Innovation is the name of the game when it comes to the AE50 Awards, the annual honours handed out by ASABE — the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, a member-driven organization which helps to develop standards and a consensus for certain topics or methods in the agriculture industry and biological engineering in an attempt to make them more efficient and more effective.

Each year, ASABE creates a Top-50 list highlighting the best and most innovative products in engineering and technology for agricultural, food and biological systems. And it’s not just equipment; it also includes other systems such as livestock, irrigation and other aspects of ag-mechanization. 

“They're focused on the innovations that basically improve technology, improve the life and the usability for customers, ultimately making things more efficient, more environmentally friendly. That kind of satisfies some of the greater goals of what the organization is trying to achieve,” says MacDon’s vice-president of product development (and ASABE member), Neil Barnett.

The competition for the AE50 Awards is tough, with notable industry names such as John Deere, Case IH, New Holland, CLAAS and AGCO often claiming several spots on the limited list, but it’s not uncommon to see MacDon’s name among those greats. And that is indeed the case this year, as MacDon’s FD2 PLUS FlexDraper® header is the latest product to earn the AE50 accolade.

Innovation is in MacDon’s DNA; from the earliest days of the company, the mission was always to provide the most efficient and best-possible product to its customers – the farmers – so they know when they purchase a MacDon product, they are getting a quality, reliable tool that will make their jobs easier and, ideally, make their farms more profitable. 

“From the beginning, MacDon's really sought to keep our customers, the farmers, in mind and bring them direct value,” says Mark Zastrow, product manager for MacDon’s Corn Header products.

“Going back to the early days and the introduction of the FlexDraper®, where it was sort of unheard of to do that at the time, but it worked really well to get all of the crop to feed the combine smoothly, which helped those farmers get more done. We want to keep doing that today in all of our different markets — for hay tools, for windrowers, for corn headers — where we don't want to just add features to compete in the sales market, we want to make sure those features are bringing value to our customers and helping them hit their bottom line to support their family, their business, and to make sure that they can really be more successful that way,” he continues.

“I think in product development, but really in MacDon as a whole, innovation is a core attribute. I mean it is necessary for our business to succeed,” adds Barnett.

“We're a shortline company. We repeat that often. The need for us to innovate is really tied to our existence, almost. If we don't innovate, we don't exist. We don't have the advantages of a bigger company that we can leverage. And so, really, the key is for us to reach our customers through our innovative designs. We're creating more value for these customers through making machines either easier to use or more productive, and that's through product innovations. But I would also say we're innovating in a lot of other ways as well. We're innovative in some of the ways we build products, some of the ways we deal with markets. There's a lot of types of innovation at MacDon.”

MacDon’s innovations have been honoured by the AE50s since 2004, starting with the 974 FlexDraper® Combine Header. From then on, MacDon has been consistently awarded for its products: the M-series windrower and FD70 FlexDraper® (2007), the R80 Pull-Type Disc Mower (2008), the R85 Pull-Type Disc Mower (2012), the M1240 Windrower (2018), the R2 Series Rotary Disc Header (2020), M1170 NT Windrower & FD2 Series FlexDraper® (2021), TM100 Tractor Mount (2022) and the M2 Windrower & D2 Series Draper Header (2023.)

And last year, the company had a trio of AE50-award-winning products — R1 FR Front Mount Rotary Disc, the FD261 FlexDraper® and the FlexCorn™ header.

The draper headers, in particular, have become a flagship product for MacDon; it was one of the first companies to even put a draper header on a combine, and once that innovative engineering started providing real, tactile results in the field, the question then became, what’s next?

“Our sizes have continually increased over the years, where we're up to 61 feet now, where initially we're at 36 feet and that's crept up. We've developed (a) much more efficient cutting system on the machine so that we can get faster ground speeds, again increasing your productivity,” says Russ Henderson, product manager at MacDon.

“As well as being able to handle the wide variety of crops; where initially the draper headers were primarily for cereal crops — wheat, oats, barley — then canola came along and rapeseed and all the different edible beans which are low podded on the ground tougher to get. So we've kept evolving the machine to add more and more crops to our repertoire of what we can harvest and we're pretty proud that we can do pretty well everything that's out there today when it comes to field crops.”

The most recent iteration of the FlexDraper® header – the FD2 PLUS – was first made available to consumers in 2025, though it had been in the design pipeline for almost a decade. The testing process for the FD2 PLUS was a rigorous affair, with techs and engineers putting every piece of the header through the ringer to make sure it would hold up to the tough conditions out in the field. 

And, strangely enough, the most innovative thing about this header is actually found in its simplicity. 

FD2 PLUS FlexDraper® header has an additional two inches of extra flex at the cutterbar and hugs the ground tighter as compared to the original FD2 FlexDraper® header. Henderson and his team knew they needed to keep this draper header simple and reliable, without a lot of extra moving parts and maintenance that the customer would ultimately have to shoulder. 

“When we developed our FlexDraper® headers with our three-piece frames that allowed us to flex follow the ground and still maintain our close reel-to-cutterbar relationship, that was key. But as we got into it, and we're over 20 years now, we found that there's still some customers that believe a flexible cutterbar gives them a better performing product than a flexible-frame machine and we felt that we're missing out on that small portion of the market, it's kind of the last holdouts that believe they have to have a flexible cutterbar in order to work better,” explains Henderson.

“Our concern was that most flexible cutter-bar headers, the current technology that was out there, is that you didn't have the reel-cutterbar relationship and you would lose a lot of crop … you may cut it off but you won't get it into your header, into your combine and ultimately into your grain bin. So we thought if we're going to do anything on this it has to maintain our reel-to- cutter-bar relationship so that we can gather everything we cut, PLUS cut a little closer and that's where the FD2 PLUS evolved and came in.”

The task then became how to accomplish this change without overcomplicating the whole product. The team developed a flexible cutterbar that follows the ground a bit better, allowing it to catch undulations and skip over rocks while still maintaining that much-desired reel-to-cutterbar relationship. To do this, they used a very simple mechanical leaf-spring system; no bearings, no bushings, no hydraulics, just springs.

Leaf springs are strong, compact and require almost no maintenance. On top of that, the leaf springs stood up to MacDon’s meticulous testing process when earlier options or iterations did not. 

The springs are simple, but effective, and Henderson, Barnett and Zastrow all agree that making something very complex with numerous added features and options is often a lot easier than simplifying things down. But those complexities also often mean that a compromise is being made in terms of cost and, unfortunately to some extent, reliability. There are simply more components that can break, and those fixes can be timely and expensive. This is not a compromise MacDon is willing to make. 

To design something simple that can still tick all the boxes in terms of dependability, efficiency and cost takes “true talent,” as Henderson says. He feels MacDon has nailed that trifecta with the FD2 PLUS and is very pleased the header is getting AE50-level recognition because of that.

“When we received the award for the FD2 PLUS, we were so proud because we felt that that was a very valuable addition to our FD2 product line, but we didn't know if the world would see it as that,” says Henderson. 

“Our customers are buying the units now, we're getting a lot of uptake and good demand for it, but to have the industry recognize that this early on was very touching for us and makes us really happy.”

And while MacDon’s product and engineering teams don’t do their work with an awards-focused mindset, the recurring acknowledgement from an organization such as ASABE and the AE50s is something many are immensely proud of.

“I think it’s rewarding for a designer, a design manager, a test manager, anybody in product development – I think actually anyone in the business – to see the designs that you worked on be launched into the marketplace and it’s another step to see it acknowledged in the industry. To see that people took notice and think that there’s some relevant innovation on this product and that it’s been acknowledged as one of the main innovations of the year,” says Barnett. 

“As a shortline company I sometimes feel the odds are slightly stacked against you; we have less opportunity, we have less product, quite frankly, than the larger OEMs so when we’re able to win with the shorter product offerings that we have as compared to them I think that shows something, that we’re continuing to innovate on the product that we have and we know that it’s important. It kind of puts MacDon almost on a more even footing with some of those big companies when we’re there and we’re getting awards and they’re getting awards and we’re all together.” 

“Over the years with all our products, we're always chasing performance and customer value, making sure that we get the best product to the customers, and in order to do that you've got to innovate and you've got to come up with unique solutions that allow you to bring a product out that has a high value in the marketplace,” adds Henderson.

“When these AE50 awards come along, and our engineers will apply for them once in a while based on our technology that we've come out with, to us it's the icing on the cake to receive an industry award from our peers for something that we've done. We're not out there trying to win awards, we're out there trying to take care of customers and give them the best product and performance and value that we can. And when we receive an AE50 award that's just kind of like, ‘Wow we've done a great job and even our industry companions can see that as well.’ And so it kind of gives you a good feeling that you're on the right path and you're going the right direction.”

Visit our product pages to learn more:
FD2 PLUS Series FlexDraper® Header
FD2 Series FlexDraper® Header

Additional Resources:
AE50 Awards
MacDon Dealers