Sabanto is taking the next step in retrofit autonomy by pairing its driverless tractor system with the Precision Planting Gen 3 20|20 system.
Sabanto recently announced that its Sabanto Autonomy System will monitor the Precision Planting System. The integration tackles one psychological hurdle farmers face in autonomous agriculture: planter trust. As a Sabanto-retrofitted tractor navigates the field, its Vehicle Operating System (vOS) is actively communicating with the Gen 3 20|20 to monitor row-by-row performance. Growers are able to run planters without having to be in the cab, freeing them to focus on other operations.
“Growers told us the tractor driving itself wasn’t the hard part of planting – Trusting the planter without someone watching it was. This gives them that confidence and peace of mind with the equipment they already trust,” says Craig Rupp, founder and CEO of Sabanto.
Maximizing Tight Planting Windows
Timing is crucial for farmers during the planting season as weather leaves thin windows and no margin for downtime. The new integration gives farmers flexibility during peak season since they no longer have to be in the driver’s seat.
As a tractor autonomously navigates the field and performs planting operations, the Gen 3 20|20 will run and monitor planting functions row by row including:
- Seeding
- Rate control
- Prescriptions
- As-planted recording
Sabanto’s Vehicle Mission Control (vMC) interface keeps growers in full control by setting custom row-by-row tolerances. The system can pause, recat and notify the grower if an issue arises or performance falls outside the instructions. Giving growers the opportunity to diagnose the problem remotely or inspect the tractor.
“In 2024 we saw the problem: you can’t support your community if you can’t afford the equipment to put grain in the ground. Equipment costs have dropped in nearly every industry except ours. Sabanto and Precision Planting give us financial runway, mental space and time to ask our neighbors what they need. They’ve built more than a self-driving tractor; they’ve built a platform farmers can trust,” says Quint Pottinger, the first U.S. farmer to plant his entire crop autonomously.
