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For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

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Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#131

Post by aguyfromnb »

dsalzman wrote: post #58

Opportunity for a company like $TESLA or other startup to provide additional competition in the farm equipment space. It's a duopoly between John Deere (Green) and Case IH (Red). A modular electric system would work well since the required speeds are low and torque is important. Extra points for a small wind turbine based charging station that can mount to a barn.

>Opportunity for a company like $TESLA or other startup to provide additional competition in the farm equipment space.

Wait, what? Tesla is just as bad (or worse) when it comes to right-to-repair.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#132

Post by GlenTheMachine »

pmiller2 wrote: post #92
froindt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard of farmers going so far as to make their own GPS guidance systems, enhanced before they were widely available and reasonably priced. I'm not sure how accurate and repeatable they were. Going to any farm that's been around for 20+ years, you'd see so many custom solutions that are really functional. Farmer one-off solutions are kind of like homebrew Excel applications - they're infinitely customizable, the…

Does civilian GPS have enough resolution to be useful in a tractor guidance system?

Not by itself, in most situations. Maybe if you're automating a combine, where you're doing repeating patterns in a big flat field with no obstacles and where 1 meter deviations from the desired trajectory isn't an issue (not an uncommon situation, but for a lot of use cases you really do care about that 1 meter deviation, e.g. for plowing or cultivating).

Otherwise you have to augment, eg with relative GPS or machine vision.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#133

Post by throwaway744678 »

cpach wrote: post #64
wetpaws wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there is no competition in the US.

Does farmers in other countries somehow enjoy a plethora of tractor manufacturers to choose from?

In Europe, Claas, New Holland Come to mind immediately. But there are definitely others.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#134

Post by jerf »

asdff wrote: post #59
svachalek wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I also put large household appliances in this category. They've been getting more expensive and more fragile for decades, without much real progress other than energy efficiency which is unrelated to the fragility afaik.

Pretty much all audio equipment falls into this as well. A vintage marantz stereo is going to sound better than nearly anything on the floor at best buy today, and if something goes wrong you either pop in a new part and take the thing to someone who can solder a wire and read a schematic. Unlike a modern stereo that's a hunk of junk if a piece of critical plastic snaps in half or a cheap quality solder on the silico…

But how does the "vintage marantz" sound compared to something you can buy with, say, an hour's research with an internet search engine? Including price?

I don't know the answer to that. But I do know from experience that while your average $15 headbuds are total, absolute, utter garbage, that if you do your research there are $15 headbuds that sound pretty good. They may not be $100+ quality headphones, but for something that fits in my pocket they're quite credible. Don't just buy whatever one has finagled their way into Best Buy or the checkout counter at your grocery store, but that's not necessarily everything the market has to offer.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#135

Post by zorpner »

earlINmeyerkeg wrote: post #128
macinjosh wrote: post #98

My grandfather, rest his soul, was a 3rd generation rancher and farmer. He bought 2 John Deere tractors in the '80s and used them for 35 years. They are still being used to this day on the ranch. Growing up, I visited the ranch regularly. Farming and ranching is very hard on equipment so the tractors often needed repair. My father and grandfather could seemingly fix anything on the tractor without even needing to go…

The greatest innovation in the history of mankind was a land consolidation. It took what 100 peasants all making enough food for subsistence living to 100 peasants be able to make enough food for thousands of people. It's not sad, it's progress.

It's not sad, it's progress.

These are not mutually exclusive concepts.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#136

Post by Johnny555 »

melling wrote: post #15
privateSFacct wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All good ideas, but repairing surface mount / integrated / dust and vibration glued parts is not as easy EVEN IF they were open standards as a 40 year old tractor is to repair. I spent way to long repairing an old gas engine, it was super simple in terms of operating approach. Opening the hood on my new car - the fixes are not as obvious.

I couldn’t even swap out a headlight in my girlfriend’s car, because of the tight space. Instead she has to pay a garage to do it. That’s not it used to be.

The Ford Fusion requires removing the front bumper cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMxBBdMeNho

I rented one once and on a long trip I noticed a headlamp was out, I was going to just buy new bulbs and replace them, but once I saw the procedure, I called the rental place and drove 30 minutes to swap out the car.

If they are going to make it that hard to swap headlights, they should use LED's which (should) never need to be replaced.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#137

Post by AnimalMuppet »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #54
sneak wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If customers don’t want this stuff, why isn’t there a competing company offering non-DRM tractors?

> If customers don’t want this stuff, why isn’t there a competing company offering non-DRM tractors? Because modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs, despite propaganda to the contrary. The way the system actually works is that the wants/needs of the capital-holders take priority over the wants/needs of other stakeholders (e.g. customers and workers). The other stakeholders are of…

> The way the system actually works is that the wants/needs of the capital-holders take priority over the wants/needs of other stakeholders (e.g. customers and workers).

The capital-holders did not (in most cases) get a "you are now free to hose your customers" card. The cases where they are free to do so are cases where there is a lack of competition. So "modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs in the absence of competition". But if there is actual competition, and the wants of the capital-holders take priority over the wants of the customers, that's not going to work out well for the capital-holders.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#138

Post by froindt »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #125
pmiller2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does civilian GPS have enough resolution to be useful in a tractor guidance system?

RTK does. Also, fields are big and 'generally' there isn't much to hit out there. I think most new harvesters these days are self driving.

That's true, but if you're spraying a field and veer off by ~12", you're running over corn and killing your profit.

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#139

Post by Waterluvian »

macinjosh wrote: post #98

My grandfather, rest his soul, was a 3rd generation rancher and farmer. He bought 2 John Deere tractors in the '80s and used them for 35 years. They are still being used to this day on the ranch. Growing up, I visited the ranch regularly. Farming and ranching is very hard on equipment so the tractors often needed repair. My father and grandfather could seemingly fix anything on the tractor without even needing to go…

Thanks for sharing this about your grandfather.

> The world changes and sometimes it sucks but that is how progress is made.

This touches on something I think a lot about. Massive driverless farms, in my mind's eye, looks like one puzzle piece towards the utopia of the future. But you do lose the human aspect. It reminds me of Star Trek where Picard is working with his hands on a vineyard. Capitalism is abolished so he does it just for the human reasons. There's no way he can compete with a replicator.

So that leads me to thinking about how we're in a really tight spot. The "human" present (past?) of salt of the Earth people making our products with a human touch and passion vs. the demands of the future utopia we want(?). It's a tight spot because capitalism mode is still active. The people who want to be passionate about their craft still have to compete commercially. In a future it might be that they can do it just because that's what they feel like doing. (super tangent: that reminds me of the "Primitive Technology" trend on YouTube where people re-discover technology just for the heck of it)

It also reminds me of a response I once got. I regularly use farriers as an example of a skilled job that has pretty much gone obsolete because of automobiles. Someone once responded, "have you seen a farrier at work? It's art."

Re: For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity

#140

Post by macinjosh »

earlINmeyerkeg wrote: post #128
macinjosh wrote: post #98

My grandfather, rest his soul, was a 3rd generation rancher and farmer. He bought 2 John Deere tractors in the '80s and used them for 35 years. They are still being used to this day on the ranch. Growing up, I visited the ranch regularly. Farming and ranching is very hard on equipment so the tractors often needed repair. My father and grandfather could seemingly fix anything on the tractor without even needing to go…

The greatest innovation in the history of mankind was a land consolidation. It took what 100 peasants all making enough food for subsistence living to 100 peasants be able to make enough food for thousands of people. It's not sad, it's progress.

Progress on a societal scale for certain. Sadness on the personal scale as new generations mourn the loss of their family's historical way of life. Both can exist :)
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