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Tony Kramer: Hi, I'm Tony Kramer, your host of the Agriculture Technology Podcast, and I'm sitting down with agriculture technology and equipment experts to help you enhance your operation for today, tomorrow, and into the future. In this episode, I talk with Clint Sedlacek about Monosem planters. With that, let's get started. I am really happy to bring on Clint with Monosem to talk about the different planter offerings that they have in the U.S. market and around the world. Clint, before we get started, why don't you take some time to introduce yourself? Tell our listeners a little bit about who you are, where you come from, and how you got to where you are today.
Clint: Well, thanks for having me on, Tony. I'm Clint Sedlacek. I am Monosem USA's Western Territory Sales Manager. I pretty much cover everything west of the Missouri River, and I also cover Quebec in Canada. I have a good background in farming. I grew up in Nebraska as a corn and soybean farmer, and we had a little bit of cattle. From there, I eventually moved down to Kansas for family reasons and kind of backed my way into convincing these guys to give me a job. I've been having fun at it ever since.
Tony: There you go — corn and soybean boy, central United States — and Monosem gotcha, similar to myself. Anyways, Monosem kind of opens the door, opens your eyes to different industries within agriculture and what you guys have to offer at Monosem. You dabble in some of the high-value crops and things outside of corn and soybeans. So it's been fun and interesting getting to connect with you at Monosem and learn about what you guys do. So while we jump in here, Clint, why don't you give us a little bit of background on Monosem itself — kind of how you guys got started and where the Monosem company is today?
Clint: Monosem is actually a French company. It was founded about 80 years ago by the Rabeaux family, and they started off building mechanical planters. From there, they're actually credited with creating the first vacuum planter in the world that was market-produced. Then the U.S. division was launched in 1980. From there, we've grown pretty much across the whole world — pretty much no continent we're not touching or have planters on. Like I said, the crazy thing is when you think planters, you think corn and soybeans, and then we have this whole other area of high-value crops that we cover. That includes things you never think about, going all the way from planting flowers to arugula to bok choy — a huge market we cover. We have to have a large, broad variety of products to cover it all.
Tony: Where you and I grew up in agriculture, we're used to corn, soybeans, maybe some sugar beets or things like that thrown into the mix, but Monosem has a very broad spectrum starting over in Europe and very large. And what you guys have to offer — what is it like on some of the planters? Not every model, but some of the planters — there's, what is it, 200-plus different crop types?
Clint: If you go from NG Plus, our mainstay, we cover about 130 different crops that can be planted with it, and the MS I'd say probably 80-plus with that one. So yeah, combined, you're easily looking at over 300, I'd say.
Tony: That's something that is new to me — being able to have that broad spectrum of different types of crops. Now, we'll get into that a little bit later when we talk about different models that are available. But the other thing I want to bring up that is kind of unique to Monosem is your planters are truly built to order. There is no real specific kind of base spec. You guys are a true custom-built planter based on what the customer is looking for. Talk to us a little bit about that process and what allows your planters to be so configurable.
Clint: Yeah, so we like to say our planters are almost like snowflakes — no two are the same when they come out of the factory. No assembly lines here. Every planter is hand-built by our crews. It's something we have to offer because of all the markets we cover. We cover the odd and unusual — the markets that might only have a need for 20 planters and something the big guys don't want to go after or deal with. We were one of the original founders of the twin-row concept when that was a big thing. I think you probably remember that too, back in the early 2000s. From there, we've expanded and adjusted our row units to give us a lot of spacing options that our competitors can’t offer. And then when we go over to the vegetable side, you have to be flexible. When we're talking about line or row spacing that people in the Midwest never think about — when you have to get down to two-inch line spacing, you’ve got to be flexible and able to modularly build these things. A lot of these crops — no grower grows them the same. You can have one guy who grows onions at three inches apart, C-line, and then you have a guy next door who grows onions also, but he grows his at four and a half. We've got to make sure we can meet the market wherever we can.
Tony: Yeah, that's another thing I've learned in the vegetable production side of agriculture. A typical broad-acre commodity crop — we've got 30-inch row spacing, 22, 20, 15-inch. We've got kind of these standard sets. Whereas in vegetables, to your point, onions might vary a little bit or lettuce varies a little bit, and that's why you guys have to stay flexible. It's a great offering to have — to be able to line things up the way you want them based on your operation and how you produce your crops. It's very unique to Monosem, and I think that's one of the things that sets you guys apart from some of the competition. Now, let's dive in a little bit to each of the different types of models. You kind of teased it a little bit when we were talking about different crop types. You had mentioned an NG Plus, but I know you guys have a couple other models out there as well. Tell us a little bit about the different types of planters or different types of row units that Monosem has to offer.
Clint: Yeah, it's a pretty wide range to cover what we do, but we have, I’d say, our mainstay four. Our first one is our Valoterra, which is our newest offering. It's an all-electric row unit that also offers what we call ASG High Speed. It's very similar to the Deere BrushBelt. That's mostly geared towards corn and sunflower growers at the time, but it's a very modular row unit with a lot of new cutting-edge ideas that we're pretty excited about. And then we have what most people probably know us for — our NG Plus. We've had that one for about 35 years now. That is our mainstay. It can plant a huge variety of crops. People love it for its reliability and simplicity. That's kind of the one we like to promote a lot. And then we have our NC, which is a take on NG Plus. It's a large-shoe planter, which I know a lot of people aren't always familiar with — especially on a large planter like this — but that's more geared towards our Latin America and Mexico customers. That's how they prefer to plant corn and soybeans — with that shoe planter. And then the last round in our lineup is our MS, which is our mini-seed planter. That's geared towards the vegetable market, mostly out on the West Coast and kind of in the Northeast — that's where we see the majority of those go.
Tony: Let's dive into the MS planter a little bit, 'cause I know you guys have some different offerings within that MS portfolio. Tell us a little bit about each one of those different row unit versions and why a customer would choose one versus the other — some of the differences there?
Clint: Yeah, we have quite a few different offerings. I believe at this time we have six or seven different row unit setups for the MS. The mainstay is our MS Version A. That's just our basic row unit — it has a front press wheel and a rear press wheel. That's generally used for most vegetable crops that need to be spaced 8 inches or wider. Then we have our Version B, which is a stripped-down version of the A. It allows us to get tighter row spacing — we can get down to about 5.5 inches with Version B. We utilize that when we need to get that tight spacing. A lot of times we'll partner that with what we call a Duo Bar — it's two toolbars mounted together, so you have two ranks of planter units to allow us to get even tighter spacing.
We then have our Version C, which is basically an A, but it has a split shoe on it and a dual seed disc. That means we can plant two seed lines out of a single meter to allow incredibly tight row spacing. We also offer that with adjustable shoes — so if, say, you want to plant one crop at two inches and another crop at four and a half, you can get a shoe that can adjust between those.
We then offer our Version D, which we also call our Onion Planter. It's two of our MS meters mounted into a single row unit. What that allows us to do is get pretty good row spacing or line spacing to those seed lines, but also allows us to have better control over the depth on those meters. We can also partner that with disc openers, which allow us to cut through some residue. It's more of a minimum-till kind of setup — not for heavy residue.
Then we have our Version M, which is our High-Density Planter. It's where we take a lot of meters and mount them into a single bed. We can go anywhere from, if you want a single meter in a bed, or we can sometimes get up to 18 meters in a bed. Pretty close row spacing on that — we can get anywhere down to 1.5 inches and then go larger.
Then we round it out with our Version G, which we actually developed for the Southwest — specifically the Yuma region. It's a row unit made to mount into a sled and carry all the weight onto the toolbar instead of transferring that weight to the bed. That allows growers to avoid compressing or damaging their beds as they're planting. And that kind of rounds out all of our options for the MS.
Tony: Yeah, so that — again, back to the kind of built-to-order concept — the different offerings of row spacing, row units, all that type of stuff, you really have a solution for anybody. And from my perspective, with RDO Equipment, our stores on the West Coast offer them — whether they're planting lettuce or broccoli or whatever it may be — there are different offerings and different solutions. You talked about that M, that high-density setup with a lot of row units. You talked about the Version G, really designed for that desert Yuma/Arizona region. And then I know the Version A is very popular in our Salinas Valley — the California coast there. So it really offers a solution for any vegetable grower out there based on where they're at in the world and what they're trying to do — what crops they're growing.
Clint: No, you're 100% right. It kind of falls in that category of we've got to be flexible. When we offer this stuff, it's more like a baseline — it's not an end product we're offering. It's a starting point. That's sometimes a lot different from what people expect when they come to us, because usually when you go to an equipment manufacturer, what they show you is what you get and that's it. Ours is, “No, here's where we're starting and here are the building blocks — let's see if we can make something for you.” And sometimes that includes building blocks we don't even have, and we have to go out and make them or find them. That's how we continue to grow and adapt. For us, there's usually no idea that's a crazy idea — we always try to see if we can make it work. And sometimes some of it leads to longer-term success, because usually if it's affecting one guy, it's affecting multiple people. So we try to listen to the customer and take what they say in their feedback — we take it pretty seriously.
Tony: Now, before we jump into this last product that we were talking about here — I'm very excited for the launch of this product — I just want to take a moment and talk about some of the John Deere-specific technology that we can tie into, say, the MS, the NG Plus, Valoterra, and NC. What are some of the technologies that we can capitalize on when utilizing these Monosem planters?
Clint: I'm glad you brought that up, Tony. And I probably should have mentioned earlier — a lot of people don’t realize this — we actually are a Deere company. John Deere bought Monosem in 2016, and since then, we've been integrating and working closer with them. Part of that was gaining the ability to access Deere technology. So in terms of the Valoterra and MS, the Valoterra uses what we call SeedStar M, which is our version of SeedStar 3, and it allows us to tie into Operations Center, which I think a lot of people find a lot of value in. It definitely helps them optimize their operations and get more out of their planters.
For the MS, right now we offer ground and hydraulic drive, which allows us to utilize SeedStar 2 — especially for these high-value crop guys and vegetable growers, this is technology they have not had access to before. So we're kind of breaking ground here with these growers and giving them the ability to see live population data on their planters and adjust in-cab, getting their eyes on data they didn’t know they could get before. And again, same thing — it ties into Operations Center, which goes full loop for these guys because it adds another layer onto their operations. Whether they're adding in tillage data or harvesting data, now they're getting all that information in one place and tracking everything in one place.
And then, we can even lean into prescriptions for their planters — eliminating one more factor that can go wrong. When an operator pulls up into a field with a planter, he can have it preloaded and see what he's supposed to be planting and at what rate. All he has to do is accept it and go. It just eliminates that chance of something going wrong there.
Tony: Yeah, it really has opened the door. Like you said, we go back to broad-acre commodity crops — corn and soybeans. Those farmers have had planter monitoring systems like SeedStar for many, many years. We are now offering these types of monitoring tools and documentation into vegetable crops and some of those markets that have not had this technology in the past. So it really opens up that door. And to your point, bringing this into the John Deere Operations Center — creating work plans, easing stress for the operator, doing things behind the scenes in the office but allowing that to flow into the tractor and vice versa — bringing tractor data into the office to make educated decisions. That's new territory for high-value crops. And I know you mentioned John Deere acquiring Monosem back in 2016 — you guys still operate as Monosem, but you've got that backing of John Deere and the technology tie-in. So it has really opened up a new door for high-value crops and vegetable farms to access these types of technologies.
The last thing I want to talk about, Clint — I'm very excited about this — is you guys just launched a brand-new row unit, or rather a new way to drive a specific row unit. Talk to our listeners a little bit about MS Electron.
Clint: Yeah, we're very excited about this. It's something that's been in the works for us for a while now. MS Electron — it's more a reference to the system. Like you said, we're going to change the way we drive the row units. It's an electric motor that mounts on the front of the meter and then connects to a pulley and a side belt system. What this does is eliminate a lot of the older technology — chains, sprockets, hex shafts — and allows better control of these meters. And not only that, we're adding another layer of technology to it.
With the ability to put these motors on here, we're now going to be able to offer SeedStar M to our vegetable growers, which is a much better software suited for what they're looking to do than SeedStar 2. The software can handle what we're doing a lot better. You can actually get live singulation data on small, high-population seed crops. So say you're doing lettuce at half a million seeds per acre — with our new sensor that's part of MS Electron, which is our SeedWatch Mini Sensor, you can actually get accurate readings of that seed. We're showing significant accuracy with this. We've done tests pushing the limit of the sensor — we've gone up into the high hundreds of thousands with small seed and gotten accurate details.
And as part of this too, like any electric-drive planter, you now have adjustable rates and can change what you're doing on the fly. Like I said, we're super excited about this. Right now, we are only offering it on new planters that we're building, but the plan is hopefully by Q4 of next year we'll start offering retrofit kits — where our existing MS users can buy a kit from an RDO dealer and convert their existing planter to electric drive and utilize this technology. So it's something we're very excited about. A lot of work has gone into it. We're already taking a meter everybody loves and trusts and just making it a little bit better now.
Tony: Yeah, that's one of the things I'm most excited about. So we take MS Electron — you mentioned ground drive and hydraulic drive. Now we've got, again, not only does Monosem have every row unit offering for anything you could possibly imagine, but now we've got every drive offering. If ground drive truly fits your operation, or if you'd like to take that next step and get to hydraulic drive, and then now we've got that top-tier electric drive — more control over those row units, more control over the meters. It's taking it to that next level. We've kind of got that good, better, best: good with ground drive, better with hydraulic drive, and now best with electric drive. Very excited for the launch of this product and everything that Monosem is bringing to the market with MS Electron.
If somebody wants to learn more about any of the products we talked about here today, Clint, where can they go? Who can they talk to?
Clint: First off, you can go to your local RDO dealer and talk to someone there — they'd be more than happy to help you out. But if you're not in an area where there's an RDO, you can go to our website: monosemusa.com. On there, there's a link that will help you locate dealers in your area — who's an assigned Monosem dealer. You can also visit our other website, monosem.com, for a little more in-depth detail on some of our planters and offerings.
Tony: Awesome. I just want to thank you, Clint, for taking the time out of your day to sit down and talk to me about Monosem planters and everything that you guys have to offer. Whether it's your typical corn and soybean with that Valoterra or NG Plus type of platform, or you're in the high-value vegetable crops with the MS or mini-seed row units, Monosem has definitely got a solution for your operation. So thanks again for doing this.
Clint: Well, thank you, Tony. I appreciate it.
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Tony Kramer
Tony Kramer is the Product Manager of Planting Technology and a Certified Crop Advisor at RDO Equipment Co. He is also the host of the Agriculture Technology podcast. If you have any questions for Tony or would like to be a guest on the podcast, email agtechpodcast@rdoequipment.com, or connect with him on LinkedIn.
