As the technology revolution continues in agriculture, autonomous equipment and fleet management are seen by many as an opportunity for growers to reduce labor demands and boost efficiency for their farm operation.

But adoption of this technology isn’t without its growing pains, as the machines, software and operational decision making must all work together.

Mike Lessiter, president of Lessiter Media, the parent company of Precision Farming Dealer, recently moderated an expert panel discussion entitled, “New Technology: Today, Tomorrow & Beyond,” at the Farm  Equipment Manufacturers Assn. (FEMA) Fall Convention in Addison, Texas. F EMA’s Tech Council selected four expert panelists for the discussion:

• Colin Hurd, CEO, Mach: described as an autonomy solutions provider who assists OEMs in all aspects of technology, perception, navigation, route planning, monitoring, and connectivity. Colin was the founder of SmartAg, the first retro-FRIT driverless tractor automation system, which was acquired by Raven and later CNH. 
• Chris Hunsaker, Co-Founder and CEO, AcutusAg: leads an ag software company engaged in improving the efficiencies of the world’s ag operations. Previously, Chris and his family owned and operated Double L Equipment Company — an implement company and FEMA member — which was sold to an investor group in 2021. 
• Daniel Rauchholz, Founder and President, Farmada: heads a manufacturer of ground-breaking farm implements. Offers global perspective, having previously served as international sales manager for Great Plains Manufacturing.
• Roger Murdock, Sales & Marketing Director, Montag Manufacturing: currently serving on FEMA board, his career spans many specialized ag equipment, OEMs, as well as the supply side of the business, where he was selling components and blades to other shortline manufacturers. 

Lessiter: Can you each speak to the idea that a tractor could be merely a power unit, and all the high tech and smart tech is on the implement itself? 

Hunsaker: There are a lot of possibilities, all driven by the idea that the know-how of the implements is in the heads of the users of the implements, and the people who made them, not the tractor guys. 

If you introduce autonomy into the equation — where you no longer have an operator, or the operator’s engagement with the implement is significantly reduced — the need for what the tractor is totally changes. It really does become just a power unit. 

In the past, the reason we’ve towed implements is because of the economics of the tractor. It was a platform that could be used across implements throughout the year to do different jobs. It made sense from a scalability perspective and it’s hard to justify creating a self-propelled implement, as there are economic limitations. 

When you remove the operator from the equation, all the math changes. You start talking about precision technology and how that happens. And now you start to look at a world where maybe the equipment’s not getting bigger anymore. Maybe it’s getting smaller.

If I have full autonomy in play, how am I bringing power to the equation to put the right implement in the field to do the job that I want it to do? In my experience, it changes every answer. I don’t think that’s far away if people can start to think about it a little bit differently. 

Hearing what others have done, they’ve proven that autonomy can be done in certain use cases. It doesn’t necessarily have to be full autonomy right away. You look for value you can deliver to the end customer — where you’re automating a function of a machine and making it work better — and see that somebody will purchase it, then you introduce it incrementally. 

The cost of the components and the equipment required to do that has come down dramatically in recent years and that will continue. That’s just how that works. It creates an interesting future where you can imagine what the equipment looks like in the field, and it looks very different. One of the biggest drivers is looking at this as an efficiency question for the farm.

Those who will lead the charge on these advancements are people like these panelists and their customers on the farm working together, not necessarily the tractor manufacturers. It needs to be evaluated, and we need to figure out ways to introduce automation into the system and create a different future.

Rauchholz: I think another area advancing fast is fleet management. In 2021, I was on a farm in Ukraine that bought one of our machines. They had 150,000 acres and a bunch of 20-something-year-olds in front of their computers and the boss sitting behind them. 

The boss could see all their screens and they had a fleet of all their machinery and we were behind him. 

We could go in and ask: ‘Where is the guy? What’s the seeding rate? How fast is he going?’ They could zoom in and see the hopper level. They could say ‘There’s the guy coming to refill,’ and the agronomist would set everything for them or tell them what rates to do. They knew exactly what they wanted to do. They had all the data, all the analytical tools, or people analyzing that for them. 

This whole idea of fleet management and tracking data so you can then make decisions will tie into that even more.

Murdock: Our frustration is the lack of control over what’s going on. Recently, I was out in the field with a unit that was put on one of the major manufacturers’ implement. We were hooked up to one of their new tractors, and we had the majors’ rep with me, and we couldn’t get them to communicate.

He called someone who beamed in through satellite and unlocked it, but we still couldn’t get everything to work. After a couple hours of software people talking to people at their factories, they found out the software division released the software but didn’t realize the wiring harnesses weren’t up to date with the software package. Technicians and staff weren’t up to date on what the software designers are doing. It seems like there’s a lack of communication. 

So what you’re all saying about automation and autonomous is great, but as a short-line manufacturer we still need the ability to communicate with other people’s stuff. If we could just figure out how to standardize that, it would be a lot easier for everyone.

Lessiter: How much effort does it take to get to where the implement is truly communicating back to and controlling the tractor?

Hurd: That’s the harder question to answer because it involves some level of collaboration with major OEMs that are building tractors today. I think that might get disrupted. 

There are a lot of companies spending a lot of time and energy trying to disrupt the tractor market. My colleagues at Mach attended the Ag Robotics show where there are some 15 different companies building fully autonomous platforms.

At some level, farms are going to help navigate that for manufacturers and advocate for, ‘Hey, I need this tool. It’s going to save me tons of time and money. You need to make sure that I can hook it up to your tractor or I’m going to go buy this other brand.’ I saw that happen with the grain cart situation because we were only compatible on a certain model of a tractor. 

There’s going to be something that happens here. I don’t know exactly what that will be, but being an implement manufacturer, having some control over what your machine is doing, and knowing you can tell some other system that you need input from what it’s doing is important. At this point, I don’t think it can be avoided if you want to participate in this world in the future.

Lessiter: Give us a glimpse into what you think is coming in the next 3 years with autonomy or semi-autonomous operations. 

Hurd: I think we’re way away from set-it-and-forget autonomy. I think that’s still 5-plus years out for many applications. There might be a few where if you’re in a huge field it works. We’re a lot closer to a single person being able to run 4 or 5 machines at the same time, or the combine operator managing the grain cart. 

That’s what is near-term, and I think you’ll see a lot of that coordinated fleets, multi-machine, in-field coordination with people on site still.

Hunsaker: Coming from the implement space in the past, when I look at autonomy — depending on what your implement is and how complicated it is, it might be difficult to fully automate everything that happens on that machine. But something could be introduced that makes it easier for the operator — so if you’re capturing the data from your machine and it’s used, that can inform and de-risk some of the creation of that automation.

On the future of a mixed fleet, depending on what your farm is and what you’re doing, you may have certain things that are autonomous and others that aren’t. There must be a management layer on top which allows all that to coexist in the same space. You’ll see platforms capable of doing that, and we’re working on that right now.

Rauchholz: I like to say ‘evolution’ instead of revolution. I think it goes step by step instead of a big rapid change. For me, it’s probably still going to be hybrid for quite a while.