Farming economics vary a ton from country to country. In the US there is widespread consolidation and larger farms can afford high tech machines. But in poor places where the labor is cheap it's often the case that farm plots are small and fragmented, and the economics of this type of automation don't really work. Not saying it can't, but the delivery model needs to be one where the farmer isn't bearing the cost of the machine.
One of the most voiced benefits of the increased automation and efficiency through the industrial revolution (and the technological advancements today) was that we'll generate more value/goods/etc. with less human work, therefore everyone's prosperity will increase. For example, a farm that would require 20 people will require 5 with machines.
We did get the increase in production efficiency but that newly-generated value was never passed on to those who did the actual work (all the way from farmers and factory works to most white collar jobs). It was captured and collected by those at the top. So now, everyone's afraid of "losing their jobs to machines" and somewhat rightly so. Instead of building machines to do our bidding while we live like royalty, we still have insane amounts of poverty despite the world generating more products/food/value than ever before in human history, with people losing their jobs and getting nothing in return.
Because the market for agriculture is competitive, the value was passed down to consumers in the form of cheaper food. Before industrialized agriculture, it was normal for food to be the largest chunk of a household's budget.
What would happen if instead of collecting tax for UBI the central bank would issue new currency? Prices would keep on raising forever, but from time to time we could cut a few zeros. The ones who hold onto cash would see their money slowly losing value, better use it or lose it. This system would be easier to implement.
That is what what we do now.
Controlled inflation by central banks is really controlled reduction of the value of the currency. ~2% per year is the target. The USA gets a free pass at the moment because USD is "the" reserve currency. If/when that changes we might get a lesson in hyper-inflation. :(
That's why the wealthy don't hold much cash. (unless they see a crash coming)
Innovators making profits - this is the premium we have to pay for exploration. On the other hand, if we rejected exploration everyone would be worse off. Just take a look at innovation in communist regimes.
One imagines the tractor could also be hacked destructively by some nation-state adversary.
But probably not to drive places randomly and smash into things. The better attack is to change some engine settings so the entire fleet is ruined just before a big harvest, so there's no time to fix them. Attacking people with tractors just draws attention to your compromise.
Nah just up nutrients dose rates a few % and render the field unusable for years to come. Smash a whole fleet that has a lion's share of the market. Blammo food shortages across your country for years rather than just the few weeks waiting for machines yo be fixed.
I agree, but this is a tractor. You’d need to hack the fertilizing units or the chemical dispensers etc. unless I’m really mistaken this would just be a device for dragging other stuff around.
"Using the John Deere Operations Center mobile app..."
So now your tractor is controlled via their network? If their server goes down, can you still farm? What if your John Deere Operations Center account has been been terminated or suspended? Here are their terms.[1] "In its sole discretion, Deere may restrict the Site or restricted areas of the Site to selected users."
Farmers have been fighting for the right to repair Deere tractors. So this is Deere's response. They now claim the right to prevent tractor owners from using them.
Since you can't fix it yourself it will probably be in the barn waiting for an appointment at the genius bar when your account is deleted (for complaining about John Deere).
Not all that different than commercial aircraft. If Boeing cuts you off from software updates or replacement parts then your ailiner is basically worthless and unable to fly within a month. Many agribusinesses are probably fine with this as a tradeoff for the decreased manning of an autonomous tractor. JD might say that the small farmers who dont like the arrangement are not its target market.
A farmer owning a $250,000 tractor is a very different thing than a pilot owning a $250,000,000 aircraft. I would say that there is a much greater expectation that a farmer should be able to repair their own tractor, for example.
I would agree, if we're talking CUT/SCUT you're in the realm of something that is easily serviceable(and the market doesn't really do DRM/lock-out currently) however these are different scale machines that are much pricier(just a quick glance looks like higher end 8Rs can start at 600k).
I havent met a farmer who owns his own working tractor at this scale. They are almost universally owned by the farmer's business entity. Any farmer operating as a sole propietor, and is in the market for a $500k tractor, needs legal advice asap. These are industrial machines, not household appliances.
Wait, maybe Jeremy Clarkson bought that lambo tractor under his own name. But it is more likely that his production company owns it.
The fact is, a pilot did not purchase the plane with his own money, and is working for a giant corporation that can negotiate a contract with another giant corporation.
A farmer, esp. a small scale private farmer, is not in the same position to negotiate a favourable contract as American Airlines would to Boeing.
The aircraft operator could be leasing the aircraft as well, in which case the lessor (typically a giant financial org) has a contract with the aircraft manufacturer.
this is not a piece of equipment suited to a small scale private farmer, though. this machine is for someone to whom acreage represents a block on a spreadsheet.
This statement is not accurate. Everyone summer I visit my friend's farm in central Illinois. Three people are responsible for farming 1000 acres. I've seen tractors and combines that are the size and cost of the 8R in the shed. This is a very normal and common family farm (though incorporated). Many of the farms in the area are this size and operated by private farmers.
I'm assuming that you don't know many farmers, then. It's not universal, but it's very common that farmers are self-incorporated businesses and that those businesses own the tractors. (In fact, this is usually a wise move given how many farming expenses are favorably subsidized by the US tax code.)
The power balance is different. Boeing vs United Airlines is a somewhat uneven contest, but it's not like John Deere vs. some farmer with 4000 acres in Nebraska.
Somewhat uneven? It’s been known that certain models of planes only exist because airlines demanded Boeing to make them.
It’s a pretty even fight, and because of the existence of Airbus, the airlines actually have a slight advantage. Look at what happened when Southwest casually mentioned they might be thinking about adding A320s into their fleet. Sent Boeing scrambling.
I'm not in either of these industries, but I suspect a major difference is that an airline owning a jet has a lot more leverage against potential malfeasance by the manufacturer than the average farmer has against John Deere.
John Deer has many more competitors than Boeing; farm equipment runs at slow speeds using off the shelf industrial diesel engines, and never (intentionally) leaves the ground or exceeds 30mph. Most medium sized countries have tractor factories, as they're essential for food production for the population.
It looks like they have one significant competitor, New Holland (i.e. Cnh Industrial): https://csimarket.com/stocks/competitionSEG2.php?code=DE, and two smaller that are worth mentioning: Massey Ferguson (Agco), and apparently Emerson (though I couldn't find which brands they own at a quick kagi'ing.)
Boeing actually seems to have more diverse competition, including Lockheed, Northrup, etc (although they're dominant in the commercial airplanes segment, where airbus isn't mentioned, so maybe these stats are US market only): https://csimarket.com/stocks/competitionSEG2.php?code=BA
Not a farmer but worked on one growing up and my in-laws farm several thousand acres. The existence of a competitor to JD is one thing, the distance from farm to dealer is another. If the competitor dealership is 75 miles away and JD is 20 miles away that can be a major factor.
Being able to get service in the field quickly is critical during planting or harvest. During these times downtime can be exceedingly expensive if the farmer is trying to beat some change in weather.
And sure you could try and get someone other than the dealer to work on it, if you can find them. But trying to find this person when your equipment is broken and you are burning money isn’t a great option and the dealer will probably favor servicing clients who bought equipment from them.
> farm equipment runs at slow speeds using off the shelf industrial diesel engines
John Deere manufactures it’s own engines in many cases, but it also uses engines from other manufacturers.
> never (intentionally) leaves the ground or exceeds 30mph
Yes, aviation has a lot lower risk tolerance than agriculture, but ag equipment still kills plenty of people, and I’d probably rather be in a head-on collision with a honda civic going 50mph than an 8R going 30mph.
> Most medium sized countries have tractor factories, as they're essential for food production for the population.
Are you just reiterating that John Deere has more competitors? If so, I think this is misleading because most of these factories are just the same few competitors with factories in different companies (rather than distinct companies per country).
Flying your modern aircraft doesn't depend on a lousy app that requires your "username and password" and probably doesn't even know what a pwd salt is. And if it goes down you can still fly (or keep flying).
You won't get cut out of replacement parts unless you're in a sanctioned country (and they do have ways of sourcing the parts).
Yes the agribusiness are ok with this, they know how to handle it (but you'll bet they'll have a lot of angry calls and lawsuits in some cases). Small farms on the other hand...
There are few airlines who could purchase an airplane from Boeing while there are millions of farmers who could purchase a traktor. Corporate greed is endless and every single corporation wants to sell subscription services while denying right to repair.
But the thing is that airliners have the right (and expectation) to repair their own planes, with Boeing and Airbus running a very extensive repair/service arm of their businesses. Upkeep of certain parts of the plane (engines, computers, cabin interior features) are actually also the responsibility of the sub-vendor who makes it. There also exists an extensive ecosystem of after-market repair shops and a vested interest by regulators to keep all ships airworthy to put a check on Boeing deciding to make access to a critical software update contingent on any kind of pressure sales tactic via user agreements.
The key bit here is that the customers of the airlines are subject to tight regulation. In most right to repair debates, no one is proposing comparable regulation on farmers or car owners or etc.
Similarly, how much do you want third parties tinkering with your airliner’s software systems? Obviously the risk envelope for an airliner is narrower than farm equipment, but farm equipment still kills plenty of people. Automotive is probably an even better example—do you want third parties tinkering with the software systems in your car? What about other cars with which you share the road? I’m not opposed to right to repair, but I don’t think proponents have seriously considered the practical implications for mission critical systems.
The alternative is that you can download the autonomous software and start using without any network connectivity.
But what happens when JD discovers a problem with the software? How do they force you to upgrade your software? What happens if the bug is dangerous or the bug causes your tractor to have mechanical issues if not upgraded?
Does the farmer want to be responsible for installing the emergency software update?
If John Deere is becoming a vertically integrated tech monopoly, the next step is for them to begin buying up the farms themselves. They'll have data as to which fields have the yields, best soils, best conditions, and are the most productive.
Not that it could not happen... there are various hedge funds that do this already, with mixed success. They generally lease back to a farmer.
John Deere doesn't have any data that the farmer wouldn't have, and they certainly don't have better access to large sums of capital than hedge funds. I can seem them participating in a capital lease agreement for someone doing this sort of operation, but operating a farm is a very different proposition.
John Deere doesn't have any data that the farmer wouldn't have.
Sure they do. They have the data from all the farms that use their service. The farmer only has data from their own farm. Deere can tell who's doing better.
Having data is not really sufficient to doing as well or better in a business though.
As an example, Zillow had all that house price data, and then blew half a billion dollars because it thought it could use that data to start buying and selling houses itself.
Then, once it has a monopoly and doesn't need to add any new "features" to its products, it can just fire all its employees and replace the CEO with a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization).
Nah, they just package the knowledge and sell it for a nice profit. No point in doing anything else than what they already do very well. There are quite a few unknown unknowns when starting a side business, and little reason for them to do it (other than small pilot farms just to get a feel for how it works, to build better equipment)
Yes. I work for John Deere ,but can't speak for the company.
The tractor and combines are sending real time crop data, it isn't hard for someone to look at that data and see across all farmers that yields are a bit different from what the market is predicting and make a large profit trading on that insider knowledge.
Those who work on that software and the admins of the database are registered with the SEC as not allowed to trade commodities. All that money they could make is directly out of our customers pockets and they wouldn't let us have that data if were were not protecting it.
It is a zero sum game. Farmers sit on one side of the trade and farmers the other. Thus the value of the data is exactly equal to the amount farmers lose by the traders having the data.
I've seen a video of a guy who 3D printed the mold of a very rare replacement part for his BMW and cast it with Aluminum, and it then fitted and worked perfectly as well as the original if not better.
I have family that still use JD tractors from 60s and 70s. In fact I have a relative who bough one for less than 2k, refurbished it for ~5k, and use it during winter for his chalet. Why don't we build pre-computerized tractors? I understand that cast-iron will break, but still the point remains with CNC machines becoming cheaper and cheaper.
Because unlike regular passenger cars the automation in tractors is essential for high yields. A farm that uses high tech tractors is going to beat out a farm with traditional tractors every single time. The days of the old boomer farmer are long gone; anyone who has managed to avoid getting swallowed by the conglomerates by this point has a pretty cutting edge setup that would make some startups blush. Drones, IoT, ML, etc. have been penetrating agriculture since the 2010s.
I think a better strategy would be to build open source tractor software for open source tractor hardware; some kind of "Linux for farms" coalition. It is very hard finding software people who intersect with agriculture people though which is what makes this a difficult undertaking.
As I've heard from people in the agro business, the equipments are already communicating on a standard Isobus (non open source), allowing to use differents equipment together.
What would open source bring? You always need a hardware anyway, and the conditions are rough, a RPI would not survive.
And for farmers locked in JD awful customer service, well they have plenty of choices beside JD, except they are not all American.
Considering the notoriety of John Deere fighting the right to repair and right to own movement, I have a hunch that their adoption of any new technology could be largely motivated by curbing ownership.
I would say many software services moving to cloud and to a subscription has largely prevented those products from being pirated or even necessarily owned. Inspired by that, for JD the most convenient path to create an "anti-piratable" product is by slapping a label of "autonomous and AI" and have them being directly controlled from a central location.
> I have a hunch that their adoption of any new technology could be largely motivated by curbing ownership.
I’m plenty critical of John Deere (having worked there for a decade), but I think you have it backwards. Technology drives profit for John Deere, and John Deere’s right to repair is a defensive play to keep third parties from eating into those profits.
Parenthetically, I also strongly suspect that the tech media are overly-cynical about its portrait of Deere’s anti-right-to-repair stance. Practically speaking, it becomes a lot more expensive to ship software updates when you can’t guarantee anything about the state of the system you’re shipping to because the customer has modified various things. Moreover, the more people tamper with these complex, dynamic systems, the more likely there are to be issues, which Deere probably fears will erode its “quality” reputation (Deere’s management can’t maintain Deere’s reputation; it certainly doesn’t want other parties accelerating the erosion). Furthermore, triaging issues and litigating responsibility becomes dramatically more expensive (note that unlike other parts of the software industry, “issues” here are tens of thousands of dollars per incident in the best case and “loss of life lawsuits” in the worst case). So yeah, all of these things are about “profit” from Deere’s perspective, but it seems to me to be less about avoiding competition per se and more about the substantial cost burden on Deere to support a third party ecosystem.
As another parenthetical, I also think people attribute more competence to Deere’s software business than I’ve personally observed. I would honestly love to work on Deere’s technical problems, but Deere has so many political, cultural, and managerial problems that impede technical progress.
It's pretty simple: JD and Monsanto have extracted the high margin economic value into their products, leaving the farmer as an employee managing low margin operational work and carrying the burden of weather risk. JD weather risk is spread across 1000s of farms.
Same story with ASML, Siemens and other industrial tools companies.
Things get interesting when the cost (economic value) of the tool is a largest percentage of the total $ of goods produced.
Something something owning the means of production, hahaha.
In the 20th century that phrase was written about workers, as in employees, but if even the business owners don't really own the means of production... are they really business owners ?
It seems history repeats itself, just one echelon higher in the society.
If this is true why aren't farmers using other less extractive brands? Has JD used anticompetitive practices to hinder competition?
Or did JD increase farming productivity in a pareto efficient way, so the farmers are still better off buying JD, even though JD gets to keep most of the newly created surplus?
Or is it just a race to the bottom where farmers that don't buy JD get priced out, even though buying JD makes the farmers worse off as a collective?
There is intense concentration within the industrial agriculture 'toolchain'. John Deere, CNH Industrial and AGCO, the next largest competitors, sell 75-85%+ of combine harvesters in the US. Plus, there are things like tie-ins with Bayer/Monsantos data science platforms that smaller vendors can't or don't offer.
Tom Philpott describes this really well in 'Perilous Bounty': there are lots of farmers who are price takers. Their only way forward is to hope to survive weather and price cycles by producing more, more efficiently. This ironically leads to overproduction and poor returns.
Whereas JD are price makers who can use their consolidated power to set terms and prices within the market. Farmers don't really stand a chance.
Funny I was reading a book about US-North Korea relations wherein they talk about the effect of trade sanctions on North Korea. They didn't work, basically, and one reason why was because Korean agriculture was not very mechanized, so lack of imports of parts didn't really matter.
Grain farmers are doing just fine, they are not being ground to dust by the system.
But it is certainly true that production subsidies serve to make landlords and suppliers rich just as they serve to make farmers rich - your tax dollars at work!
Are farmers “rich”? I grew up in a big farming family in a big farming community and I don’t think anyone is rich.
My grandpa probably has a few million dollars in assets, but he saved aggressively his whole life and probably worked 40% more than the average non-farmer over the same time span (longer hours, fewer/shorter vacations, retired in his late 70s, etc).
Yes, farmers have a lot of capital invested in their businesses, but their incomes (i.e., what they take home rather than reinvesting in their businesses) still seem pretty modest.
Compared to my cousins who farm, I’m pretty sure I’m wealthier than they are as a software engineer, certainly with respect to income and perhaps also with respect to total asset value.
If they scale up, buy out other farmers, basically go corporate, they can be rich. It also feels like there are huge regional differences (eg a California walnut farmer is going to be a lot richer than an Illinois corn farmer).
If small land holding farmers are leaving the profession en masse, leaving only the bigger farm operations, then “farmers” are becoming richer simply because the poorer ones are dropping out.
It’s bound to happen eventually, but we probably haven’t crossed that threshold yet.
There are a lot of confounding variables in the question but if you look at the labour required to operate the average farm size in Iowa (360 acres) it is not a full time job, not close to a full time job.
Grain farming doesn't become a full time job until you reach over 1000 acres, if a guy farms one section of land and makes a decent living and chooses to spend that extra time enjoying life, more power to 'em, but farming in that 640-1280 acre pocket scales really well - it is a choice!
The over half of farmers in Iowa, most of which are row-crop farmers, that are running farms under 640 acres, are they dropping out because of economic pressure? Maybe some, but I think mostly it is old-timers that had a great run but they have a business that provides half an income to the next generation at the current scale and the next generation would rather do one thing than two. Either way, Dad's not retiring "poor"!
(This happens a lot in my neck of the woods, lots of 1,000 acre-ish farmers retiring with kids that are professionals that "love the farm" but have no interest in it at this scale.)
The fact that many farmers choose to operate their business in a way that is under-leveraged and often over-work themselves instead of hiring outside help that they can certainly afford is an artifact of culture, not a measure of wealth.
Of course, coming from a rural community there is a pretty good chance that you engage in an unusually high level of personal savings and as such have converted a high income into high asset holdings, I know I do - it is something in the water I think!
Institutionalized power imbalances which eventually lead to abrupt disruptions. aka Revolutions.
This story is as old as history.
I've been reading more about the Progressive Era during the apocalypse. (Currently chewing thru Caro's Master of the Senate, which covers New Deal thru Great Society.) Same challenges, rhetoric, social fault lines. Only the cast of characters have changed.
Don't worry, though. The more I learn, the more optimistic I become. We've been here before. Countless times. And somehow, humanity stumbles forward. Though the stakes are quite high for this iteration.
If there's anything "exceptional" about American Exceptionalism, my nomination is that our transfers of power have been relatively more peaceful than most.
I'm not saying things will necessarily work out. Only that it's possible we'll reach the next equilibrium. Kick the can down the road a few more decades. Potentially giving our grandkids the opportunity to revisit this never-ending argument again, on their own terms.
Right now, just knowing it's possible is hope enough for me.
I can see a seat in the picture, so you would expect that driving it by hand to be a fallback. It isn't ideal, but might be a good enough solution for their user base.
Yes, as A John Deere employee who cannot speak for the company I can tell you this is carefully targeted only to things where you drive to the field, your spouse follows in a car to bring you back home and you hit start. The important part of this story is we can assume that even in the worst case nobody will be hurt as no humans are anywhere close. This is a much easier problem than driving on roads where there are other cars, bicycles, and other pedestrians. Also in operation the tractor will be slow enough that most humans and animals can outrun it, and it is visible enough that they will.
Any farming operation where humans might possibly be around this won't work for. We want this to be full autonomous, but the technology isn't ready.
The primary purpose of this is to target great engineers (ie the people who read hacker news) with the idea that we are an exciting company to work for. I personally have some code in this tractor, and I know the people who work on it. We have lots of open positions, the jobs are fun (as hard as any other engineering of course), and you might want to join us.
Not super related, but one interesting thing mentioned in the article is that the population will increase from 8 billion to 10 billion by 2050, "increasing global food demand by 50%." Why would a 25% increase in population cause a 50% increase in food demand?
That doesn't make sense, unless the amount of food waste, measured as a percentage of total food, increases as the total amount of food produced increases.
I remember reading a while back that food waste was roughly similar between developed and undeveloped countries. The reason for the waste was different though. In developed countries it was consumers throwing out uneating food and in undeveloped countries it was due to poor storage environment before the food got to the consumer.
In primary production most things you don't consume yourself have either to earn income or cost you money to dispose of, and suddenly zero waste is a big win. Pig slurry has massive costs associated either with remediation of water or cartage. If you can make methane, drive a generator or heat or cool something or run pumps, and then have (in disease terms) sterile and nutrient rich water to use.. it's better.
Ploughing in your unsellable fruit is said to be heartbreaking. Suicide in farmers is high.
Growing less and getting a better price for it might be better than growing more but losing half the produce to skin taint or bruising. Less inputs, more value per acre worked.
When I looked into the figures, a large proportion (a majority?) of the "waste" occurred before the consumer even bought the food, so although the statistic is designed to shame people for their "wasteful" behaviour, the problem can't actually be substantially fixed without forcing people to eat lower quality "food" or otherwise reducing the food options available.
It could be increased standard of food as the world develops. More meat for consumption would increase the amount of food grown to raise the animals we slaughter for meat even with a static population.
That would definitely make sense. Something about the wording made it seem like the increasing population specifically was responsible for the increase in food demand, but it was probably an editing oversight.
Increased consumption per-person as more people have improved economic circumstances. See "How to Sustainably Feed 10 Billion People by 2050, in 21 Charts" [0].
"There is a big shortfall between the amount of food we produce today and the amount needed to feed everyone in 2050. There will be nearly 10 billion people on Earth by 2050—about 3 billion more mouths to feed than there were in 2010. As incomes rise, people will increasingly consume more resource-intensive, animal-based foods."
Dystopian versions of this are interesting to imagine.
Suppose the whole Keurig's DRM idea is applied to automated farm equipment. Want to plant some seeds? They have to be from a given source. Want to plant a certain crop, you can't plant it unless it's treated with a given pesticide. Inline sensors detect exactly what you are dispensing.
This all works because if you want to automate the driving, you have to integrate with the dispensing of things: seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, etc. If you don't, you need a person
Of course there is a flipside where that can be used to prevent you from using illegal pesticides, as those same in-line sensors could prevent dispensing of undesired things.
It just made me realize: why don't we have a public system that if you want to do something new it needs to be brought forward for public discussion and public policy to be set first?
I do know the obvious answers to this but what are the externalized costs of not doing it, and are the trade-off worth it?
It's a good question. In my scenario I'm basically saying that if the tractor can say yes or no for actions, then this can be used for good or bad. But who gets to define the rules for it? What is undesirable for the environment for example may be very desirable for the shareholders.
> It just made me realize: why don't we have a public system that if you want to do something new it needs to be brought forward for public discussion and public policy to be set first?
Like....some type of legislative system...where they hold hearings and make laws about them?
That would be sick. Some startup should definitely disrupt this space. They could fund it by charging yearly subscriptions, maybe collect them every April or something.
(Jokes aside: this is supposed to be the job of regulatory agencies, but because industry has grown so powerful and been unchecked for so long it doesn't really feel like anyone has any teeth left to stop corporations like JD anymore).
It depends on who's in control, elected into power, and their competency, that will determine the outcome. It doesn't inherently mean that part of the system is broken, I think it's mostly the electoral system that's broken.
I am imaging the horrors of an HP printer ecosystem on a farm... Which now makes me wonder why HP printers do not require special HP paper.
Fortunately, there is not much moat here. If John Deere demonstrates that self-driving tractors are a massive profit win for farmers, you'll see 10 competitors pop out of the startup sphere within a year.
> Want to plant some seeds? They have to be from a given source.
IIRC this was the major source of Monsanto's controversies, they claimed that their seed genomes were covered under patent law and farmers were not allowed to grow more plants using the seeds from their existing plants. They'd have to buy more seeds from Monsanto every season.
Isn’t this the equivalent of if your neighbors prize bull got out and impregnated your entire herd of cows, trying to then sue your neighbor for theft of property?
From what I've read it'd be more equivalent of the bull getting out, you hearing about it and going to look for the bull, then forcing the bull to inseminate all your cows knowing that your neighbor typically charges $10k per.
I don't think this is an accurate characterization of the issue, if you are referencing the Schmeiser case then that wasn't the basis for Monsanto's complaint (although it was the basis of his failed defence).
I am incredibly ignorant of this market but I'm struggling to figure out the value of replacing a $100k/yr tractor driver in relation to the overall margins from acres worked?... I mean. a tractor doesn't need to drive the acreage year round. The food produced per acre seems like a lot.. I'm guessing a tractor works a field a couple times a year? so 10% or less of a $100k/yr salary?.. Is this really worth it? A cross-country truck driver is limited to the amunt of cargo it can haul, and is needed constantly. I get the value there. I must be missing something on farm tractors..
A tractor can do other things beside plowing and seeding. Some cultures are unlike wheat and require, or benefit from, more care during vegetation. Also, the tractor can probably harvest some cultures.
Farther south, several crops per year can be taken, possibly of different cultures on the same land.
The tractor can work 24/7. This is very important during certain seasons when the windows of beneficial weather are small, and the effect of the conditions at that day on the whole crop is outsized. I suspect tractor operators are in short supply during such season.
I can see how a robotic tractor may feel more dependable than skilled seasonal labor.
Where can you find someone to drive a tractor when you need it and not need to be paid the rest of the year 'when you need a driver so do all the.other farmers. When you don't nobody else in your area does either.
While I understand and empathize with many of the concerns here in the comments (especially given John Deere's track record in being practically hostile to end users), the promise of farming equipment that can run overnight, in the absence of light, may be a top-five disruptor to agriculture, right up there with fertilizer and engines.
I agree. This is really awesome to see! We've known that this was possible for years now, but it's great to see it finally commercialized and ready to roll off a production line. I'm concerned about JD's involvement in this but I trust there will be plenty of competitors in this market in a short time frame.
The economics of John Deere renting a fleet of tractors to farmers becomes more attractive than selling them when you can now run a tractor 24 hours per day without a human operator. That's because you can use the self driving software to accurately monitor how many acres the machine has been used on.
You can start renting the tractors in the South and keep moving them North. While a farmer might use that tractor a maximum of three months a year Deere could keep them running more than double that usage.
It's possible that a startup could start doing it proving the model and then get acquired by Deere.
This exists to some extent with harvesters and planters who travel to suit the season/region so the machine gets used much longer each year than it would on one farm.
I like that companies are innovating and there is competition in this space. In 2018, John Deere only had 17% of the tractor market [1]. If farmer's don't like the tech, lack of repairability, etc, it seems they have plenty of other options. I don't get why some people on this thread are so upset.
> I don't get why some people on this thread are so upset.
Agriculture is a critical component of a functional society. It's not a good idea to allow a few corporations to monopolize our entire food supply, and small farmers are constantly struggling to keep their heads above water. When suppliers like JD pull this BS with tech, it's a canary in the coal mine moment signaling that whoever controls JD could one day indirectly control US agriculture, which is a significant national security concern.
This particular tractor seems to be completely linked to JD's cloud system, there's no way to run it locally or independently from JD. If this becomes the norm 10 years from now and every tractor relies on JD's permission to operate, what happens when JD gets hit by ransomware or attacked by hostile nation states? Every tractor in the country suddenly refuses to work and we no longer have enough food to feed everyone. This would be a manmade disaster with unimaginable consequences (although one easy to imagine one is nuclear holocaust).
We are in the mist of one of the biggest supply chain disruptions in modern history and you have to ask why people would be upset about technology that make a critical part of human life dependent on a company that openly hostile to human rights (for which I consider right to own property a basic human right)??
You can not image a scenario where this can cause huge supply chain issue with the food supply?
You can not image a scenario where this leads to further consolidation of farms into larger and larger corporations that control a larger percent of the national food supply?
I am shocked more people are not upset about this.
How U.S. Farmers are Coping with the Labor Shortage Crisis
While the USDA is working on new legislation to address these impacts, U.S farmers are turning to alternative options to compensate for their current labor shortage predicament.
Smart Technology Advancements
The Internet of Things (IoT) industry has exploded as farmers use innovative technology to keep up with demand and remain competitive in the global market. The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) reported 56 percent of U.S. farms have begun using agritech, with more than half stating labor shortage as the reason.
Innovative agrotechnology includes,
Wireless sensors;
Predictive forecasting models;
Advanced automation;
Robotics; and
Data analytics
Smart farming technology allows farmers to work at full or near-full capacity with fewer workers, but not without certain drawbacks.
The current technology can only accommodate certain crops, excluding nearly 200 specialty crops. This forces specialty farmers to make the difficult decision to either consolidate their operation or transition to machine-serviceable crops.
Transitioning to smart farming technology also requires a high initial cost investment. This is particularly difficult for small to medium-size farms, which are the ones hit hardest by the effects of farm labor shortage.
Despite these drawbacks, many U.S. farmers are realizing the investment is worth the initial cost to enhance crop quality and quantity through precision automation, pest control, and crop-health monitoring.
I have plowed before with tractors of this size. (Actually, the tractor I drove was larger.) The article doesn't cover it, but I would be curious about the real world logistics of such a tractor. For example, how does it know about the soil conditions and thus whether to stop or continue plowing? (Plowing wet soil is not good.) How does it sense when there's a flat tire on the plow? How does it sense when a duck foot (aka blade or chisel) has broken, come loose, etc.? What's the UX of starting or stopping it and transferring to another field? I would love to see how it handles trees, telephone/electrical poles, ditches, fences, etc. when driving and plowing. These were all things that I had to deal with or pay attention to.
This is good question. Soil conditions are variable and I doubt it is sensing absolutely everything as suggested above. A better application for autonomous tractor I reckon is as optical sprayer that is linkage mounted. E.g WeedIt, Weedseeker or Deere's own solution. I think handling trees etc should not be a problem as one, these should already be mapped as part of paddock setup and two, 'seeing' unusual objects and just stopping and notifying for human intervention is pretty simple.
The simple answer is that they probably don't - yet. The software need to be hardened... If you have thousands of operational vehicles you will find the "bugs" quickly though, the question is how fast they can iterate and come up with models that identifies and handle these conditions.
I'm more surprised that this is not already the case as the farming machines as they commonly use GPS to precisely follow the path on the land they work on.
It's also much less formidable landscape than driving autonomous vehicles among the humans.
1) The area that these machines work is already considered an insulated work space, you would not expect to have humans on the grounds when the autonomous machines operate.
2) These machines make a lot of noise and move very slowly, which would allow humans to protect themselves from machines that misbehave
3) The farming equipment is already bulky and doesn't need considerations for things like aerodynamics, which means that all kind of sensor and extra equipment can be attached.
4) The business model can tolerate cost increase, it's very common for these machines to be time shared between users.
I'm looking forward for a future where being a farmer means machine management from a comfortable room. The traditional farming is so dirty and hard job that most young people are avoiding it at all cost and this is not a business that can cease to exist as farming is what makes our civilisation exist.
I've written harvest inventory software for a couple of custom harvesting outfits.
Their business model is they buy crops in the field or charge to do custom harvesting. Usually the former.
I've not been onsite for one outfit but the other is close to home so I visit from time to time. The amount of equipment they have is amazing. Millions of dollars of very large equipment. They load it up and truck it around between multiple states to harvest.
Point being, sometimes farmers have little or minimal equipment. They might even contract planting, spraying etc. and sell crops directly in the field. Or they might plant and cultivate but not harvest.
That certainly makes this kind of thing more affordable as it ultimately spreads the cost between many farmers (with the company that owns the equipment taking a cut of course).
Just out of curiosity, most ploughing tractors appear go quite slow.
Is there any reason why they cannot be geared as required to plough at 50/60/70mph etc? Is there something about the actual physics of ploughing/whatever/etc that requires slowness? Or is it more the fact that it is physically very arduous for the machine and it would cost too much for both the power required and speed?
Just kinda thinking along the Elon Musk line of thought around robots in a car factory - i.e. why aren't they moving so fast that all we see is a blur etc
Partly it's about friction and grip - ploughs are dragged through the ground at depths up to 30cm, turning the soil through 180°. The power required to do that is considerable but most critically the grip the power unit (wheeled or tracked tractor, animals) has controls speed, which depends on the conditions. In addition, as speeds increase the soil will not move smoothly over the mould-board and thus not leave a consistent result ready for the next operation.
Efficiency is always a consideration. There's an interesting "Mega Factories" video where they cover the Porsche factory in Leipzig that builds the Macan and Panamera [1], in which a supervisor points out that the robot arms accelerate only as quickly as they need to. They were able to trim something like 10% of the robots' energy usage just by controlling movement speed and acceleration. There are hundreds of massive robots in the factory shifting heavy objects around, so this isn't a trivial savings.
Another consideration is that a 70 MPH tractor would stir up way too much dust. Topsoil would end up everywhere except where it's wanted.
One valid question might be why a robotic tractor needs to be shaped like a human-driven tractor, or work like one. Maybe it'd be more effective to use an army of small drone-like machines that operate closer to the ground?
AFAIK, John Deere tractors were already fairly automated, including some form of driverless navigation. Could someone in the field compare the automation level in the market currently versus what is unveiled in the article?
Yes, as an operator currently you just sit in the seat and monitor in between scrolling on your phone. If fully setup, the tractor can steer itself, turn at the end of field and lift and adjust machine height. The operator is the important set of eyes making sure everything is operating as it should. Ploughing sort of suits automation as there are less things to go wrong than say planting or harvesting but as mentioned in another post, it would take a solid solution to deal with all soil conditions to make this flawless.
Surely there's an auto maker who wants to deliver the Toyota corolla equivalent of tractors to the world. John Deere sounds so terrible for farmers with it's locked in anti repair machines.
158 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 213 ms ] threadThat's about the only thing that comes to mind when I hear "John Deere" now.
This could shift the skills needed to farm more towards automation/programming tech etc
We did get the increase in production efficiency but that newly-generated value was never passed on to those who did the actual work (all the way from farmers and factory works to most white collar jobs). It was captured and collected by those at the top. So now, everyone's afraid of "losing their jobs to machines" and somewhat rightly so. Instead of building machines to do our bidding while we live like royalty, we still have insane amounts of poverty despite the world generating more products/food/value than ever before in human history, with people losing their jobs and getting nothing in return.
It's likely also a leading cause of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#/media/File:W...
That's why the wealthy don't hold much cash. (unless they see a crash coming)
Don’t get me wrong, the worst case scenario is bad. but anyone interested in creating that scenario probably has better tools at their disposal.
If this tractor gets hacked, it will be to allow 3rd part spare parts.
But probably not to drive places randomly and smash into things. The better attack is to change some engine settings so the entire fleet is ruined just before a big harvest, so there's no time to fix them. Attacking people with tractors just draws attention to your compromise.
https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-j...
The leading cause is transportation accidents. Farmers driving tractors and equipment and workers traveling to worksites.
Actually a lot of the jobs list transportation incidents as the reason.
So now your tractor is controlled via their network? If their server goes down, can you still farm? What if your John Deere Operations Center account has been been terminated or suspended? Here are their terms.[1] "In its sole discretion, Deere may restrict the Site or restricted areas of the Site to selected users."
Farmers have been fighting for the right to repair Deere tractors. So this is Deere's response. They now claim the right to prevent tractor owners from using them.
[1] https://www.deere.com/en/privacy-and-data/terms/
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/11/21363122/boeing-747s-flop...
Wait, maybe Jeremy Clarkson bought that lambo tractor under his own name. But it is more likely that his production company owns it.
The fact is, a pilot did not purchase the plane with his own money, and is working for a giant corporation that can negotiate a contract with another giant corporation.
A farmer, esp. a small scale private farmer, is not in the same position to negotiate a favourable contract as American Airlines would to Boeing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_lease
It’s a pretty even fight, and because of the existence of Airbus, the airlines actually have a slight advantage. Look at what happened when Southwest casually mentioned they might be thinking about adding A320s into their fleet. Sent Boeing scrambling.
Boeing actually seems to have more diverse competition, including Lockheed, Northrup, etc (although they're dominant in the commercial airplanes segment, where airbus isn't mentioned, so maybe these stats are US market only): https://csimarket.com/stocks/competitionSEG2.php?code=BA
Being able to get service in the field quickly is critical during planting or harvest. During these times downtime can be exceedingly expensive if the farmer is trying to beat some change in weather.
And sure you could try and get someone other than the dealer to work on it, if you can find them. But trying to find this person when your equipment is broken and you are burning money isn’t a great option and the dealer will probably favor servicing clients who bought equipment from them.
John Deere manufactures it’s own engines in many cases, but it also uses engines from other manufacturers.
> never (intentionally) leaves the ground or exceeds 30mph
Yes, aviation has a lot lower risk tolerance than agriculture, but ag equipment still kills plenty of people, and I’d probably rather be in a head-on collision with a honda civic going 50mph than an 8R going 30mph.
> Most medium sized countries have tractor factories, as they're essential for food production for the population.
Are you just reiterating that John Deere has more competitors? If so, I think this is misleading because most of these factories are just the same few competitors with factories in different companies (rather than distinct companies per country).
Flying your modern aircraft doesn't depend on a lousy app that requires your "username and password" and probably doesn't even know what a pwd salt is. And if it goes down you can still fly (or keep flying).
You won't get cut out of replacement parts unless you're in a sanctioned country (and they do have ways of sourcing the parts).
Yes the agribusiness are ok with this, they know how to handle it (but you'll bet they'll have a lot of angry calls and lawsuits in some cases). Small farms on the other hand...
But what happens when JD discovers a problem with the software? How do they force you to upgrade your software? What happens if the bug is dangerous or the bug causes your tractor to have mechanical issues if not upgraded?
Does the farmer want to be responsible for installing the emergency software update?
This whole idea of shipping half-baked and fixing later OTA is one of this age's great consumer scams.
Not that it could not happen... there are various hedge funds that do this already, with mixed success. They generally lease back to a farmer.
John Deere doesn't have any data that the farmer wouldn't have, and they certainly don't have better access to large sums of capital than hedge funds. I can seem them participating in a capital lease agreement for someone doing this sort of operation, but operating a farm is a very different proposition.
Sure they do. They have the data from all the farms that use their service. The farmer only has data from their own farm. Deere can tell who's doing better.
As an example, Zillow had all that house price data, and then blew half a billion dollars because it thought it could use that data to start buying and selling houses itself.
The tractor and combines are sending real time crop data, it isn't hard for someone to look at that data and see across all farmers that yields are a bit different from what the market is predicting and make a large profit trading on that insider knowledge.
Those who work on that software and the admins of the database are registered with the SEC as not allowed to trade commodities. All that money they could make is directly out of our customers pockets and they wouldn't let us have that data if were were not protecting it.
I have family that still use JD tractors from 60s and 70s. In fact I have a relative who bough one for less than 2k, refurbished it for ~5k, and use it during winter for his chalet. Why don't we build pre-computerized tractors? I understand that cast-iron will break, but still the point remains with CNC machines becoming cheaper and cheaper.
Because unlike regular passenger cars the automation in tractors is essential for high yields. A farm that uses high tech tractors is going to beat out a farm with traditional tractors every single time. The days of the old boomer farmer are long gone; anyone who has managed to avoid getting swallowed by the conglomerates by this point has a pretty cutting edge setup that would make some startups blush. Drones, IoT, ML, etc. have been penetrating agriculture since the 2010s.
I think a better strategy would be to build open source tractor software for open source tractor hardware; some kind of "Linux for farms" coalition. It is very hard finding software people who intersect with agriculture people though which is what makes this a difficult undertaking.
[1] https://agstack.org/
What would open source bring? You always need a hardware anyway, and the conditions are rough, a RPI would not survive.
And for farmers locked in JD awful customer service, well they have plenty of choices beside JD, except they are not all American.
I would say many software services moving to cloud and to a subscription has largely prevented those products from being pirated or even necessarily owned. Inspired by that, for JD the most convenient path to create an "anti-piratable" product is by slapping a label of "autonomous and AI" and have them being directly controlled from a central location.
I’m plenty critical of John Deere (having worked there for a decade), but I think you have it backwards. Technology drives profit for John Deere, and John Deere’s right to repair is a defensive play to keep third parties from eating into those profits.
Parenthetically, I also strongly suspect that the tech media are overly-cynical about its portrait of Deere’s anti-right-to-repair stance. Practically speaking, it becomes a lot more expensive to ship software updates when you can’t guarantee anything about the state of the system you’re shipping to because the customer has modified various things. Moreover, the more people tamper with these complex, dynamic systems, the more likely there are to be issues, which Deere probably fears will erode its “quality” reputation (Deere’s management can’t maintain Deere’s reputation; it certainly doesn’t want other parties accelerating the erosion). Furthermore, triaging issues and litigating responsibility becomes dramatically more expensive (note that unlike other parts of the software industry, “issues” here are tens of thousands of dollars per incident in the best case and “loss of life lawsuits” in the worst case). So yeah, all of these things are about “profit” from Deere’s perspective, but it seems to me to be less about avoiding competition per se and more about the substantial cost burden on Deere to support a third party ecosystem.
As another parenthetical, I also think people attribute more competence to Deere’s software business than I’ve personally observed. I would honestly love to work on Deere’s technical problems, but Deere has so many political, cultural, and managerial problems that impede technical progress.
Same story with ASML, Siemens and other industrial tools companies.
Things get interesting when the cost (economic value) of the tool is a largest percentage of the total $ of goods produced.
In the 20th century that phrase was written about workers, as in employees, but if even the business owners don't really own the means of production... are they really business owners ?
It seems history repeats itself, just one echelon higher in the society.
Or did JD increase farming productivity in a pareto efficient way, so the farmers are still better off buying JD, even though JD gets to keep most of the newly created surplus?
Or is it just a race to the bottom where farmers that don't buy JD get priced out, even though buying JD makes the farmers worse off as a collective?
Tom Philpott describes this really well in 'Perilous Bounty': there are lots of farmers who are price takers. Their only way forward is to hope to survive weather and price cycles by producing more, more efficiently. This ironically leads to overproduction and poor returns.
Whereas JD are price makers who can use their consolidated power to set terms and prices within the market. Farmers don't really stand a chance.
But it is certainly true that production subsidies serve to make landlords and suppliers rich just as they serve to make farmers rich - your tax dollars at work!
My grandpa probably has a few million dollars in assets, but he saved aggressively his whole life and probably worked 40% more than the average non-farmer over the same time span (longer hours, fewer/shorter vacations, retired in his late 70s, etc).
Yes, farmers have a lot of capital invested in their businesses, but their incomes (i.e., what they take home rather than reinvesting in their businesses) still seem pretty modest.
Compared to my cousins who farm, I’m pretty sure I’m wealthier than they are as a software engineer, certainly with respect to income and perhaps also with respect to total asset value.
It’s bound to happen eventually, but we probably haven’t crossed that threshold yet.
Grain farming doesn't become a full time job until you reach over 1000 acres, if a guy farms one section of land and makes a decent living and chooses to spend that extra time enjoying life, more power to 'em, but farming in that 640-1280 acre pocket scales really well - it is a choice!
The over half of farmers in Iowa, most of which are row-crop farmers, that are running farms under 640 acres, are they dropping out because of economic pressure? Maybe some, but I think mostly it is old-timers that had a great run but they have a business that provides half an income to the next generation at the current scale and the next generation would rather do one thing than two. Either way, Dad's not retiring "poor"!
(This happens a lot in my neck of the woods, lots of 1,000 acre-ish farmers retiring with kids that are professionals that "love the farm" but have no interest in it at this scale.)
The fact that many farmers choose to operate their business in a way that is under-leveraged and often over-work themselves instead of hiring outside help that they can certainly afford is an artifact of culture, not a measure of wealth.
Of course, coming from a rural community there is a pretty good chance that you engage in an unusually high level of personal savings and as such have converted a high income into high asset holdings, I know I do - it is something in the water I think!
Modern sharecroppers.
Usury, rent seeking, monopsony, wealth transfer.
Institutionalized power imbalances which eventually lead to abrupt disruptions. aka Revolutions.
This story is as old as history.
I've been reading more about the Progressive Era during the apocalypse. (Currently chewing thru Caro's Master of the Senate, which covers New Deal thru Great Society.) Same challenges, rhetoric, social fault lines. Only the cast of characters have changed.
Don't worry, though. The more I learn, the more optimistic I become. We've been here before. Countless times. And somehow, humanity stumbles forward. Though the stakes are quite high for this iteration.
If there's anything "exceptional" about American Exceptionalism, my nomination is that our transfers of power have been relatively more peaceful than most.
I'm not saying things will necessarily work out. Only that it's possible we'll reach the next equilibrium. Kick the can down the road a few more decades. Potentially giving our grandkids the opportunity to revisit this never-ending argument again, on their own terms.
Right now, just knowing it's possible is hope enough for me.
Any farming operation where humans might possibly be around this won't work for. We want this to be full autonomous, but the technology isn't ready.
The primary purpose of this is to target great engineers (ie the people who read hacker news) with the idea that we are an exciting company to work for. I personally have some code in this tractor, and I know the people who work on it. We have lots of open positions, the jobs are fun (as hard as any other engineering of course), and you might want to join us.
Half of the food grown is thrown out instead of eaten.
Ploughing in your unsellable fruit is said to be heartbreaking. Suicide in farmers is high.
Growing less and getting a better price for it might be better than growing more but losing half the produce to skin taint or bruising. Less inputs, more value per acre worked.
"There is a big shortfall between the amount of food we produce today and the amount needed to feed everyone in 2050. There will be nearly 10 billion people on Earth by 2050—about 3 billion more mouths to feed than there were in 2010. As incomes rise, people will increasingly consume more resource-intensive, animal-based foods."
[0] https://www.wri.org/insights/how-sustainably-feed-10-billion...
Suppose the whole Keurig's DRM idea is applied to automated farm equipment. Want to plant some seeds? They have to be from a given source. Want to plant a certain crop, you can't plant it unless it's treated with a given pesticide. Inline sensors detect exactly what you are dispensing.
This all works because if you want to automate the driving, you have to integrate with the dispensing of things: seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, etc. If you don't, you need a person
Of course there is a flipside where that can be used to prevent you from using illegal pesticides, as those same in-line sensors could prevent dispensing of undesired things.
I do know the obvious answers to this but what are the externalized costs of not doing it, and are the trade-off worth it?
Like....some type of legislative system...where they hold hearings and make laws about them?
That would be sick. Some startup should definitely disrupt this space. They could fund it by charging yearly subscriptions, maybe collect them every April or something.
(Jokes aside: this is supposed to be the job of regulatory agencies, but because industry has grown so powerful and been unchecked for so long it doesn't really feel like anyone has any teeth left to stop corporations like JD anymore).
I am imaging the horrors of an HP printer ecosystem on a farm... Which now makes me wonder why HP printers do not require special HP paper.
Fortunately, there is not much moat here. If John Deere demonstrates that self-driving tractors are a massive profit win for farmers, you'll see 10 competitors pop out of the startup sphere within a year.
in the case of cartridges, the Hé cartridges came first, then the compatible ones. In the case of paper, it existed before HP printers.
See also Keurig capsules and water.
IIRC this was the major source of Monsanto's controversies, they claimed that their seed genomes were covered under patent law and farmers were not allowed to grow more plants using the seeds from their existing plants. They'd have to buy more seeds from Monsanto every season.
Farther south, several crops per year can be taken, possibly of different cultures on the same land.
The tractor can work 24/7. This is very important during certain seasons when the windows of beneficial weather are small, and the effect of the conditions at that day on the whole crop is outsized. I suspect tractor operators are in short supply during such season.
I can see how a robotic tractor may feel more dependable than skilled seasonal labor.
You can start renting the tractors in the South and keep moving them North. While a farmer might use that tractor a maximum of three months a year Deere could keep them running more than double that usage.
It's possible that a startup could start doing it proving the model and then get acquired by Deere.
[1] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/some-of-the-major-c...
Agriculture is a critical component of a functional society. It's not a good idea to allow a few corporations to monopolize our entire food supply, and small farmers are constantly struggling to keep their heads above water. When suppliers like JD pull this BS with tech, it's a canary in the coal mine moment signaling that whoever controls JD could one day indirectly control US agriculture, which is a significant national security concern.
This particular tractor seems to be completely linked to JD's cloud system, there's no way to run it locally or independently from JD. If this becomes the norm 10 years from now and every tractor relies on JD's permission to operate, what happens when JD gets hit by ransomware or attacked by hostile nation states? Every tractor in the country suddenly refuses to work and we no longer have enough food to feed everyone. This would be a manmade disaster with unimaginable consequences (although one easy to imagine one is nuclear holocaust).
You can not image a scenario where this can cause huge supply chain issue with the food supply?
You can not image a scenario where this leads to further consolidation of farms into larger and larger corporations that control a larger percent of the national food supply?
I am shocked more people are not upset about this.
https://agamerica.com/blog/the-impact-of-the-farm-labor-shor...
How U.S. Farmers are Coping with the Labor Shortage Crisis
While the USDA is working on new legislation to address these impacts, U.S farmers are turning to alternative options to compensate for their current labor shortage predicament.
Smart Technology Advancements
The Internet of Things (IoT) industry has exploded as farmers use innovative technology to keep up with demand and remain competitive in the global market. The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) reported 56 percent of U.S. farms have begun using agritech, with more than half stating labor shortage as the reason.
Innovative agrotechnology includes,
Wireless sensors; Predictive forecasting models; Advanced automation; Robotics; and Data analytics
Smart farming technology allows farmers to work at full or near-full capacity with fewer workers, but not without certain drawbacks.
The current technology can only accommodate certain crops, excluding nearly 200 specialty crops. This forces specialty farmers to make the difficult decision to either consolidate their operation or transition to machine-serviceable crops.
Transitioning to smart farming technology also requires a high initial cost investment. This is particularly difficult for small to medium-size farms, which are the ones hit hardest by the effects of farm labor shortage.
Despite these drawbacks, many U.S. farmers are realizing the investment is worth the initial cost to enhance crop quality and quantity through precision automation, pest control, and crop-health monitoring.
Everything else can have sensors on board, cars do this.
It's also much less formidable landscape than driving autonomous vehicles among the humans.
1) The area that these machines work is already considered an insulated work space, you would not expect to have humans on the grounds when the autonomous machines operate.
2) These machines make a lot of noise and move very slowly, which would allow humans to protect themselves from machines that misbehave
3) The farming equipment is already bulky and doesn't need considerations for things like aerodynamics, which means that all kind of sensor and extra equipment can be attached.
4) The business model can tolerate cost increase, it's very common for these machines to be time shared between users.
I'm looking forward for a future where being a farmer means machine management from a comfortable room. The traditional farming is so dirty and hard job that most young people are avoiding it at all cost and this is not a business that can cease to exist as farming is what makes our civilisation exist.
Their business model is they buy crops in the field or charge to do custom harvesting. Usually the former.
I've not been onsite for one outfit but the other is close to home so I visit from time to time. The amount of equipment they have is amazing. Millions of dollars of very large equipment. They load it up and truck it around between multiple states to harvest.
Point being, sometimes farmers have little or minimal equipment. They might even contract planting, spraying etc. and sell crops directly in the field. Or they might plant and cultivate but not harvest.
That certainly makes this kind of thing more affordable as it ultimately spreads the cost between many farmers (with the company that owns the equipment taking a cut of course).
Is there any reason why they cannot be geared as required to plough at 50/60/70mph etc? Is there something about the actual physics of ploughing/whatever/etc that requires slowness? Or is it more the fact that it is physically very arduous for the machine and it would cost too much for both the power required and speed?
Just kinda thinking along the Elon Musk line of thought around robots in a car factory - i.e. why aren't they moving so fast that all we see is a blur etc
Another consideration is that a 70 MPH tractor would stir up way too much dust. Topsoil would end up everywhere except where it's wanted.
One valid question might be why a robotic tractor needs to be shaped like a human-driven tractor, or work like one. Maybe it'd be more effective to use an army of small drone-like machines that operate closer to the ground?
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3FUH9fVC_M
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tractor_manufacturers
https://www.futurefarming.com/machinery/john-deere-acquires-...
https://agfundernews.com/breaking-exclusive-john-deere-acqui...