11–18 of 18 posts
Their GPS steering is really cool. I think they get better accuracy through multiple GPS receivers spread out across the entire tractor.
Some vendors use multiple receivers, but Deere uses one, with possibly one or more on the implement(s) being towed, depending on the configuration. RTK provides centimetre level accuracy with the single receiver.
Deere's recent patent filings point to a totally autonomous managed fleet of farm equipment. They've had a long standing relationship with NREC out of CMU to develop autonomous and semi-autonomous systems. In terms of accuracy, here's a metric to think about: due to fewer overlaps and misses, yields were up 7.6% and cost savings were up 6.8% - and this was with just recent tech advances.
Where are you getting those numbers from? Surely such improvements would be fairly isolated to an acre or two, rather than hundreds of acres. Those numbers (6.8% and 7.6%) aren't in the article.
Through recent research I developed the distinct impression that anyone who has managed land for an extended period+ with and without modern industrial farming methodology seemed to say that the general outcome of such was dependence on external entities for seeds, technology, energy, fertiliser and pesticides... and this seems to include both academia and government bodies in charge of agricultural knowledge dissemination.
The most lucid illustrations of this quandry I have yet encountered are Masanobu Fukuoka's One Straw Revolution (a few decades ago) and the USDA's Alley Cropping instructional video series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8Kwb5yInPM
Basically, the claim is that higher yields with lower maintenance are possible through non-industrialised methods that rely on crop diversity and natural systems.
My impression is that the US (and Europe) heavily subsidise or artificially protect a lot of their agriculture whilst burning loads of fossil fuels to plant, maintain and harvest them which is a situation that has partly evolved to cater to vested interests in government and energy sectors.
China wastes loads of food, leads the world in agricultural research, and certainly does not yet have anything like a food crisis. Not only that, but their population is stable or dropping.
Overall, this article is pretty FUD.
+ Not I!
So does my $200 cell phone...
My uncle was an early adopter of these sorts of things for his rice farm. When I saw the movie "Cars" for the first time and the film portrayed Tractors as "dumb" I thought to myself, if you really knew what went into a modern tractor you would not portray it as "dumb" in an animated movie.
> Most people don't don't realize that an 8000 series tractor has more computing power than the first space shuttle... So does my $200 cell phone...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where are you getting those numbers from? Surely such improvements would be fairly isolated to an acre or two, rather than hundreds of acres. Those numbers (6.8% and 7.6%) aren't in the article.
At an acre or two, you'll be doing most of the work by hand, with using push tools -- rototillers and the like -- for the occasional tough part. These sorts of process improvements are one of those economies of scale things that really only start making sense when you're dealing with an amount of land that you can't just eyeball.