Posted on 09/13/2022 4:58:14 AM PDT by FarCenter
US farm machinery giant John Deere has estimated software fees will make up 10 percent of the company's revenues by the end of the decade.
Chief executive John May offered the projection in a Wall Street Journal report on how Deere has plowed billions into developing self-driving tractors and crop sprayers that can tell the difference between weeds and produce.
Though farmers are already struggling with operating costs – including fertilizer and fuel – Deere wants to sell software subscriptions for operating its ever smarter vehicles.
Bernstein analysts estimate that the average gross margin for farming software is 85 percent, compared with 25 percent for equipment sales.
All Deere's tractors and harvesters have an autopilot feature included as standard following decades of ushering farmers into more technology-driven agriculture.
However, the company now plans to have 1.5 million machines and half a billion acres of land connected to the John Deere Operations Center within a matter of years. This cloud service "will collect and store crop data, including millions of images of weeds that can be targeted by herbicide."
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.com ...
Don’t pay your software renewal bill? We’ll just lock up your tractor Farmer Jones.
I despise the idea of GMO food.. It would great if they could target the weed, or the bug, instead of the food....
Small potatoes in the giant scheme of things.
Deere’s gone crazy like everyone else. Wait until the Globalists find out and ‘brick’ all the Deere equipment. Furthermore, who wants everyone in the world to know when you start up your tractor? There isn’t a computer program out there that can’t be hacked, even if it involves using AI. You got your AI, but my AI is smarter than yours, so there!!
“Subscription” is the new business model to ensure a constant revenue stream.
You will own nothing.
And you will be happy.
Klaus said so.
Isn’t John Deere also involved in an issue with maintenance and parts for their equipment??
This is an article about the issue.
The entire auto industry is planning this as well with EVs.
One of the practices that DOES hurt humans and the earth is monocrop agriculture. This is where those huge tractors and harvesters fit it ... the ones being so computerized that a human farmer will not be needed, at some point. Fits right in with the ‘transhumanism’ movement.
Monoagriculture means spraying fields with toxic herbicides (like RoundUp) to kill everything. All that lives in the soil, including small animals are killed. It’s a veritable desert. Chemical fertilizers are a necessity - soil is otherwise barren. Then one crop, like soybeans, corn, wheat is planted. This is “Big Ag” and “Big Food’ - cheap ingredients to make processed non-nutritious junk food, but hey Mr/Mrs Consumer ... it’s CHEAP ... or at least it was until FJB.
With GMO crops and glyphosate (causes cancer), ‘food’ isn’t so healthy any more. The nutritional value of plant crops (kale, spinach - things people believe are healthy) has dropped because the soils they are grown in are so poor, plus a lot of what shows up in lab testing (vitamins, minerals) isn’t bio-available to humans.
Anyway, there is such a thing that’s catching on called ‘Regenerative’ Agriculture. No spraying, no monocrops, no huge tractors that run on software. I have found some local sources and a relative just started a regenerative farm. She was thrilled the other day because she found a dung beetle in fields that were monocropped on their place - the beetle means the soil/habitat is starting to show some life again. On a larger scale, this is the way to fight ‘climate change’ such as it is. A good movie and book of the same name is called “Sacred Cow” ... the movie is worth seeing. The difference between a monocrop environment and a regenerative agriculture farm is stunning. A regenerative environment can return what looks like desert into a veritable “Eden”.
Why is there an obesity & Type 2 Diabetes epidemic in this country? It’s avoidable if you stay away from Big Ag/Big Food products, do not follow a SAD (Standard American Diet) diet, and T2D, despite what the docs/Big Pharma tell you, is reversible. It’s a VERY screwed up world we currently live in.
I will stick with my reliable Farmall tractor.
“The nutritional value of plant crops (kale, spinach - things people believe are healthy)”
Yep, that’s why I grow my own.
It makes Deere a stronger company and it implies that its products are improved by taking advantage of computer-enhanced ag developments.
If a Roomba can vacuum a house, a tractor can drive itself around a cultivated tract with greater precision.
Employing computers in agriculture will reduce prices and improve production. Can you imagine when farm machinery can plant, harvest, irrigate with precision, and test soil for nutrients, fungi, and insects?
This is the model that helped sink Sun Microsystems.
They had other problems with process technology but software licenses really pissed off users.
I suggest that's an incorrect assumption.
The farmer may not be needed to sit atop the tractor, but he will be needed to manage the entire process from a control center.
Agriculture is an immensely complicated field...and getting more so, not less.
There’s a class action lawsuit against JD so farmers could actually work on their own equipment and being able to use the JD proprietary S/W as needed: https://www.thelyonfirm.com/blog/john-deere-class-action-lawsuit/
“””Deere has plowed billions into developing self-driving tractors”””
So why are we importing millions of ‘manual laborers’ when so much of this ‘manual labor’ is being automated?????????
I used to tell farmers the only mgt decision they make is the color of paint on their machinery........................
“That a human farmer will not be needed. I suggest that’s an incorrect assumption.”
It has also already happened. in 1900 40% of Americans worked on farms. Now it is less than 2%. Robo tractors are a much smaller advance than the others that happened last century.
thank microsoft for the model.
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