My How Farming Has Changed

This video shows how much farming has changed since I was a youngster growing up on a farm back in the 1950's. This young farmer is riding on a ~ $500k or much more tractor & tillage rig while playing a game with his ride along niece. They no doubt are comfy warm and the noise level is such that you can hear them banter while playing the game. So why is the operator even required? Just put it on auto-pilot and control it from your phone?? (I say this in jest, but someone will likely chime in that yes, that is exactly possible today!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cwDF65Opc0

(quoted from post at 16:58:05 03/23/19) This video shows how much farming has changed since I was a youngster growing up on a farm back in the 1950's. This young farmer is riding on a ~ $500k or much more tractor & tillage rig while playing a game with his ride along niece. They no doubt are comfy warm and the noise level is such that you can hear them banter while playing the game. So why is the operator even required? Just put it on auto-pilot and control it from your phone?? (I say this in jest, but someone will likely chime in that yes, that is exactly possible today!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cwDF65Opc0

Click to expand...

I'm not that big on chimes, but there is a lot of research and development going on in the trucking industry centered around unmanned big rigs. What I've seen so far is an unmanned truck following a manned truck.

That video is proof that the buddy seat is best used as a place to carry your grease gun.

Yes it sure has changed. I grew up on a small so. Mich farm. no cabs, lucky to have an umbrella.
long hours, no profits. Left the farm at 18. joined USAF for a electronics career. Of course, I did enjoy
going back to help farm at busy times. The picture has My Gr-Dad and his sons. probably 11 bottoms !!

I don?t have smart anything on my 1980s and 90s equipment, but I use the grid fertilizer sampling and spreading the coop offers, and use my drone to watch fields from
a different angle, and use this iPad to learn a lot about better Ag ideas.

Farming sure has changed a lot, mostly for the better, even if you still hold your own steering wheel. How fertilizer is used and applied is number one, how we
understand and use all the different types of seed and weed and fertilizers is just so important.

Seemed back in the 60s and 70s ?more was better? whether seed, fertilizer, herbicide, number of acres.... just, ?more.?

Now most of that is trimmed down to ?what makes it better? not ?more?. Although there are plenty who still chase more acres for no reason I can fathom.

I?m plenty bored doing tillage while steering the tractor. I?ve never run a gps tractor so I don?t know, but I just can?t figure out what is really gained. I can see it for
planting and spraying, but for fall tillage you save a little fuel on overlap I?m suppose but can?t understand anything else gained, and I would be bashing my head off the
glass I think I?d be so bored.....

Paul

I like his YouTube channel, I watch most of his videos.

When my Ancestors arrived in Canada they had only the cloths on their backs,a work ethic second to non,and the Government offered nothing. These hard working pioneers past down a belief you reap what you work for..........

Nothing like a day on the Great Prairies of Canada.....I wonder how much draft the plow had?



Bob....North Western Alberta...

I have a picture here of 14 Doukhobor woman pulling a plow. The Doukhobors came to Canada in 1899 to escape religious persecution in their native Russia. They lived in communes and believed it was wrong to force an animal to work. When I was in Alberta years ago I visited a Farm that had been owned by them in western Alberta, it was being used as a Historical site,,it was very interesting,, their building methods were different
I would post this picture but it won't copy well

Yes, I would say that is possible here and now!

Is it safe and advisable?

Probably not, but in a controlled area, with no other people or vehicles present, it would be completely feasible.

With enough safety sensors, which would further raise the cost, it could be done.

Will the manufacturer be willing to say "let it run unattended, we will stand responsible for any damage, injury, or death", probably not...

A self driving tractor in a field is actually going to be pretty easy to do. They would have the technology for that.

A person with an iPad could watch 3-5 of them working a whole farm in a section or township or whatever.

The trouble is what happens when a cultivator shovel falls off, or a shank breaks, or the cultivator plugs, or a hyd hose breaks, it a branch (half a tree) is laying in the field, or a big hunk,of old metal is dug up and hanging on the implement. Or 10,000 other possible issues.

The driving, steering, even turning and raising and lowering the implement, that?s all real easy. You can monitor the pull power needed and a lot of bigger things and keep track of how the big things are working.

But how do you monitor for every little thing that possibly could happen?

There is a fella, well a group, that is working on ?open source? tractor controls. It would be to electronic farming controls what Linux is to computers.

He is pretty smart guy and of course he shares his thoughts a little easier than the companies doing this for profit.....

He said last summer, the driving and controls is easy, it is dealing with the remaining 2% of the operation. Dealing with the odd issues that come up while going round and round in a field. He said he really doesn?t see a truly driverless tractor happening for a long time, if ever. As you add more monitoring equipment, the expenses go up and then you have to start monitoring the monitoring equipment for failures..... and then you find there is another whole set of issues you need to monitor for you didn?t think of before......

Was interesting to hear him in an interview.

Paul

I can remember the farming as a kid and it is very close to being a happy
memory in my minds eye. Nice and sunny,incredible thunder storms, winter with
big drifts. Im sitting here in my chair not holding a steering wheel. Take a
little peek. They are all running autonomous tractors. Even Mahindra has them
comming out for the india market. The only thing you will be able to do is pat
it on the head after you fuel it up.
Auto

John Deere had a prototype in about 2001 .

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Driverless vehicles will need a lot of sensors to keep them out of trouble. If it is the same as our cars the sensors fail more often that what they are monitoring.

This was taken in 2017 @ NFMS Louisville,KY. Is a NH T8-410 autonomous tractor. It can be operated with or without an operator in the cab. This may have been a prototype not available to farmers yet, not sure.Like the video jeffcat referenced it could be operated from an i pad or smartphone in your home office or inside your pickup cab. There would be sensors for "almost" every possible thing that could go wrong on these tractors. If row 12 on a 16 row planter plugged up there would be a warning buzzer sent to your smart phone or the tractor would just stop forward motion until you came out of you office to fix the planter.Same thing for a broken hydraulic hose - tractor stops in its tracks. "Object detection radar or lidar" sounds like something out of Star Wars but this tractor would have that option now to be called driverless. Technology is changing so fast in agriculture is hard to believe.