21 Humans get tired and may cut a corner or two (we won’t tell) for the sake of getting the job done. Remember the T-1000 from the Terminator franchise? It never got tired. Farmers don’t need to worry about fatigue when the machine is doing the work. “Autonomy doesn’t get fatigued and can do a consistent job all the time,” Jardon said. “You can be confident the job is getting done as you would want it to, regardless of how many days in a row the machine has been running.” An additional benefit of autonomous technology is it addresses labor shortages. In 2012, for example, the American Farm Bureau estimated the farm labor shortage was responsible for about $3.3 billion in missed GDP growth and about $1.3 billion in missed farm income. Autonomous equipment helps remove the stress associated with trying to find workers. “A lot of farmers have a hard time finding the help to operate machines,” Jardon said. “Autonomy negates the need for extra people to operate equipment and unlocks more time for farmers to do other work or grab supper with the family.” John Deere wants to develop more autonomous capabilities. So much, in fact, that by 2030 the organization hopes to have a fully autonomous corn and soybean production system. “We started with tillage because the tractor and the tillage implement is the easiest first one to get to that point,” Jardon said. “But we’re learning about building algorithms, and as we get to more of the complex operations, we can take what we learned from the first operations and apply those as get further into the growing season cycle.” Jardon explains more about the technology in this video. | pag CHOOSE BETWEEN CROP NEWSLETTERS IN YOUR REGION, A FARM MACHINERY NEWSLETTER, OR THIS DIGITAL DIGEST.
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