Something in Common

Some things very different.

By Henry Gantz
hgantz@meistermedia.com

John Deere 7760

The Case IH Module Express 625 and the John Deere 7760 cotton pickers have one thing in common: they pick cotton and build modules on the go.

“The new systems have the potential to do away with the module builder and the boll buggy,” says Dr. Gregg Ibendahl, a Mississippi State University agricultural economist. Ibendahl presented the much anticipated economic data on the new pickers at Cotton Incorporated’s 21st Annual Engineered Fiber Selection system Conference in early June in Memphis. “Not only can you eliminate these two pieces of equipment, you can also eliminate the tractors and labor that go with each, potentially saving over $22 per acre.”

But that is just about where the similarities end. The Case IH 625 builds 8’x8’x16’ modules, roughly half the length of a traditional module. Height and width are the same. The Deere 7760 builds 8’x7.5’ plastic-wrapped round modules.

Yeah, but …

Case IH Module Express 635

According to Ibendahl’s data, The Case IH system has a lower initial cost and is less expensive to operate, but the Deere 7760 makes up for that with higher picking efficiency. “The reason the Deere machine has better efficiency is that it really doesn’t have to stop,” explains Ibendahl. “It can carry a module – even though it is a smaller module than the Case IH – on the back while it’s making another one. The advantage is that you can carry that built module to the end of the row.”

Indeed, the Case IH picker does have to stop to dump a module (Case IH says that can be done in as little as 70 seconds) that has to be tarped in the field. But the Deere picker’s plastic wrap can be an issue at the gin with regard to contamination of cotton lint, and it can add $15 per acre to the cost of a module.

Deere modules have to be staged in the right direction at the end of the row so that a module truck can pick them up, four at a time, and it takes a special piece of tractor-mounted equipment to do that. The new Case IH picker’s modules make it almost seamless for a conventional module truck to pick up. But Deere says that special piece of staging equipment may, at some point, eliminate the need for a module truck altogether. The thinking is that modules can be loaded directly onto a flatbed.

The Case IH picker was introduced in 2006, and was commercially available in 2007. The Deere picker was introduced in 2007, but is not commercially available. Deere has not yet announced plans for commercial release.

Ibendahl says each new picker will cost roughly $200,000 more than a conventional picker.

So which of the new on-board, module-building pickers is better? “We’ve seen that both systems can lower cost,” says Ibendahl. “What we see in a lot of cases is that the Case system is going to be cheaper, but the Deere system is going to have less cost variability.”

His conclusion is that it will come down to brand loyalty, as in, “what’s your favorite paint color.”