Kuhn's 16-tonne Gladiator XL 1210 leads strip-till charge at Farm Progress Show 2026

Kuhn's Gladiator XL 1210, billed as the largest commercial strip-till toolbar on the market, arrived at the 2026 Farm Progress Show carrying 16 tonnes of fertiliser capacity and a $750,000 to $850,000 price tag. That's the headline number of this year's tillage launches, and it tells you where the machinery business thinks farming is heading: narrower soil disturbance, bigger iron behind it.

The Gladiator XL handles 24 rows, but it doesn't come cheap in tractor power either — it wants 650 hp on the drawbar. This is strip-till for operators who've decided the practice pays and are willing to tool up accordingly.

Who else joined the strip-till market?

Case IH used the show to make its own move, launching the Nutri-Tiller 1000 series in mounted configurations from 6 to 16 rows. That's a deliberately broader spread than Kuhn's flagship, aimed at what you'd call typical farm operations rather than mega-acre custom applicators.

Kinze took a different angle entirely. Partnering with Yetter, it built the Falcon SF700 strip freshener — a tool aimed squarely at pre-plant seedbed preparation rather than full fertility placement. Call it strip-till's lighter-footed cousin.

What does autonomy change for tillage work?

PTx Trimble expanded its OutRun system beyond grain carts and into tillage. The system now runs spring and fall tillage plus land rolling on John Deere 8R tractors and select Fendt models, with operators supervising the whole job from a phone app. No cab required, in theory.

The practical significance: autonomy is no longer a harvest-only story. Spring and fall tillage windows are long, repetitive and labour-hungry — exactly the jobs an 8R with nobody in the seat can chew through while your people do something that actually needs judgement.

What's new in conventional iron?

Traditional tillage didn't get ignored, just updated rather than reinvented:

• John Deere added smaller High Speed Disk models in 15- to 25-foot widths and extended autonomy-ready capability across more of the range.
• Great Plains released the VT1200 chisel plow, with a floating hitch and more aggressive finishing options for vertical tillage work.
• Norwood brought the Kwik-Koulter high-speed disc harrow, which runs 10 to 15 mph in sizes up to 60 feet wide.

Sixty feet at 15 mph is a lot of acres per hour. Whether your soil structure thanks you is a separate conversation.

Versatility as a selling point

Two launches leaned hard on doing more than one job. Landoll's 2700 Vertistrip works as a shank, coulter or mole knife unit on the same toolbar — one frame, three soil strategies, presumably three sets of parts to lose in the shed.

Great Plains took the road-travel problem instead. Its BD7510 drill folds from 20 feet wide in the field down to 8 or 9 feet for transport. That's a direct nod to farmers working near urban areas, where a 20-foot load on a public road is increasingly a safety and liability question rather than an inconvenience.

What should farmers watch next?

The pattern across the show is consistent: manufacturers are betting farmers want soil conservation without surrendering yield, and they're pricing everything from 6-row mounted units to $850,000 flagships to test that bet. Watch for Case IH and Kinze dealer availability through the coming season, wider OutRun tillage compatibility as PTx Trimble adds tractor models, and field results — not brochure specs — on whether the smaller High Speed Disks and the Vertistrip's convertible toolbar hold up in real conditions.