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.
That should be interesting to see.
Tie it to a rope, tie the rope to a stake, start it and put it in gear, go inside and read a comic book, come out and it’s DONE.
how was it that in the 80’s, these ma and pa farms could afford help, but now these corporate farms cannot?
Will the owners have the right to repair then?
And if you are hiring them for a season it requires a lot of paperwork.
Like with most things, when the government gets involved it gets expensive, complicated and normal people can't do it.
Exactly.
Knowing John Deere, no.
Maybe dad and an uncle’s collection of vintage tractors that someone can work on will be valuable someday.
I bet if the farmer is late on a payment the tractor quits driving.
I have seen this movie before. I believe it was called “Kill Dozer”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6y5tILFRao
Sounds like a recipe for driving small farmers out of business.
A fella who used to work for me and then went to work at Deere told me they could do most tractor driving automatically. Problem is, farmers LIKE to drive tractors. They’re willing to let the RTK drive across the field to make nice perfectly straight rows, but they kick it off and make the headland turn by hand. Kinda like cruise control.
I help a farmer part-time near Lawrenceburg, TN. He farms with late model Deere machinery, but has enough 20 series tractors (built from 1963 to 1972) to outfit a half dozen farmers. There are at least two others in that county that could do the same.
Another family near there specializes in rebuilding and selling Deere farm tractors built in the 1960s through the early 90s. They have an impressive collection.
The main worry is if rebuild and repair parts become unavailable.
This will reduce the number of cases of gonorrhea caught from tractors.
(Seinfeld reference)
My dad and uncle have rebuilt many Massey Fergusons and sold a few but have several around.
I think there is one little gas powered Allis Chalmers too.
Like a little rail system. Probably very doable.
For an extra $1,000 they give you the feature to make it do work without you having to learn Spanish.
Never happen with a Hoyt Clagwell.
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