At CES 2022, John Deere tractors break new ground with full autonomy

cnet.com

9 points·throwawaysea··3 comments

Reminds me a bit of the movie Interstellar, where the guy's combines and tractors are all automated. I'd be interested to see if they allow a multi-tenant sort of approach with the software. From what I understand, it's common for several farmers to share in the cost of those machines together and then share it.

This is the opposite of what most farmers want, which is a dependable, no-nonsense machine they can repair themselves. When a tractor breaks down in the middle of a planting or a harvest, nobody can afford to wait for a factory technician to show up, or proprietary parts to be shipped from some centralized warehouse.

Deere is notorious for doing their best to create vendor lock-in, and this just sounds like more of the same.

I agree with you, but I'm not sure the small time, family or hobbyist farm is the target audience. This seems more targeted at the Resnick's Wonderful farms or Lawrence Agriculture. These are giant operations, with service and maintenance agreements and don't mind spending $500k to replace ten workers, or $5M to replace one hundred.

As sad as it makes me to say it, it is very difficult for traditional "mom and pop" farms to compete with these huge conglomerates and most of the food being produced is raised by these large companies.

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