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Midwest grain farmers are super boxed in with regard to what they must sign in order to have access to the latest tractor technology for their specific crop, bu

Midwest grain farmers are super boxed in with regard to what they must sign in order to have access to the latest tractor technology for their specific crop, but that's happening within the context of the technology getting incrementally better year-by-year, i.e., continuously cheaper input costs per unit of crop yield. This is all somewhat par for the course for a highly commoditized industry. Also, check out the comment below from the child of the Deere engineer who makes the point that "liability is the enemy of automation". If you gave farmers the ability to hack their tractors you are opening a bunch of complicated issues.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
Why do they need the latest tractor technology? Amazingly, people used to survive using tractors without air conditioning. Just slum it a little and use something that was state of the art for 1990. Plenty of Deere competitors can beat that.
- brianwawok 7y ago
  How much lower profit margin will you accept? If the guy next to you can harvest twice as fast as you, how are you covering that extra harvest driver pay?
  - lostlogin 7y ago
    By not playing for the new harvester.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  Who needs the latest computer technology? Amazingly, people used to compute by hand. Just slum it a little and use something that was state of the art for 1990s. Plenty of Intel competitors can beat that. ------ Farmers are in a competition for revenues. Better tractor technology growing more food with fewer workers. If all your neighbors are growing 200 bushels whenever you grow 100 bushels, you're going to die. AWS simply won't be competitive with 90s era computers. Modern farmers won't work with tech designed in the 90s either. Sure, farming might be slower than computers at advancing, but its the same general thing. Computers (and tractors) are durable goods, they can last 20 years if you need them to. In practice, people replace durable goods regularly, because the NEW model is that much better than the old model. So from that perspective, the economics between the computer world and farming world are probably the same. The group with superior technology will get superior revenue at lower ongoing costs. For computers, that's less power-usage for the same amount of computations (requests per second or whatever). For farmers, that's fewer workers picking your fields for the same amount of crop.
  - wglb 7y ago
    > So from that perspective, the economics between the computer world and farming world are probably the same This totally leaves out the risk factor of not finishing harvest in time. In northern climates, if you don't finish, for example, by early September, the remaining crop may be unharvestable. Thus you could lose half your crop, totally. So the economics are not at all the same.
    - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
      Farming has to scale down. Big Ag which includes tractor companies, input companies, pesticides/herbicides companies and GMO seed companies are like a cartel. They completely control the market. When you have 2000 acres and it’s a single narrow harvest window, it’s not possible unless you use herbicides and inputs and reliable traited seeds and even harvest is time by desiccating with..surprise!..glyphosate, one realized with depressing clarity that the real farmer is Big Ag. It’s their world. And the rest of us belong to them.
      - wglb 7y ago
        The reality is a bit more complicated than that. >Farming has to scale down. Then how are you going to feed everyone? By the time I left the farm for college, the productivity of the American farmer had increased by almost two orders of magnitude for the 50 years beginning when my grandfather homesteaded in 1911. Improvements in technology, from using tractors instead of horses, modern cultivating techniques (strip farming, idle land cultivating), fertilizer increased yields and cut prices substantially. When I was 3, my dad and uncle, who were partners in the farm, purchased a tractor for the equivalent of 1200 bushels of wheat. 15 years later, that same tractor would have cost 9500 bushels of wheat. It isn't so simple that giant companies, whether it be oil, big ag, energy want to make profits. Clearly they do. But when we all insist on buying and driving cars and complain when gasoline prices are too high, there are overall economic forces at work that tend to create opportunities of scale, resulting in Big Ag and Big Energy. The consumer and the hungry mouths are all part of the equation.
- leroy_masochist 7y ago
  We're talking about grain combines that are 50 feet wide and cost half a million dollars new, that are GPS-guided, and that have multiple advanced control systems that optimize rotor speeds, tractor speed, blade height, and dozens of other settings multiple times per second. If you're a grain farmer in the Midwest then you own several or dozens of these machines, they're financed, and you hedge your financing against future commodity prices. It's a business that lends itself to massive economies of scale. A hard-working pure-hearted American farmer with a tractor from 1990 and a little bit of grit is going to be real hard-pressed to compete. Not really a matter of sucking it up and slumming it, unfortunately.
  - tomcam 7y ago
    Do you have a blog or YT channel or something where you discuss these issues more? I’d love to follow you.
    - leroy_masochist 7y ago
      No but thank you for saying that!
  - dragontamer 7y ago
    I'm not fully up to date on farming technology, but you bring up a good point. I think most laypeople don't realize just how complicated these machines are. Here's a lettuce transplanter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ1u9IwJrs8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ1u9IwJrs8 It can transplant a lot of lettuce in a very quick amount of time, with a crew of 3 (1 driver + 2 workers on the back). You're not going to beat this plant-tape methodology with 90s era technology.
    - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
      That plant tape technology was developed in Spain and acquired by a Salinas lettuce company. They still struggle with margins due to CA labour costs and regulations. At some point, even economies of scale will totter when things become too big. In Ag, the better you do, you lose..because quantity creates glut and farmers are at the bottom of the supply chain of cheap food. Any increase in food prices would only benefit the top. But with new tech, the farmers are bearing the burden of new technology cost without seeing an increase in revenue. This has already led to the demise of the dairy industry. Ditto with grain and commodity crops. These are also heavily subsidized. Cheap food is subsidized by tax payers and farmers get shiny new tech toys on credit and eventually will fold. Because. Subsidies never work. I am reminded of that quote in catcher in the rye.
- neuralRiot 7y ago
  I work in automotive tech and i hear this all the time, "why we can't just jump a power wire to there?" People love technology when it works for them, when it breaks suddenly they want to be back in the80's.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago

Why do they need the latest tractor technology? Amazingly, people used to survive using tractors without air conditioning. Just slum it a little and use something that was state of the art for 1990. Plenty of Deere competitors can beat that.

brianwawok 7y ago
How much lower profit margin will you accept? If the guy next to you can harvest twice as fast as you, how are you covering that extra harvest driver pay?
- lostlogin 7y ago
  By not playing for the new harvester.
dragontamer 7y ago
Who needs the latest computer technology? Amazingly, people used to compute by hand. Just slum it a little and use something that was state of the art for 1990s. Plenty of Intel competitors can beat that. ------ Farmers are in a competition for revenues. Better tractor technology growing more food with fewer workers. If all your neighbors are growing 200 bushels whenever you grow 100 bushels, you're going to die. AWS simply won't be competitive with 90s era computers. Modern farmers won't work with tech designed in the 90s either. Sure, farming might be slower than computers at advancing, but its the same general thing. Computers (and tractors) are durable goods, they can last 20 years if you need them to. In practice, people replace durable goods regularly, because the NEW model is that much better than the old model. So from that perspective, the economics between the computer world and farming world are probably the same. The group with superior technology will get superior revenue at lower ongoing costs. For computers, that's less power-usage for the same amount of computations (requests per second or whatever). For farmers, that's fewer workers picking your fields for the same amount of crop.
- wglb 7y ago
  > So from that perspective, the economics between the computer world and farming world are probably the same This totally leaves out the risk factor of not finishing harvest in time. In northern climates, if you don't finish, for example, by early September, the remaining crop may be unharvestable. Thus you could lose half your crop, totally. So the economics are not at all the same.
  - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
    Farming has to scale down. Big Ag which includes tractor companies, input companies, pesticides/herbicides companies and GMO seed companies are like a cartel. They completely control the market. When you have 2000 acres and it’s a single narrow harvest window, it’s not possible unless you use herbicides and inputs and reliable traited seeds and even harvest is time by desiccating with..surprise!..glyphosate, one realized with depressing clarity that the real farmer is Big Ag. It’s their world. And the rest of us belong to them.
    - wglb 7y ago
      The reality is a bit more complicated than that. >Farming has to scale down. Then how are you going to feed everyone? By the time I left the farm for college, the productivity of the American farmer had increased by almost two orders of magnitude for the 50 years beginning when my grandfather homesteaded in 1911. Improvements in technology, from using tractors instead of horses, modern cultivating techniques (strip farming, idle land cultivating), fertilizer increased yields and cut prices substantially. When I was 3, my dad and uncle, who were partners in the farm, purchased a tractor for the equivalent of 1200 bushels of wheat. 15 years later, that same tractor would have cost 9500 bushels of wheat. It isn't so simple that giant companies, whether it be oil, big ag, energy want to make profits. Clearly they do. But when we all insist on buying and driving cars and complain when gasoline prices are too high, there are overall economic forces at work that tend to create opportunities of scale, resulting in Big Ag and Big Energy. The consumer and the hungry mouths are all part of the equation.
leroy_masochist 7y ago
We're talking about grain combines that are 50 feet wide and cost half a million dollars new, that are GPS-guided, and that have multiple advanced control systems that optimize rotor speeds, tractor speed, blade height, and dozens of other settings multiple times per second. If you're a grain farmer in the Midwest then you own several or dozens of these machines, they're financed, and you hedge your financing against future commodity prices. It's a business that lends itself to massive economies of scale. A hard-working pure-hearted American farmer with a tractor from 1990 and a little bit of grit is going to be real hard-pressed to compete. Not really a matter of sucking it up and slumming it, unfortunately.
- tomcam 7y ago
  Do you have a blog or YT channel or something where you discuss these issues more? I’d love to follow you.
  - leroy_masochist 7y ago
    No but thank you for saying that!
- dragontamer 7y ago
  I'm not fully up to date on farming technology, but you bring up a good point. I think most laypeople don't realize just how complicated these machines are. Here's a lettuce transplanter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ1u9IwJrs8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ1u9IwJrs8 It can transplant a lot of lettuce in a very quick amount of time, with a crew of 3 (1 driver + 2 workers on the back). You're not going to beat this plant-tape methodology with 90s era technology.
  - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
    That plant tape technology was developed in Spain and acquired by a Salinas lettuce company. They still struggle with margins due to CA labour costs and regulations. At some point, even economies of scale will totter when things become too big. In Ag, the better you do, you lose..because quantity creates glut and farmers are at the bottom of the supply chain of cheap food. Any increase in food prices would only benefit the top. But with new tech, the farmers are bearing the burden of new technology cost without seeing an increase in revenue. This has already led to the demise of the dairy industry. Ditto with grain and commodity crops. These are also heavily subsidized. Cheap food is subsidized by tax payers and farmers get shiny new tech toys on credit and eventually will fold. Because. Subsidies never work. I am reminded of that quote in catcher in the rye.
neuralRiot 7y ago
I work in automotive tech and i hear this all the time, "why we can't just jump a power wire to there?" People love technology when it works for them, when it breaks suddenly they want to be back in the80's.