, chemistry, biotechnology and convergence, says Saik.

DOT is a great example of convergence, the era we are in right now, as automation is helping farmers deal with labour shortage issues, says Saik.

“The next 10 years, there will be 123,000 jobs vacant at the farm level, costing the Canadian economy about $11 billion in unmet productivity – DOT is going to address this challenge of us not having enough qualified operators.”

Saik is building his book on the sustainable farms platform, looking at farm viability and public perception.

“Without farm viability, you have no sustainability, and the larger public has no understanding of modern farming and they do not understand farms of consequence.”

Saik says farms of consequence refers to farms which make a living from farming – farm families that are mostly incorporated.

“There are about 20,000 farms of consequence in Canada, about 150,000-200,000 farms of consequence in the U.S, it’s a very small number.”

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A good option is to head to southern portions of the U.S. where milder climates make year-round testing possible. Only that way can engineers rack up the maximum number of hours on a machine in the shortest possible time.

For the development team at DOT Technology Corp., fields at the University of Arizona’s ag research station at Maricopa was the ideal setting to put their autonomous “power platform” to work through the winter. DOT will be shown for the first time in Ontario at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show this fall.

In March DOT Technology Corp. organized a public demonstration event at the University of Arizona facility to showcase the current state of development of the autonomous power platform to a large group of farmers and agriculture industry people, including representatives from other manufacturers who may be considering building DOT-ready implements.

DOT Technology has already started commercializing the DOT power platform with an initial limited sale offering. The first machines went out to customers in April and will make history as the first group of autonomous machines to seed prairie fields on a scale never before seen.

The early-adopter producers who’ve decided to take the plunge and buy a DOT will be getting a lot of extra product support from the company, as it moves toward full commercialization. If you wanted one but didn’t get in on that initial release of units, don’t despair.

“We do have a second release (of DOTs). That will be at the end of June, early July,” said Leah Olson-Friesen, CEO of DOT Technology Corp. “We’re giving farmers a choice of a variety of support, either remote access or in-person support. And that will be the farmer’s choice.

Currently DOT is capable of working with a SeedMaster drill and Pattison Liquid Systems 120-foot sprayer body. At the Arizona event, New Leader announced it would begin producing a dry box spreader system that is specifically designed for DOT, further expanding its range of functions.

Agriculture 5.0

Rob Saik, who founded the consulting firm Agri-Trend, is now working with DOT Technology Corp., and he thinks this range of implements and the technology and data capture associated with them may well open up new opportunities for producers to consider seeding, fertilizing and crop protection functions in an entirely different way.

“Today we’re in what I call Agriculture 5.0,” he told the crowd. “This is the era of convergence where biosynthesis, market segmentation, sensors, 3D printers, robotics, water precision all wrapped into data is upon us. At one time if I talked to you about auto steer, it was a single conversation. Today as you’ll see in DOT, all these technologies are mashed together.”

He thinks applying fertilizer incrementally in season without greatly increasing labour needs may be one of the benefits DOT power platforms offer.

“Right now it’s about a five-to seven-minute process to pick up or switch an implement,” added Norbert Beaujot, inventor and founder of DOT. “So it’s just as quick to hook up to the back of a tractor. With time that will become quicker, because we’ll be able to move into the target (implement) autonomously.

“My overall concept for the design was based on, in our world, trying to satisfy about 3,000 acres of farmland for each DOT unit, being able to seed or plant, spray and look after the harvest activity for 3,000 acres.”

Research into creating other implements to work with DOT is also continuing.

“We’ve done a 41-foot land roller that we’re experimenting with,” said Beaujot. “It’s not farm ready yet.”

In the near term, sales of DOT power platforms will be handled by the company on a direct-to-producer basis.

“We’re selling the power platform for US$260,000,” she adds. “You can buy the full package for just over US$500,000. That includes the power platform, a sprayer and a drill. We’re now working with our suppliers to get prices nailed down and ensure our supply chain is strong.”

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The Dot A-U1 Power Platform is an autonomous platform with no cab and in fact, it looks little like a regular tractor. The platform attaches to implements like a drill or a sprayer unit.

The demonstration will be part of the Evolution of Farming Demonstration at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show (COFS).

“We know that farmers attend events like Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show to see the latest technology – and there is nothing more game-changing in the market right now than the Dot Power Platform,” says Doug Wager, president of Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show.

The demonstration will offer a unique opportunity for farmers to learn about Dot Technology Corp. and see their autonomous platform in action. This also marks the first time that Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show has featured fully autonomous field equipment as part of the demonstration line up. Over the course of the next few months, other partners will be added to the Evolution of Farming Demonstration.

“We are very excited to debut the Dot A-U1 Power Platform in eastern Canada at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show,” says Leah Olsen, CEO of Dot Technology Corp. “Autonomous agriculture is the industry’s future, and through the continuous development of artificial intelligence capabilities, Dot will enable farmers to spend more of their time focusing on the overall operation of their businesses. With its great demonstration field, Canada’s Outdoor Farm show will give farmers the ability to see how Dot operates and will give them the opportunity to interact with autonomous farming,”

The innovative Dot A-U1 Power Platform is helping farmers in myriad ways, by utilizing the mobile, diesel-powered, machine to handle a large variety of implements commonly used in agriculture. From a 20 per cent savings on fuel, labour and equipment capital costs, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and creating efficiencies, the Dot Power Platform is reimagining how farming is and can be done. Through the continuous development of artificial intelligence capabilities, Dot will enable farmers to spend more of their time focusing on the overall operation of their businesses.

See Dot first at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show, Sept. 10, 11 and 12, 2019. More information will be coming about the Evolution of Farming Demonstration, featuring the Dot A-U1Power Platform and Dot-ready implements.

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