ExactRate™ helps farmers fertilize their crops faster

In order for farmers to sustain their farms for generations to come they need to be more efficient with the time they spend in the field.

A new John Deere technology - ExactRate™ - is helping farmers do just that. ExactRate, which debuts this week at Commodity Classic, is an on-planter system that fertilizes new crops at twice the speed previously possible, while working seamlessly with other new Deere technologies that allow farmers to simultaneously plant their crops.

'Multiple independent studies have shown that fertilizer applied at the time of planting provides the best opportunity for plant health, on-time maturity and increased bushels per acre,' said Kevin Juhl, a Deere marketing manager.

ExactRate helps farmers reduce the number of trips needed to refill fertilizer tanks during planting, as it provides the capacity to carry 1,600-gallons of fertilizer with the new 8RX Tractor and new Deere planters. That's enough fertilizer to go several hours between refills.

'We had an imbalance before,' said Grant Wonderlich, solutions architect at Deere. 'Our customers had seed capacity for hours of planting but fertilizer capacity for a fraction of that. We've worked across factories to close that gap, and knowing it makes a difference in our customers' businesses is the best part of it all.'