Modern Day Farmer

The rough life of a modern day farmer. LOL.
If you do not watch the entire video at least watch the last 20 seconds.
Farmers have it so rough

That reminds me of railroad engineers, if they don't use any controls in a certain amount of time, unless I'm mistaken, the train automatically comes to a stop.

That's funny. I always like it when we finally pull into fields that are a mile long. The actual farming is easy. All the management and decisions that goes into farming is hard today.

It's quite a site to see potato drills near a mile long and straighter than an arrow thanks to navigator on planters and auto steer

I saw that a few years ago. Getting bored is an issue. My sons take their lap tops with them an do much of the planning and organizing while doing field work. The newer tractors have not only auto steer but cruse control too. So the operator is actually only monitoring the equipment and turning it on the head lands. I think we will see more of the automatic systems in the years to come. Cloned tractors and fully autonomous tractors are already being tested. With skilled farm labor being needed for a shorter season and requiring higher skills I see this trend continuing.

The auto steering and parallel tracking are real money savers. Studies show that a human driver will over lap between 5-10%. So lets assume just 5%. So a 5% over lap on 3000 acres is 150 acres of seed, fuel or fertilizer wasted. The wider the equipment the wider higher the over lap is with a human operator.

There was a documentary about train engineers sleeping at the controls in Australia.

It was the longest, straightest, non stop section of rail in the world. They installed a button that had to be pushed every so many minutes or the brakes would lock, someone would have to come out, unlock it and relieve the driver.

For planting like he is doing auto steer is a very good tool, not just a novelty. It's very tiring trying to drive a perfectly straight line for hours on end. Did you notice the monitors by his right shoulder? When he is steering manually he doesn't have as much time to watch the monitors and he certainly can't look back to watch for problems with the drill or planter. When I plant with auto steer I am much more aware of what is going on behind me because I can look back there and watch. If something screws up, like a plugged wheel, I can catch it right away stead of dragging it across the field, leaving a row with uncovered seed. My yearly income is being determined during planting and any glitch in the planter means a smaller pay check in the end. I also can watch all the information the monitor is giving out. I am less tired and if bad weather is coming and I need to stay out there longer, or even all night I can do it, with lots of coffee of course. LOL

Now if I am pulling a field cultivator or other tillage tool it seems like I'm not doing anything just sitting there watching the world go by. One thing I noticed right away when I used the first auto steer was how much I was stabilizing myself by holding onto the steering wheel. A tractor is always moving and jiggling and bouncing. When the steering wheel is pushed forward and there is nothing to hold onto the body muscles have to work harder to keep upright and in one position in the seat. Just a few ramblings.

I have tried to drill wheat into no-till with out auto steer. I have run a commercial sprayer on no-till wheat stubble, for years, finally got auto steer and saved enough the first year to pay for the system. I think on the newer Deere systems, the auto steer shuts off after 3 minutes?

I was not totally sold on the auto steer and the cost, but after seeing how harvest went with no overlaps, I was impressed. Then the farm I help out picked up a self-propelled discbine and with out the auto steer it's very difficult to go straight at almost 14 mph. Cuts the full width every time, straight as can be. I'm sold.

I was in no way trying to say auto steer was bad because I can see the advantages of it in reduced planting cost and greater profit per acre.

For us the video can be just funny but look at through a city person eyes.
All they see is a farmer hard at work and relate it to farmers complaining they have such a rough life farming.

One of the last times I saw my Uncle George before he passed away,he was on a rant about how some tractors these days even have cup holders. I told him I had to rough it and put mine in the handle that opens the window.
That really got him going about how he used to cultivate in the hot sun all day on the old stem wind John Deere. lol

You are correct, I volunteer at a railroad museum operating trains and there is an alarm that comes on every few minutes that the controls are not touched and you have to either push a button, flip a switch, or something to make it go off. I believe they used to have pedals that the engineer has to tap similar to the button, but for very long distance freight trains they would just put a brick or lunchbox on the pedal so they didn't have to keep tapping it which defied the purpose of it. That's why (I believe) they are now mostly just buttons to press. Not an engineer yet but I do know its something along those lines.

~FarmallCT