5 ms·

Wonder how difficult it would be for some opensource startup to come out and make a simple Generic Tractor at low cost, low maintenance? I grew up on a small f

by rdudek 5y ago

Wonder how difficult it would be for some opensource startup to come out and make a simple Generic Tractor at low cost, low maintenance? I grew up on a small farm and the tractor we had was very basic. Didn't have any of the latest tech which has pathing and seeding controls.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
7thaccount 5y ago
I'm not a farmer, but this comes up a lot. Most modern farming (the type done for money commercially and not as a hobby)is fiendishly complex. The tractors are massive and are driven by GPS and have all kinds of massive machines connected to them. If you want a simple and cheap tractor, you can find a Farmall from like 40 years ago and restore it easily for like a grand or two (at least my friends dad was still doing this in 2008). Typically whenever a once competitive firm becomes a lazy monopolist, at some point others want to break in and get a piece of the profit pie. It could happen someday.
- frankfrankfrank 5y ago
  Although I am not doubting you, I find it rather curious that you would describe tractors and/or other farm equipment as "fiendishly complex". I am not sure if there is a term or concept for this issue, but I get a strong sense from this whole concept that what is really happening is the generation of artificial and intentional complexity, if not just the perception of complexity. There is nothing inherently complex about, e.g., a tractor that has some method of automatic steering, locates itself by GPS, and follows a path set by coordinates and vectors. Another aspect of what we are experiencing here I think is essentially a multi-level/nested con job that uses that artificial and perception of complexity to extract ever higher and compounding levels of what what are essentially rents. The established industry players are banking on the high barrier to entry (heavy machinery production) and brand recognition (Runs like a Deere) to con the whole sector, and therefore extract wealth from the whole of society trying to feed itself. Please feel free to challenge my perspective.
  - abakker 5y ago
    Look how hard it was for Tesla to build cars. the Capex businesses are notoriously unattractive for VCs. I suspect that it will take some other innovation to make this worthwhile to fund. Right to repair is not innovation, its just a single feature change, so nobody cares to solve it. It generates complaints, but probably doesn't hurt sales. At some point, maybe electrification will be that innovation. Or maybe form factor? but, JD is not ignoring product development, they just have expensive spare parts. A data point I never see is what JD reliability is like. Toyota has expensive spare parts compared to several of their competitors, but they are also very reliable. If JD's DRMs and expensive parts are concomitant with reliable tractors, then maybe this issue is really just interesting to techno libertarians and not actual farmers? I don't have any sense for the size of the JD repair market.
    - themadturk 5y ago
      I'm not sure about Deere reliability, but I've seen anecdotal evidence in the past about farmers being out of operation because they can't fix their farm equipment themselves.
    - fomine3 5y ago
      Now Tesla and other EV startups are skyrocketed. Possibly now is the chance if they could attract WSB?
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    I think you hit the nail on the head. Much like modern web design, pointless complexity slows down competitors with distractions.
  - webmaven 5y ago
    > Although I am not doubting you, I find it rather curious that you would describe tractors and/or other farm equipment as "fiendishly complex". I am not sure if there is a term or concept for this issue, I've come across the term "confusopoly": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly
  - 5y ago
- masklinn 5y ago
  > Typically whenever a once competitive firm becomes a lazy monopolist, at some point others want to break in and get a piece of the profit pie. It could happen someday. The problem is, as in many other domains, a combination of opportunity cost and network effect. Getting in the commercial farming game is going to be expensive as hell and gruelling as you try to get a foothold, and unlike, say, a car, your average farmer has a ton of equipment from the same brand which works together, and the more time passes the harder it becomes to interop (though I guess at least in farming you don't have too many patented hitches or PTOs these days?) Not to mention in farming you really need to have a network on the ball for parts and repairs, if you fuck up a farmer's season by leaving them stranded for a week they're not going to be happy campers.
- matthias509 5y ago
  All the implements which farmers use, planters cultivators, etc have gotten larger over the years as the scale of farms have grown. A 40 year old tractor likely isn’t going to have the horsepower to work with these new implements. Also, the old tractor is likely to lack a cab which could mean no climate control for you. Both of these would be serious issues for operating a modern, large scale farming operation.
  - BenjiWiebe 5y ago
    Those older tractors can and do have enough power for modern farming. Source: I work in a shop in a farming community which usually has 10+ tractors lined up to get worked on, and the vast majority are 20-40 years old. They are much more repairable then modern tractors, so plenty of farmers actually prefer them to the newer higher tech tractors. Oh, and most GPS steering systems don't come with the tractor, and some types of systems are retrofitted onto any tractor with a steering wheel.
  - 7thaccount 5y ago
    That's basically what I was saying above. If you need all that a modern tractor has to offer you don't have much of a choice. If you need to farm on a smaller scale, an older (and much easier to repair) and much cheaper model is always a possibility. Although the used market is insanely expensive now I would guess.
syshum 5y ago
https://www.opensourceecology.org/portfolio/tractor/ https://www.opensourceecology.org/portfolio/tractor/
- jonnydubowsky 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing this. I remember checking it out a few years ago when Open Source Ecology first started doing their workshops. They've come a long way. I love how their system is designed to build modules to build machines to build more modules.
biorach 5y ago
There are plenty simple low-cost tractors on the market. However for large-scale agriculture where your tractor is pulling high-end machinery you need something very powerful and sophisticated. JD leads this market, and is a significant player in the mid-range also.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by rdudek 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

7thaccount 5y ago

I'm not a farmer, but this comes up a lot. Most modern farming (the type done for money commercially and not as a hobby)is fiendishly complex. The tractors are massive and are driven by GPS and have all kinds of massive machines connected to them. If you want a simple and cheap tractor, you can find a Farmall from like 40 years ago and restore it easily for like a grand or two (at least my friends dad was still doing this in 2008). Typically whenever a once competitive firm becomes a lazy monopolist, at some point others want to break in and get a piece of the profit pie. It could happen someday.

frankfrankfrank 5y ago
Although I am not doubting you, I find it rather curious that you would describe tractors and/or other farm equipment as "fiendishly complex". I am not sure if there is a term or concept for this issue, but I get a strong sense from this whole concept that what is really happening is the generation of artificial and intentional complexity, if not just the perception of complexity. There is nothing inherently complex about, e.g., a tractor that has some method of automatic steering, locates itself by GPS, and follows a path set by coordinates and vectors. Another aspect of what we are experiencing here I think is essentially a multi-level/nested con job that uses that artificial and perception of complexity to extract ever higher and compounding levels of what what are essentially rents. The established industry players are banking on the high barrier to entry (heavy machinery production) and brand recognition (Runs like a Deere) to con the whole sector, and therefore extract wealth from the whole of society trying to feed itself. Please feel free to challenge my perspective.
- abakker 5y ago
  Look how hard it was for Tesla to build cars. the Capex businesses are notoriously unattractive for VCs. I suspect that it will take some other innovation to make this worthwhile to fund. Right to repair is not innovation, its just a single feature change, so nobody cares to solve it. It generates complaints, but probably doesn't hurt sales. At some point, maybe electrification will be that innovation. Or maybe form factor? but, JD is not ignoring product development, they just have expensive spare parts. A data point I never see is what JD reliability is like. Toyota has expensive spare parts compared to several of their competitors, but they are also very reliable. If JD's DRMs and expensive parts are concomitant with reliable tractors, then maybe this issue is really just interesting to techno libertarians and not actual farmers? I don't have any sense for the size of the JD repair market.
  - themadturk 5y ago
    I'm not sure about Deere reliability, but I've seen anecdotal evidence in the past about farmers being out of operation because they can't fix their farm equipment themselves.
  - fomine3 5y ago
    Now Tesla and other EV startups are skyrocketed. Possibly now is the chance if they could attract WSB?
- fartcannon 5y ago
  I think you hit the nail on the head. Much like modern web design, pointless complexity slows down competitors with distractions.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > Although I am not doubting you, I find it rather curious that you would describe tractors and/or other farm equipment as "fiendishly complex". I am not sure if there is a term or concept for this issue, I've come across the term "confusopoly": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly
- 5y ago
masklinn 5y ago
> Typically whenever a once competitive firm becomes a lazy monopolist, at some point others want to break in and get a piece of the profit pie. It could happen someday. The problem is, as in many other domains, a combination of opportunity cost and network effect. Getting in the commercial farming game is going to be expensive as hell and gruelling as you try to get a foothold, and unlike, say, a car, your average farmer has a ton of equipment from the same brand which works together, and the more time passes the harder it becomes to interop (though I guess at least in farming you don't have too many patented hitches or PTOs these days?) Not to mention in farming you really need to have a network on the ball for parts and repairs, if you fuck up a farmer's season by leaving them stranded for a week they're not going to be happy campers.
matthias509 5y ago
All the implements which farmers use, planters cultivators, etc have gotten larger over the years as the scale of farms have grown. A 40 year old tractor likely isn’t going to have the horsepower to work with these new implements. Also, the old tractor is likely to lack a cab which could mean no climate control for you. Both of these would be serious issues for operating a modern, large scale farming operation.
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  Those older tractors can and do have enough power for modern farming. Source: I work in a shop in a farming community which usually has 10+ tractors lined up to get worked on, and the vast majority are 20-40 years old. They are much more repairable then modern tractors, so plenty of farmers actually prefer them to the newer higher tech tractors. Oh, and most GPS steering systems don't come with the tractor, and some types of systems are retrofitted onto any tractor with a steering wheel.
- 7thaccount 5y ago
  That's basically what I was saying above. If you need all that a modern tractor has to offer you don't have much of a choice. If you need to farm on a smaller scale, an older (and much easier to repair) and much cheaper model is always a possibility. Although the used market is insanely expensive now I would guess.

syshum 5y ago

https://www.opensourceecology.org/portfolio/tractor/ https://www.opensourceecology.org/portfolio/tractor/

jonnydubowsky 5y ago
Thanks for sharing this. I remember checking it out a few years ago when Open Source Ecology first started doing their workshops. They've come a long way. I love how their system is designed to build modules to build machines to build more modules.

biorach 5y ago

There are plenty simple low-cost tractors on the market. However for large-scale agriculture where your tractor is pulling high-end machinery you need something very powerful and sophisticated. JD leads this market, and is a significant player in the mid-range also.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]