John Deere’s introduction of a fully autonomous tractor at CES 2022 dazzled many in the tech field, but a basic question remains: Will farmers take to it?
Deere officials obviously believe farmers will curry to the newest big thang. Admittedly, there is going to be a learning curve. Some questions still need to be answered, at least according to one Nebraska farmer interviewed by Fierce Electronics.
“There will be a lot of skepticism to start, similar to what you hear from people about autonomous vehicles,” said Taylor Nelson, a fifth-generation farmer from Jackson, Nebraska, who raises corn and soybeans with his father Doug Nelson and uncle Jim Nelson.
“But the people developing this technology are 20 steps ahead. People are going to have doubts and they will experience the autonomous tractor and will build that trust,” Nelson added. “So I think it’s about trust building and there will be a huge learning curve.”
He hasn’t yet used a fully autonomous tractor himself in one of his fields, but saw it demonstrated by Deere officials on an Iowa farm before he agreed to come to join the Deere booth at CES 2022. (Which raises an interesting question on English usage: Is a farmer actually driving an autonomous tractor or is the tractor doing the driving while the farmer theoretically remains in a state of control?)
Deere’s autonomous tractor gets started in a field from an app on a smartphone. “When I got to be around this tech for the first time, you run the app on the phone and do a pre-op check, and just swipe to farm and the tractor winds up, does a pre-routine and… takes off. You know what it’s going to do. Until that swipe to start, I thought, I can’t believe this is happening! It was incredible to see in real life.”
Deere’s app is connected to a control center, which can intervene if the tractor’s camera sensors encounter an obstacle, such as an expected downed tree, and there’s a need to push out an alert to the farmer to intervene. An array of sensors on the tractor can see obstacles, which are compared with years of machine learning data Deere has collected showing obstacles and ordinary fields.
“I have a ton of confidence about field safety,” Nelson said, realizing the initial autonomous design is suited for a tillage operation, which is not quite as complex as planting or harvesting operation that will surely come in the future. “It’s not fit today for planting or harvesting. It’s going to take machine learning and a process to build that data out.”
Nelson said “for sure,” farmers will want to know more details about what Deere is charging for the autonomous tractor technology, which is set up to be used on an existing tractor model. Deere hasn’t yet revealed all the terms of its new approach.
Many farmers already use nearly all the automated functions Deere provides in tractors, only they have to sit in the cab to monitor and adjust it, sometimes for 16 hours a day, as they plant, harvest or till their fields.
Nelson is not convinced farmers in general fancy an autonomous tractor like someone might dream of owning a Tesla with driver assistance features, but they will come around to the idea that such a tractor can help with the critical shortage of helpers on farms.
“Farmers don’t always say, ‘I want an autonomous tractor,’ but they do say, ‘I can’t get enough help’ as they come to the realization of what an autonomous tractor means,” Nelson added.
“There’s huge variability on a farm with different soils and slopes and that’s why it’s hard to hire operators,” Nelson said. But an autonomous tractor would allow him and other farmers to spend more time with family or offer to do tractor work for nearby farms.
“There will be a lot more tractor activity at night, I perceive,” he said. “Farmers get tired and if they use those hours at night for productivity, it will have a compounding effect that will apply outwardly once it starts. It will start at the farm level but revolutionize the industry.”
In a way, an autonomous tractor could also have a psychological effect on Nelson and other farmers. Yet, farming is built-in to his ego, just as it was for his father and his father’s father. “There’s a lot of pride in the privilege to be able to provide for your family and your community and America and the world. It is a huge responsibility and farmers take a lot of pride in that. People are counting on farmers and that’s what gets passed down,” he said.
“I personally really enjoy the seasonability of farming. Every season is a new season. There’s better seed, ways to better prepare the ground, grow the crop and getting to get out and reap what you sow. With good enough weather, all those things come together. You’re going out there and working with the season and every season, you get to start over. If you have a terrible year, it doesn’t mean you’ll have another terrible year.”
Now that Deere is on the doorstep of providing fully autonomous tractors, Nelson wonders what can possibly be done to control the weather, or at least better prepare for it. “Weather is and always will be a huge challenge, so it’s how to use data to manage around it closer to real time down to the farm level to better predict when to have the machine ready at the right time,” he said.
Nelson and other farmers he knows use a variety of smartphone weather apps to predict when to plow a field that can be miles away from the tractor shed and still avoid a sudden heavy downpour. But that’s still not exact enough.
“If somebody sells sunshine in a jug, I’d be the first customer,” he said with a broad smile.
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