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Misfit Tractors a Money Saver for Arkansas Farmer

120 points by jelliclesfarm 6y ago

h2odragon 6y ago
> "older machinery has to be a fit, and you have to put the time in to fix it. A lot of farmers don’t want to work on restoring equipment and I completely understand, but I could never do what I’m doing now with new equipment. That’s just the math of it.” I bet this is a fun place to work. Hackers of Heavy Metal.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  https://youtu.be/E-HeAnJcJvQ https://youtu.be/E-HeAnJcJvQ : check this out..it’s just ripping the field with a cultivator. I have never seen one of these Rome tractors before. Apparently it’s an Arkansas beloved..Mid west farming, it’s a planet of its own.
  - h2odragon 6y ago
    I got to meet a guy who was building tile plows for Michigan fields in the early 90s... This meant putting tons of machine onto the back of a cat d8 dozer; which then went out and put 1ft pipe 6ft into the ground in one pass. miles at a time. That was pretty impressive.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  I found it interesting that his entire crew working on the Steigers and Rome are from South Africa..like half a dozen of them. Does that mean America doesn’t have enough mechanics who have experience with these machines? Steigers are big in Australia acc to the article. South African crew seems a tad odd but I wonder if it’s just availability of the labour rather than any other specific reason.
  - vagrantJin 6y ago
    > South African crew seems a tad odd but I wonder if it’s just availability of the labour rather than any other specific reason. That's an underhanded comment or do you assume Africa can't produce any technical skills? Agriculture and agri-machinery is big business in SA which is similar to AUS who have generational farmers aplenty and new entrants alike.
    - doublerebel 6y ago
      On HN please assume a charitable interpretation. America is short on good mechanics. This is about qualified South African labor imported because Americans are underqualified, not the other way around. America has an annual shortage of around 39,000 techs... https://www.carparts.com/blog/mechanic-shortage-in-america/ https://www.carparts.com/blog/mechanic-shortage-in-america/
    - poulsbohemian 6y ago
      >That's an underhanded comment or do you assume Africa can't produce any technical skills? Lighten up a bit, eh? The parent didn't say anything negative about South Africa, rather he plainly wondered about the labor market for these skills and why it was necessary to bring talent from another country. It is an interesting and valid question that seems to imply a lack of homegrown US skills. Personally I wondered if the make of tractor was South African and thus the likely source of trained technicians, but that's not the case here. Which leads us back to the root question - why SA? Good trade schools? Organizations that are helping people find apprenticeships around the world? Familial connections on the part of the subject of the article?
      - JamisonM 6y ago
        If I had to posit a theory it would be that increasing farm sizes came to North America first, and so a full generation+ of American "farm boys" are long gone to the city. In South Africa I believe the trend came later so now there are a lot of said "farm boys" with some experience but no farm to work on anymore, looking for work.
        6y ago
  - zwayhowder 6y ago
    I can't speak for South Africa, but here in Australia if you have old equipment you get real good at fixing it yourself because you can't just overnight parts to your door like Reed does, you have to trawl through Ebay looking for the part and someone who will ship it around the world at a reasonable price. I used to bring an empty suitcase on my trips to the US and return with many parts for my "vintage" '81 Yamaha motorcycle.
  - rconti 6y ago
    I'm guessing seasonal labor in the southern hemisphere off-season? I can't speak to why he wouldn't have seasonal labor from (say) Australia, unless maybe the country's big enough that they can travel domestically to places that have less of an off-season?
  - mulmen 6y ago
    I wonder about this and the (perceived?) lack of mechanics in the states. It could be down to centralization into large corporate farms and the shift in ownership preferences favoring leased equipment with factory support. But as a one-time farm boy myself I wonder if it isn’t simply a lack of opportunity or the presence of better opportunities? I work in tech now because I can but my first career path was auto tech/farm hand. I worked on a farm to pay for school but as soon as I could get a better paying career I did. I also don’t miss the stereotypical trade work environment. Lunchtime conversation on the farm or auto shop would be fireable in the tech world. Lots of “locker room talk”. I wonder how many people that kind of culture scares off.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
The numbers are nuts. But true. Tractors do depreciate at $85-100/hour. Maybe more. Makes one wonder..how would the modern tech beauteous tractor bots depreciate ...any VCs or paper number crunchers amongst us? I can’t wrap these numbers around my head. Crop subsidies are messing up with valuations and tech progress. It is the root rot of all tech innovations pronounced DOA.
- nobodyandproud 6y ago
  I had the same thought: The tractor industry seems ripe for disruption.
  - Loughla 6y ago
    The problem with an industry like tractors is, from my humble and limited experience as a farmer who hated it is that it's less about the industry and more about a mismatch between needs and reality. Farmers need machines that can operate at as close to zero ongoing cost as possible. They need automation and simplicity from the machine as well as any software. They need an assurance that, if something goes wrong they can either fix it themselves at that moment with common and standard tools, or that someone can come fix it for them within the hour, for a very low cost. The problem with fancy modern tractors aren't that they are a negative value, or that they aren't extremely handy. It's that they are unbelievably expensive, because they are geared toward huge production, extremely efficient corporate "family" farms. The kind of people who use old, out of date machinery because it's cheaper and easier to fix are a) dying out, and b) not a huge market in the US. Maybe I'm way off base, but the 'need for disruption' in farming has always struck me as naive at best, and extremely egotistical at worst. That being said, as someone who actually did farm for 20+ years before quitting that for a cushy office job, I would love for the barrier to entry to be lower. I would love to hobby farm, but it's so expensive to do anything nowadays that it's impractical. But that, again, is not much of a market.
    - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
      I hear you..every word you said.. Should we move to a model that shares equipment? Or create farming-as-a-service? Of course this might mean that farms have to be contiguous acres. But less risk and lower capital sunk is a good deal. That is the kind of disruption needed.
afandian 6y ago
How long before tractor manufacturers buy "environmental regulations" to prohibit the use of older machinery?
- zwayhowder 6y ago
  As Reed's replacing the engines with newer engines it probably won't be a problem for him. Of course not everyone has the skills or time to do that.
  - afandian 6y ago
    I'm not imagining a good-faith law here. To draw a parallel, and I don't know how things work in the states, in Europe the CE mark is only valid when the equipment is installed in the approved way. I did this for a boat once (including a brand new engine), and the relevant regulation is the Recreational Craft Directive. To get a boat legal to sell, you need to perform a relevant declaration, reference to the correct EU regulations and their localised translation into law, pay someone qualified to prepare the paperwork and translate the regulations ... a nightmare of paperwork and very expensive. I'm not suggesting any bad-faith legistlation in the Recreational Craft Directive, I fully support very progressive environmental regulations, and not drawing the parallel too too closely... But if you did want to curtail people's freedoms through regulation paperwork, there are all kinds of places you could hide a gotcha. Off the top of my head: - How about the energy efficiency of the whole power train? - Approved lubricants. - Annual energy efficiency certification of the whole vehicle from an approved organisation.
- durkie 6y ago
  electric conversions seem like they'd make a lot of sense here anyways. high torque and low maintenance.
  - dejv 6y ago
    As a farmer I am interested buying one, especially as I am using tractors for light work: spraying, towing and light field work. There are few hacked tractors already available, but it will take some time before supply chain mature enough. I am pessimistic about having heavy duty industrial scale tractors with current battery technology. Those machines are monsters and when you interpolate consumption from light workloads to those monsters it just doesn't compute. Another angle in economics is that those machines have to work for many hours a day (combines in heavy seasons run for 12+, 7 days a week) which is also hard with current batteries.
datenhorst 6y ago
> Reed employs a group of highly skilled operators from South Africa This is mentioned as an afterthought but struck me as strange . Migrant workers commuting from South Africa? The article even mentions their wage at $30/h.
- markdown 6y ago
  Migrant workers? Why aren’t they expats?
  - poulsbohemian 6y ago
    Locally (where we have a lot of folks who come from other countries to work in agriculture), I've always assumed it's about duration: If you come to work the season, you are a migrant worker. If you come to stay on a semi-permanent basis, you are an expat. But maybe I've been using those words wrong?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - markdown 6y ago
      That sounds reasonable, but I didn't see anything in the article to indicate that these mechanics were only there seasonally. Perhaps I missed it.
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    H-2A visa holders. Even American farms source global labor. Given his location, it's probably better than trying to fight the brain drain and sort out the unreliable burnouts left in the local labor pool.
- war1025 6y ago
  My brother is good friends with a family that has a fairly large farming operation near our hometown. Their dad puts out blog posts periodically and in one of them he mentioned something about the South African workers being delayed or unavailable due to the pandemic. I would guess they maybe make a good labor pool due to being in the opposite hemisphere, so they can come up to the US during their off season. Not sure on that though. I was surprised when I read about it, and then a little less surprised when I read it in this article. Guess it's a thing.
JamisonM 6y ago
"I still believe you need some newer machinery in the mix, and my harvest equipment is where you’ll find it." I find this very interesting because on our farm the main source of savings has been running 7 (3-4 in the field at a time) 1480 and 1680 combines valued at $5-8,000 each. (and about 15 headers to match, equally worthless). We keep them well maintained but if we do have a failure that is not an instant fix we literally just pull another one out of the shed and carry on. Where we farm late-90's and early 2000's seeding equipment is now cheap as dirt too, we run two air seeders worth a combined $50,000, maybe? I have a Steiger, branded as a Case 9170, they have weak spots (wiring, rear diffs & planetaries) but they are cheap horsepower. Around my parts the "Rome" tractors would be older Versatile 4WDs that are easy to repower and have nice big cabs. All that said, I find the large savings claims here to be a bit suspect. Dropping new electronic engines in these frames, even if you do a lot of the work yourself, costs real money. Once you are 80-90k into a 1980 tractor.. they made a lot of good equipment in the 90's that you can walk up and buy for those kinds of dollars. And he isn't doing the work all himself, those hours cost real cash out of pocket (a small farmer like myself that fixes himself.. well you can just keep whittling down your personal hourly rate by putting in more hours).
- JamisonM 6y ago
  "The Steigers will be repainted over the winter..." What's up with American farmers and repainting things? Drives me nuts.. I can not understand it. I would love to know.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Paint protects the iron from rust.
    - JamisonM 6y ago
      Having never stroked a paintbrush on any of my late-70's and early 80's equipment I can assure you that this is not a practical factor.
      - 6y ago
isolli 6y ago
It reminds me of the Massey-Ferguson models 135 and 165, produced in the 1960s, now among the most popular used tractors, especially in Asia and Africa: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36479610 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36479610 "These old Masseys, like the 165 and the 135, they're so basic but they're incredibly reliable and they just keep going on and on. We've had examples where they've literally been sitting in a hedge for 10, 12 years, people have put a bit of diesel in them, they've tow-started them and boof! - off they go - just like that. Parts are plentiful and they are easy to fix. They have good, strong, basic mechanics."
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  Massey Ferguson/AGCO partnered with TAFE* of The Amalgamations group. TAFE rules the region. They then became a shareholder of AGCO and is able to export equipment everywhere. These are very fruitful partnerships. While TVS group of companies had partnerships(mostly Japanese. I am slightly familiar with how these partnerships are crafted..having audited a few TVS group companies way back when I was in India) for automobiles, Amalgamations Group had a more varied interest..ranging from tractor parts to Diesel engines to manufacturing vehicle batteries. Amalgamations is a tremendous success story. It was founded in my hometown and we are very proud of it. It is just my bias but I find TAFE better than Mahindra. Mahindra just seems ..flimsy? * https://www.tafe.com/ https://www.tafe.com/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgamations_Group https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgamations_Group
- bingerman 6y ago
  My grandfather bought a new mf 165 in 60s. It is still going strong and used for productive work. It has even fully functional original tires! Always been stored inside and almost always handled with thought. Ergonomics suck compared to more modern tractors but it's just fine for small-scale work anyway, kinda fun actually.
  - isolli 6y ago
    My father used to operate a MF 135 on his father's farm in his youth. He bought another one a few years ago. It is now used for mowing grass and thorn at their country house, and to give the grand-kids rides and driving lessons (they love it). Recently it stopped working, but a search quickly suggested a solution thanks to an active online community :) If I remember correctly, the intake at the bottom of the tank got clogged, which happens from time to time.
gerbilly 6y ago
When I worked as a farmhand they gave me a Massey Ferguson 135. The old one with the round mudguards too. I used it for most small to medium jobs. I loved that old beast, I was so mad when I found out they got rid of it.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  You are making me nostalgic. Old Masseys are the best!
  - gerbilly 6y ago
    Man the clutch pedal felt so stiff when I was thirteen. I had to stand on the friggin thing.
    - eitland 6y ago
      "Clutch leg" used to be a diagnosis back in the days. Source: my dad told me about it in the eighties or early nineties I think.
mabbo 6y ago
Given these enormous price tags, why on earth hasn't someone disrupted this industry? Surely someone can build a useful, powerful tractor that meets the needs of a large portion of farmers for less than a third of a million dollars. And if they make it repairable and not DRM-encoded (like John Deere) surely that would build a loyal brand following too. Bezos has that famous line: "Your margin is my opportunity". Well shoot, there really does look to be a margin in that industry.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  Because it’s competition to multi billion dollar existing companies. John Deere has the ability to buy every new ‘disruption’ and lock it up in a vault..never to see the light of day again. Why would they disrupt anything? That would be akin to market cannibalisation.
  - bob1029 6y ago
    The opportunity cost here is pretty high, but there are still ways to break in. Your best bet would be to start up a small company, find a few farming operations that would be willing to try your equipment out, and then scale from there. Making 1 prototype of each flavor of machine from scratch would probably be a huge undertaking. Might be easier to use existing equipment as a starting point for prototypes. Alternatively, you could pitch a design to a few investors and go from there, but investors being what they are... It's a hard journey either way. Also, no one says you have to turn around and sell your assets to John Deere when they inevitably detect you as a threat. The power of privately-held corporations is that you can do whatever the hell you want within the confines of law. I would strongly advocate whoever pulls this off to stay in the market and punish the shit out of the incumbents.
    - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
      JD bought out Blue River Tech for a two hundred plus million. They shuttered their lettuce weeding robots and use it for cotton now...the last I heard. I get it. But I don’t know why they had control the platform for specific crops. My guess is that since BRT tech is ‘see and spray’, there will be a tie up with precision herbicide application with Bayer(née Monsanto) products. Remember..afterall..John Deere wanted to buy Climate and Monsanto before DoJ blocked it with anti trust objections.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
This is the <insert nationality here> scrapper/dirt hauler/landscaper way of running a fleet. You over provision junk so that enough of it's running at any one time and you do minimum maintenance. It takes a special confluence of low labor costs and in-housing certain types of labor to make this work. Don't read too much into this. This is just a story of a guy who's hyper optimized for local conditions. Not some broad brush statement about whether to buy new equipment or end of life equipment.
rajup 6y ago
The concept of making do with less in the Western world is something driven by necessity in other less wealthy nations, the prime example being the Indian "Jugaad"[1] [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad
jonstewart 6y ago
My uncle farms 80 acres, a pittance these days, with a four row John Deere 4400 combine, ca. 1975.
aatharuv 6y ago
> When Reed began farming in 2005, he paid $120,000 for his first new tractor, but fast-forward to 2020, and the equivalent tractor’s price tag now reads a heftier $350,000. The big question is why have tractor's tripled in price in the past 15 years? Regulations? Cars haven't gone up anywhere near that in that time frame.
- eitland 6y ago
  I guess tractors went from low tech to high tech. Here in Europe I think it started even before 15 years ago from my limited experience: In the 80ies as far as I can remember everything was extremely basic: open cabins without even doors was common IIRC (I was <10 years old then). There used to be one power outlet and one hydraulic outlet, often controlled manually. In the nineties I think bigger machines became the norm, as did closed sound proofed cabins and 4wd. Also it seems to be the time when simple automation became available, like systems to (slightly) adjust plow depth based on the resistance in the ground. A couple of years ago I spoke to the kid running the Fendt on a field nearby after he stopped next to my 3yo who was watching from his stroller from the curb. He says everything is automatic on the equipment he runs now. The fertilizer can be programmed ahead of time to increase or decrease output based on yesteryears (or this year's) soil measurements. It even largely runs itself in the fields, even at the edges and his task was more or less to babysit it. I wonder if he didn't also mention that it would do automatic geo radar measurements as it drove around the field. At the same time we've seen a couple of different trends playing out: - smaller farms give up. Last I heard 3000 farms closed down here here in Norway every single year, and the trend had been going on for two or three decades then. Larger farms will then rent the leftover areas. - except for the largest farms everyone is dependent on a second income. On the west coast I hear often wife or husband will be working in the North Sea at oil rigs on a 2/3 - 2/4 rotation (two weeks on, 3 or 4 weeks off). - farmers also find work in carpentry, road construction and maintenance etc. They are often popular because they are extremely hard working. Sometimes as employees other times as subcontractors (for example for snow removal it helps a lot if you already have a powerful tractor that will otherwise be unused during the winter). - Around here I think there is a trend towards agricultural entrepreneurs who owns the newest combines etc and do the harvesting.
jeffrallen 6y ago
The most interesting takeaway for me was "don't let your costs of inputs be determined by specialized vendors when your revenue comes from a commodity". Or backwards: "if you are in a commodity business, then you need to carefully control the costs of inputs, possibly by avoiding non-commodity capital equipment".
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  But corporate farms have swallowed family farms and there has been a massive consolidation. With every aspect of farming. Big tractor and the guy who sells you herbicide and suggests what seed to buy. You seed, inputs and yield projection is all done for you. And now with data collection..esp with tractors being outfitted with modern tech and AI, the farmer is like chopped meat...they are basically overseers with inherited land who collect subsidies, do the accounting, pay taxes and deliver to grain elevator. The system is designed to slowly chip away farms so the balance sheet becomes debt heavy and cash poor/land rich farmers end up selling anyways. The whole thing is rigged. The name of the game is consolidation. Across the border, I don’t know how it works w/Canadian commodity farms but at their dairy industry works with a diff subsidies model. It’s not like they have eliminated subsidies completely but it has helped not shutter dairy farms and is more protectionist. Perhaps relatedly..a slightly dated article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/american-food-giants-swallow-the-family-farms-iowa https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/american...

120 points by jelliclesfarm 6y ago

> "older machinery has to be a fit, and you have to put the time in to fix it. A lot of farmers don’t want to work on restoring equipment and I completely understand, but I could never do what I’m doing now with new equipment. That’s just the math of it.” I bet this is a fun place to work. Hackers of Heavy Metal.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
https://youtu.be/E-HeAnJcJvQ https://youtu.be/E-HeAnJcJvQ : check this out..it’s just ripping the field with a cultivator. I have never seen one of these Rome tractors before. Apparently it’s an Arkansas beloved..Mid west farming, it’s a planet of its own.
- h2odragon 6y ago
  I got to meet a guy who was building tile plows for Michigan fields in the early 90s... This meant putting tons of machine onto the back of a cat d8 dozer; which then went out and put 1ft pipe 6ft into the ground in one pass. miles at a time. That was pretty impressive.
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
I found it interesting that his entire crew working on the Steigers and Rome are from South Africa..like half a dozen of them. Does that mean America doesn’t have enough mechanics who have experience with these machines? Steigers are big in Australia acc to the article. South African crew seems a tad odd but I wonder if it’s just availability of the labour rather than any other specific reason.
- vagrantJin 6y ago
  > South African crew seems a tad odd but I wonder if it’s just availability of the labour rather than any other specific reason. That's an underhanded comment or do you assume Africa can't produce any technical skills? Agriculture and agri-machinery is big business in SA which is similar to AUS who have generational farmers aplenty and new entrants alike.
  - doublerebel 6y ago
    On HN please assume a charitable interpretation. America is short on good mechanics. This is about qualified South African labor imported because Americans are underqualified, not the other way around. America has an annual shortage of around 39,000 techs... https://www.carparts.com/blog/mechanic-shortage-in-america/ https://www.carparts.com/blog/mechanic-shortage-in-america/
  - poulsbohemian 6y ago
    >That's an underhanded comment or do you assume Africa can't produce any technical skills? Lighten up a bit, eh? The parent didn't say anything negative about South Africa, rather he plainly wondered about the labor market for these skills and why it was necessary to bring talent from another country. It is an interesting and valid question that seems to imply a lack of homegrown US skills. Personally I wondered if the make of tractor was South African and thus the likely source of trained technicians, but that's not the case here. Which leads us back to the root question - why SA? Good trade schools? Organizations that are helping people find apprenticeships around the world? Familial connections on the part of the subject of the article?
    - JamisonM 6y ago
      If I had to posit a theory it would be that increasing farm sizes came to North America first, and so a full generation+ of American "farm boys" are long gone to the city. In South Africa I believe the trend came later so now there are a lot of said "farm boys" with some experience but no farm to work on anymore, looking for work.
      - 6y ago
- zwayhowder 6y ago
  I can't speak for South Africa, but here in Australia if you have old equipment you get real good at fixing it yourself because you can't just overnight parts to your door like Reed does, you have to trawl through Ebay looking for the part and someone who will ship it around the world at a reasonable price. I used to bring an empty suitcase on my trips to the US and return with many parts for my "vintage" '81 Yamaha motorcycle.
- rconti 6y ago
  I'm guessing seasonal labor in the southern hemisphere off-season? I can't speak to why he wouldn't have seasonal labor from (say) Australia, unless maybe the country's big enough that they can travel domestically to places that have less of an off-season?
- mulmen 6y ago
  I wonder about this and the (perceived?) lack of mechanics in the states. It could be down to centralization into large corporate farms and the shift in ownership preferences favoring leased equipment with factory support. But as a one-time farm boy myself I wonder if it isn’t simply a lack of opportunity or the presence of better opportunities? I work in tech now because I can but my first career path was auto tech/farm hand. I worked on a farm to pay for school but as soon as I could get a better paying career I did. I also don’t miss the stereotypical trade work environment. Lunchtime conversation on the farm or auto shop would be fireable in the tech world. Lots of “locker room talk”. I wonder how many people that kind of culture scares off.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

The numbers are nuts. But true. Tractors do depreciate at $85-100/hour. Maybe more. Makes one wonder..how would the modern tech beauteous tractor bots depreciate ...any VCs or paper number crunchers amongst us? I can’t wrap these numbers around my head. Crop subsidies are messing up with valuations and tech progress. It is the root rot of all tech innovations pronounced DOA.

nobodyandproud 6y ago
I had the same thought: The tractor industry seems ripe for disruption.
- Loughla 6y ago
  The problem with an industry like tractors is, from my humble and limited experience as a farmer who hated it is that it's less about the industry and more about a mismatch between needs and reality. Farmers need machines that can operate at as close to zero ongoing cost as possible. They need automation and simplicity from the machine as well as any software. They need an assurance that, if something goes wrong they can either fix it themselves at that moment with common and standard tools, or that someone can come fix it for them within the hour, for a very low cost. The problem with fancy modern tractors aren't that they are a negative value, or that they aren't extremely handy. It's that they are unbelievably expensive, because they are geared toward huge production, extremely efficient corporate "family" farms. The kind of people who use old, out of date machinery because it's cheaper and easier to fix are a) dying out, and b) not a huge market in the US. Maybe I'm way off base, but the 'need for disruption' in farming has always struck me as naive at best, and extremely egotistical at worst. That being said, as someone who actually did farm for 20+ years before quitting that for a cushy office job, I would love for the barrier to entry to be lower. I would love to hobby farm, but it's so expensive to do anything nowadays that it's impractical. But that, again, is not much of a market.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    I hear you..every word you said.. Should we move to a model that shares equipment? Or create farming-as-a-service? Of course this might mean that farms have to be contiguous acres. But less risk and lower capital sunk is a good deal. That is the kind of disruption needed.

afandian 6y ago

How long before tractor manufacturers buy "environmental regulations" to prohibit the use of older machinery?

zwayhowder 6y ago
As Reed's replacing the engines with newer engines it probably won't be a problem for him. Of course not everyone has the skills or time to do that.
- afandian 6y ago
  I'm not imagining a good-faith law here. To draw a parallel, and I don't know how things work in the states, in Europe the CE mark is only valid when the equipment is installed in the approved way. I did this for a boat once (including a brand new engine), and the relevant regulation is the Recreational Craft Directive. To get a boat legal to sell, you need to perform a relevant declaration, reference to the correct EU regulations and their localised translation into law, pay someone qualified to prepare the paperwork and translate the regulations ... a nightmare of paperwork and very expensive. I'm not suggesting any bad-faith legistlation in the Recreational Craft Directive, I fully support very progressive environmental regulations, and not drawing the parallel too too closely... But if you did want to curtail people's freedoms through regulation paperwork, there are all kinds of places you could hide a gotcha. Off the top of my head: - How about the energy efficiency of the whole power train? - Approved lubricants. - Annual energy efficiency certification of the whole vehicle from an approved organisation.
durkie 6y ago
electric conversions seem like they'd make a lot of sense here anyways. high torque and low maintenance.
- dejv 6y ago
  As a farmer I am interested buying one, especially as I am using tractors for light work: spraying, towing and light field work. There are few hacked tractors already available, but it will take some time before supply chain mature enough. I am pessimistic about having heavy duty industrial scale tractors with current battery technology. Those machines are monsters and when you interpolate consumption from light workloads to those monsters it just doesn't compute. Another angle in economics is that those machines have to work for many hours a day (combines in heavy seasons run for 12+, 7 days a week) which is also hard with current batteries.

datenhorst 6y ago

> Reed employs a group of highly skilled operators from South Africa This is mentioned as an afterthought but struck me as strange . Migrant workers commuting from South Africa? The article even mentions their wage at $30/h.

markdown 6y ago
Migrant workers? Why aren’t they expats?
- poulsbohemian 6y ago
  Locally (where we have a lot of folks who come from other countries to work in agriculture), I've always assumed it's about duration: If you come to work the season, you are a migrant worker. If you come to stay on a semi-permanent basis, you are an expat. But maybe I've been using those words wrong?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - markdown 6y ago
    That sounds reasonable, but I didn't see anything in the article to indicate that these mechanics were only there seasonally. Perhaps I missed it.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  H-2A visa holders. Even American farms source global labor. Given his location, it's probably better than trying to fight the brain drain and sort out the unreliable burnouts left in the local labor pool.
war1025 6y ago
My brother is good friends with a family that has a fairly large farming operation near our hometown. Their dad puts out blog posts periodically and in one of them he mentioned something about the South African workers being delayed or unavailable due to the pandemic. I would guess they maybe make a good labor pool due to being in the opposite hemisphere, so they can come up to the US during their off season. Not sure on that though. I was surprised when I read about it, and then a little less surprised when I read it in this article. Guess it's a thing.

JamisonM 6y ago

"I still believe you need some newer machinery in the mix, and my harvest equipment is where you’ll find it." I find this very interesting because on our farm the main source of savings has been running 7 (3-4 in the field at a time) 1480 and 1680 combines valued at $5-8,000 each. (and about 15 headers to match, equally worthless). We keep them well maintained but if we do have a failure that is not an instant fix we literally just pull another one out of the shed and carry on. Where we farm late-90's and early 2000's seeding equipment is now cheap as dirt too, we run two air seeders worth a combined $50,000, maybe? I have a Steiger, branded as a Case 9170, they have weak spots (wiring, rear diffs & planetaries) but they are cheap horsepower. Around my parts the "Rome" tractors would be older Versatile 4WDs that are easy to repower and have nice big cabs. All that said, I find the large savings claims here to be a bit suspect. Dropping new electronic engines in these frames, even if you do a lot of the work yourself, costs real money. Once you are 80-90k into a 1980 tractor.. they made a lot of good equipment in the 90's that you can walk up and buy for those kinds of dollars. And he isn't doing the work all himself, those hours cost real cash out of pocket (a small farmer like myself that fixes himself.. well you can just keep whittling down your personal hourly rate by putting in more hours).

JamisonM 6y ago
"The Steigers will be repainted over the winter..." What's up with American farmers and repainting things? Drives me nuts.. I can not understand it. I would love to know.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Paint protects the iron from rust.
  - JamisonM 6y ago
    Having never stroked a paintbrush on any of my late-70's and early 80's equipment I can assure you that this is not a practical factor.
    - 6y ago

isolli 6y ago

It reminds me of the Massey-Ferguson models 135 and 165, produced in the 1960s, now among the most popular used tractors, especially in Asia and Africa: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36479610 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36479610 "These old Masseys, like the 165 and the 135, they're so basic but they're incredibly reliable and they just keep going on and on. We've had examples where they've literally been sitting in a hedge for 10, 12 years, people have put a bit of diesel in them, they've tow-started them and boof! - off they go - just like that. Parts are plentiful and they are easy to fix. They have good, strong, basic mechanics."

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
Massey Ferguson/AGCO partnered with TAFE* of The Amalgamations group. TAFE rules the region. They then became a shareholder of AGCO and is able to export equipment everywhere. These are very fruitful partnerships. While TVS group of companies had partnerships(mostly Japanese. I am slightly familiar with how these partnerships are crafted..having audited a few TVS group companies way back when I was in India) for automobiles, Amalgamations Group had a more varied interest..ranging from tractor parts to Diesel engines to manufacturing vehicle batteries. Amalgamations is a tremendous success story. It was founded in my hometown and we are very proud of it. It is just my bias but I find TAFE better than Mahindra. Mahindra just seems ..flimsy? * https://www.tafe.com/ https://www.tafe.com/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgamations_Group https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgamations_Group
bingerman 6y ago
My grandfather bought a new mf 165 in 60s. It is still going strong and used for productive work. It has even fully functional original tires! Always been stored inside and almost always handled with thought. Ergonomics suck compared to more modern tractors but it's just fine for small-scale work anyway, kinda fun actually.
- isolli 6y ago
  My father used to operate a MF 135 on his father's farm in his youth. He bought another one a few years ago. It is now used for mowing grass and thorn at their country house, and to give the grand-kids rides and driving lessons (they love it). Recently it stopped working, but a search quickly suggested a solution thanks to an active online community :) If I remember correctly, the intake at the bottom of the tank got clogged, which happens from time to time.

gerbilly 6y ago

When I worked as a farmhand they gave me a Massey Ferguson 135. The old one with the round mudguards too. I used it for most small to medium jobs. I loved that old beast, I was so mad when I found out they got rid of it.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
You are making me nostalgic. Old Masseys are the best!
- gerbilly 6y ago
  Man the clutch pedal felt so stiff when I was thirteen. I had to stand on the friggin thing.
  - eitland 6y ago
    "Clutch leg" used to be a diagnosis back in the days. Source: my dad told me about it in the eighties or early nineties I think.

mabbo 6y ago

Given these enormous price tags, why on earth hasn't someone disrupted this industry? Surely someone can build a useful, powerful tractor that meets the needs of a large portion of farmers for less than a third of a million dollars. And if they make it repairable and not DRM-encoded (like John Deere) surely that would build a loyal brand following too. Bezos has that famous line: "Your margin is my opportunity". Well shoot, there really does look to be a margin in that industry.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
Because it’s competition to multi billion dollar existing companies. John Deere has the ability to buy every new ‘disruption’ and lock it up in a vault..never to see the light of day again. Why would they disrupt anything? That would be akin to market cannibalisation.
- bob1029 6y ago
  The opportunity cost here is pretty high, but there are still ways to break in. Your best bet would be to start up a small company, find a few farming operations that would be willing to try your equipment out, and then scale from there. Making 1 prototype of each flavor of machine from scratch would probably be a huge undertaking. Might be easier to use existing equipment as a starting point for prototypes. Alternatively, you could pitch a design to a few investors and go from there, but investors being what they are... It's a hard journey either way. Also, no one says you have to turn around and sell your assets to John Deere when they inevitably detect you as a threat. The power of privately-held corporations is that you can do whatever the hell you want within the confines of law. I would strongly advocate whoever pulls this off to stay in the market and punish the shit out of the incumbents.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    JD bought out Blue River Tech for a two hundred plus million. They shuttered their lettuce weeding robots and use it for cotton now...the last I heard. I get it. But I don’t know why they had control the platform for specific crops. My guess is that since BRT tech is ‘see and spray’, there will be a tie up with precision herbicide application with Bayer(née Monsanto) products. Remember..afterall..John Deere wanted to buy Climate and Monsanto before DoJ blocked it with anti trust objections.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

This is the <insert nationality here> scrapper/dirt hauler/landscaper way of running a fleet. You over provision junk so that enough of it's running at any one time and you do minimum maintenance. It takes a special confluence of low labor costs and in-housing certain types of labor to make this work. Don't read too much into this. This is just a story of a guy who's hyper optimized for local conditions. Not some broad brush statement about whether to buy new equipment or end of life equipment.

rajup 6y ago

The concept of making do with less in the Western world is something driven by necessity in other less wealthy nations, the prime example being the Indian "Jugaad"[1] [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad

jonstewart 6y ago

My uncle farms 80 acres, a pittance these days, with a four row John Deere 4400 combine, ca. 1975.

aatharuv 6y ago

> When Reed began farming in 2005, he paid $120,000 for his first new tractor, but fast-forward to 2020, and the equivalent tractor’s price tag now reads a heftier $350,000. The big question is why have tractor's tripled in price in the past 15 years? Regulations? Cars haven't gone up anywhere near that in that time frame.

eitland 6y ago
I guess tractors went from low tech to high tech. Here in Europe I think it started even before 15 years ago from my limited experience: In the 80ies as far as I can remember everything was extremely basic: open cabins without even doors was common IIRC (I was <10 years old then). There used to be one power outlet and one hydraulic outlet, often controlled manually. In the nineties I think bigger machines became the norm, as did closed sound proofed cabins and 4wd. Also it seems to be the time when simple automation became available, like systems to (slightly) adjust plow depth based on the resistance in the ground. A couple of years ago I spoke to the kid running the Fendt on a field nearby after he stopped next to my 3yo who was watching from his stroller from the curb. He says everything is automatic on the equipment he runs now. The fertilizer can be programmed ahead of time to increase or decrease output based on yesteryears (or this year's) soil measurements. It even largely runs itself in the fields, even at the edges and his task was more or less to babysit it. I wonder if he didn't also mention that it would do automatic geo radar measurements as it drove around the field. At the same time we've seen a couple of different trends playing out: - smaller farms give up. Last I heard 3000 farms closed down here here in Norway every single year, and the trend had been going on for two or three decades then. Larger farms will then rent the leftover areas. - except for the largest farms everyone is dependent on a second income. On the west coast I hear often wife or husband will be working in the North Sea at oil rigs on a 2/3 - 2/4 rotation (two weeks on, 3 or 4 weeks off). - farmers also find work in carpentry, road construction and maintenance etc. They are often popular because they are extremely hard working. Sometimes as employees other times as subcontractors (for example for snow removal it helps a lot if you already have a powerful tractor that will otherwise be unused during the winter). - Around here I think there is a trend towards agricultural entrepreneurs who owns the newest combines etc and do the harvesting.

jeffrallen 6y ago

The most interesting takeaway for me was "don't let your costs of inputs be determined by specialized vendors when your revenue comes from a commodity". Or backwards: "if you are in a commodity business, then you need to carefully control the costs of inputs, possibly by avoiding non-commodity capital equipment".

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
But corporate farms have swallowed family farms and there has been a massive consolidation. With every aspect of farming. Big tractor and the guy who sells you herbicide and suggests what seed to buy. You seed, inputs and yield projection is all done for you. And now with data collection..esp with tractors being outfitted with modern tech and AI, the farmer is like chopped meat...they are basically overseers with inherited land who collect subsidies, do the accounting, pay taxes and deliver to grain elevator. The system is designed to slowly chip away farms so the balance sheet becomes debt heavy and cash poor/land rich farmers end up selling anyways. The whole thing is rigged. The name of the game is consolidation. Across the border, I don’t know how it works w/Canadian commodity farms but at their dairy industry works with a diff subsidies model. It’s not like they have eliminated subsidies completely but it has helped not shutter dairy farms and is more protectionist. Perhaps relatedly..a slightly dated article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/american-food-giants-swallow-the-family-farms-iowa https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/american...