HarvestersPrecision FarmingIncreasing harvest produc­tivity with AI

Mathias Preussner is not only a farmer; he is also involved in the disposal of left­over food and used cooking fats, as well as the util­i­sa­tion of organic waste, which he uses to generate energy. Last autumn, he decided to purchase a new John Deere S7 800 combine harvester, but because his own acreage is too small to fulfil the combine’s capacity, two of his farmer friends contributed to the purchase via a private loan and now share the combine. Together, they harvested 470ha during the 2025 season.

The key factors in his deci­sion to buy the combine – along­side the machine’s robust­ness and dura­bility – were the new tech­nical features of the latest series, like the auto­matic, predic­tive ground speed system. “The combine doesn’t just react to actual condi­tions; it adjusts in advance to expected condi­tions – an obvious advan­tage over systems that only work reac­tively,” says Mathias.

He also uses data-driven intel­li­gence, which allows for a connected fleet of machines, and thanks to AI, they can learn from each other. Given the large number of machines in oper­a­tion world­wide, Mathias considers John Deere to be a leader in this field. And ulti­mately, these features appealed to him so strongly that he decided to buy the combine sight unseen. After the first harvest it even impressed his combine oper­ator, Johannes Jäckel who orig­i­nally preferred a different brand.

Harvest weather

In 2025, the cold and damp period during summer meant the grain harvest made little progress. Web forums and maga­zines were full of stories on grain quality losses and farmers could hardly wait to get back into the fields with their combines. Jan Peter Loth is one of the part­ners of Mathias Preussner. On the way to his farm near Fried­berg in Hesse, wheat still stood in many of his fields. The stalks and ears shim­mered in a greyish tone, but thank­fully any sprouting or germi­na­tion was barely visible.

The day before, a grain sample showed a Hagberg falling number well above 300, so there was no reason to worry about having to market the grain as feed wheat. “Most likely, the low temper­a­tures of the past few weeks and the fact that the wheat remained standing in most fields helped preserve the grain quality. There’s not too much damage, at least not on our farm,” says Peter.

Unloading and grain trans­port 

By midday, Jan-Peter’s winter wheat is dry enough for harvesting, and the brand-new S7 800 combine begins making its rounds, oper­ated by Johannes Jäckel. Grain is unloaded on the move into one of the trailers posi­tioned at the edge of the field, each holding around 20t of grain. “It takes us about four minutes to unloaded,” explains Johannes. “With 20 loads a day, that adds up to more than an hour of extra harvesting time per day.” Unfor­tu­nately, because the trac­tors aren’t from John Deere, Machi­ne­Sync, the automa­tion system that allows the combine driver to control the tractor during unloading, can’t be used. So, Johannes and the tractor drivers must be extra atten­tive during the unloading process.

Field trial: Automa­tion of the S7 800

Patrick Hofstetter is also on site today; he is respon­sible for over­seeing the field trials at John Deere and eval­u­ating how the machines perform in real-world condi­tions. He aims to test how the auto­mated combine settings and predic­tive speed control affect the machine’s produc­tivity and grain losses, compared to an expe­ri­enced oper­ator like Johannes. To do this, a tray is mounted beneath the feeder-house to catch kernels that fail to enter the combine.

While the machine is running, Patrick moni­tors the grain losses on the G5 Command­Center display and trig­gers the release of the tray via a remote control, he then needs to find the tray under the thick straw swath. Using a blower, he sepa­rates the wheat from the chaff until only the kernels remain and then measures the exact weight of the lost grain. To ensure a true compar­ison between the auto­mated system and manual oper­a­tion, the trial must be repeated several times throughout the after­noon.

The new combine has a fan

Mean­while, Johannes is sitting in his air-condi­tioned, dust-free cab, enthu­si­as­ti­cally discussing the new machine. “Orig­i­nally, I wanted a combine from a different manu­fac­turer, but when my boss told me we were getting this model with harvest automa­tion, I imme­di­ately started watching YouTube videos to famil­iarise myself with the machine,” he says. And this home­work paid off. “During the machine briefing by a service tech­ni­cian from the deal­er­ship, it felt almost like a conver­sa­tion between equals.”

Maximum cutting width

To avoid having to do a three- point turn at the end of the field, Johannes divided it into strips. Each strip is exactly 9mwide, which, given the header width of 9.15m, leaves precisely 7.5cm at each side of the header. “The boss orig­i­nally told me to start with an effec­tive cutting width of 8.50m and grad­u­ally work my way up to see what’s possible,” says Johannes. “But I went straight to 9m, and it worked.” he says This is made all the easier by the fact that the combine performs the head­land turns itself, without the oper­ator having to do anything.

Predic­tive speed adjust­ment

The new combine is equipped with Predic­tive Ground Speed Automa­tion, a system which uses an algo­rithm to antic­i­pate changes in flow and adjusts the speed accord­ingly. “On the guid­ance system screen, you can see a biomass map based on satel­lite data – it contains infor­ma­tion about crop growth,” explains Johannes. “On the live camera screen, you can see the machine scan­ning the terrain directly in front of the header. An AI algo­rithm combines data from both sources and adjusts the combine’s speed pre-emptively”. The goal of this is to fully utilise engine power and keep the combine oper­ating at its perfor­mance optimum. The speed changes are so smooth that the oper­ator barely notices them inside the cab.

The guid­ance system screen displays the biomass map based on satel­lite data.

The green areas on the live camera screen indi­cate where the combine is scan­ning the field in front of the header.

The values displayed on the screen are based on a nominal scale from one to 10 and must be cali­brated against phys­ical measure­ments.

Auto­mated machine settings

The key factor in reducing grain losses is the Harvest Setting Automa­tion, which can be used to set limits for grain losses, quality and clean­li­ness. The system features new loss detec­tion tech­nology and contin­u­ously analyses perfor­mance para­me­ters in rela­tion to the defined limits. AI takes care of all neces­sary internal adjust­ments to keep the values within the set limits as effec­tively as possible.

The values displayed on the screen are based on a nominal scale from one to 10 and do not repre­sent actual percent­ages. To paint a real­istic picture, they must be cali­brated against phys­ical measure­ments – like Patrick’s grain loss tests – using the grain camera, or by looking into the grain tank.

Automa­tion keeps perfor­mance consis­tent

Patrick gives a signal to stop. “I’m done with the measure­ments now, and the result is clear,” he says. “The auto­matic machine settings keep grain losses consis­tently within the target range of 1%.” In contrast, the measure­ments fluc­tuate signif­i­cantly when using manual control and, in some cases, show consid­er­ably higher percent­ages. Johannes is convinced that over the course of the day, he cannot main­tain the same perfor­mance as the automa­tion of the new S7 800 combine. Based on his gut feeling, he esti­mates that, given the rela­tively small fields he harvests, the automa­tion delivers an addi­tional perfor­mance of up to 15%. “You can clearly tell that the machine is constantly making adjust­ments,” says Johannes. “A regular driver simply can’t manage that over an entire day.”