Posted on 01/10/2025 6:51:36 PM PST by SeekAndFind
If your immediate thought is that this sounds like a job killer... it is. John Deere has talked up its machines’ capabilities for precisely that purpose: to help alleviate some of the labor-shortage issues that farming faces, with the company’s chief technology officer, Jahmy Hindman, saying that “there is not enough available and skilled labor” to do the kind of agricultural and construction work that its customers do.
Though John Deere introduced its first fully autonomous tractor three years ago, the latest suite — which includes a couple of tractors, a lawnmower for commercial landscaping, and a driverless dump truck — comes plowing into a world where attitudes toward self-driving vehicles have softened.
Whether John Deere’s goal for fully autonomous farming by 2030 — outlined in a September blog post from Nvidia (we know: AI royalty Nvidia proudly touting its collaboration with a lowly multibillion-dollar minnow like JD rather than the other way around? Who’d have thought it?) — comes to fruition or not, the company will hope the new fleet reinvigorates sales after a slightly fallow year.
In 2023, John Deere’s total revenues rose to a record $61.3 billion , but sales slumped some 16% in the last fiscal year as farmers tightened their purse strings and invested less into Deere-branded machinery and equipment, which accounts for as much as ~87% of the company’s revenue. Clearly, fewer farmers up and down the country fancied dropping thousands, or indeed millions, of dollars on new machines last year, with the company’s most expensive tractor, the 9RX 830, listing for $1.228 million.
Interestingly, the company aims to make 10% of its annual revenue from software subscriptions by 2030 — quite the shift for a business that’s still almost exclusively known for making things that chop, plow, mow, move, and spray.
The labor that corporate farms rely on will become less available and more expensive due to Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. In addition, new models of farm machines are capable of precise application that reduce pesticide and herbicide use. That reduces cost and helps address environmental and health issues. Some farm machines even kill weeds and pests with small, aimed blasts of steam. In a roundabout way, Deere’s innovations in farm equipment align with the Trump and MAGA agenda and are in competition with farm pesticide giants Dow, Monsanto, BASF, Syngenta and Bayer.
“10% of its annual revenue from software subscriptions by 2030”
* You want to start your million dollar tractor engine — annual subscription, please.
* You want to steer your million dollar tractor — annual subscription, please.
* You want power out of your PTO? — annual subscription, please.
* Oh, you need MORE power out of your PTO? — the “Advanced” annual subscription, please.
* You want maintenance hours and intervals? Subscription, please.
* You want AC in your cab? Subscription, please.
* You want GPS guidance for straight furrows? Subscription!
That’s going to go over real well.
Always loved George’s last reply there
She was one of the most attractive Seinfeld women ever
Along with Justine Miceli and Rena Sofer
But that’s just my personal taste
On sixth of the country is on some form of welfare, we're basically paying them not to work and vote for democrats every two years. There is your labor. I live in an area with a lot of poultry production. In the 1990's the processing plants employed all locals in these minimum wage jobs of processing chickens. Almost overnight all the locals were fired and illegals bussed in to replace them. The locals were mostly low income blacks who then went straight to the welfare office and got on government handouts which they and their descendents remain dependent upon to this day. Meanwhile the processing plants are still employing illegals to this day. The feds raid the plants about once a year to make it look like they're doing something and haul about 95% of them off. A week later they're all back and the plant is running like normal until next year's theatrical raid. This has been going on for 30 years so obviously there's some kind of arrangement between the feds and the corporations where they raid them once a year to make it look like they're doing something while the illegals are allowed to work the rest of the time. If there was any real intention of enforcing the law they'd raid them every week until they got the message, shut them down, or haul the managers who knowingly employ these illegals off to lengthy jail terms. It's allowed to continue though and everyone involved knows it's a farce.
You are correct in all of that. If farm labor paid enough, minimally skilled Americans in rural areas would prosper and have a way up in life. I hope that Trump’s immigration policies will lead to enough of a genuine farm labor shortage to have that effect.
Yep, that’s America these days.
All the H1-B games in I/T - we know what they’re paying the companies (in a major number of the cases)
And a lot of us were willing to be competitive - the whole game is to drive out American workers
People don’t care ... until it happens to THEM personally
Why? Are farmers demanding them? John Deere there is a reason why and it must be that it benefit your company and not the farmers. Get out of here. Next!
The reason that the farmers in Florida used Spanish speakers [Mexicans] was because they couldn’t get Whites, Blacks, or Islanders to to the work. I don’t know about anyone else but that is how it happened in Florida.
America needs robotic apple and strawberry pickers.
Grains are already very capital intensive and illegals and migrants don’t go into that.
Hiring people for a limited time or even just for a job became essentially illegal. So the rise of the "employment agency". But the very existence of such an agency means that the wages paid to the employee are lower because 25% off the top goes to the agency. Also if you want to keep that person for longer it is not a matter of just asking Bob if he would willing to work for another week but having to sign another agreement with the agency.
It gets complicated and messy.
What were the farmers paying their workers?
This is the same company that forces customers to use their proprietary software, and does not allow farmers to maintain and fix their vehicles. If you choose them, you become secondary to agri-business primary customers.
Run far, run fast - choose a company that is your partner - not your overlord.
What John Deere competitor do you suggest?
There is no such thing as a labor shortage. There are only WAGE shortages.
Free Republic is mostly a faux pro worker place and you are NOT supposed to ask that question.
What part of that do you disagree with?
I aksed what they were being paid, what is so hard to understand about that?
Farmers would be entirely at the mercy of John Deere with this.
I made a statement that hiring someone for the short term was complicated by government requirements.
You said "It is not a labor shortage but a wage shortage".
Which had nothing to do with what I said. I reiterated my point and you came back by saying that you had asked what people were being paid when you did not at any point ask me that question.
I realize that this is a Saturday but it is before noon.
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