Mach CEO Colin Hurd and Acuitus Ag CEO Chris Hunsaker spearheaded the first-ever “Technology Track” at the Farm Equipment Manufacturers Association (FEMA) Supply Summit and Showcase last month in Fort Myers, Fla., with the goal being to educate FEMA members about new and emerging technologies that have a direct impact on their products and services.

Industry leaders presented insights on AI, automation, the future of autonomy and more. Farm Equipment editor/publisher Mike Lessiter moderated a panel discussion to wrap up the action. The panelists included Rhett Schildroth, Mach CTO, Andreas Ganseforth, senior product manager at ANEDO, John Fulton, Ohio State University professor, Curtis Garner, Verdant Robotics COO, Jimmy Howell, business development manager at THG Automation and Hunsaker. Here are some highlights from the conversation.

What's your advice to shortline manufacturers and their engineering departments as it relates to emerging technology?

Hunsaker: What the existing implement manufacturers have that gives them an advantage over somebody who’s starting from scratch is all of their knowledge of what’s going on. If they can figure out a way to leverage that the way somebody who is forced to start from scratch would, then they’re getting the best of both worlds.

But that’s challenging. With an existing business, getting it to change the course is like trying to turn a battleship around in a bathtub. But your organization is different from, say, John Deere, where that challenge is 100 times worse. You’re nimbler just because of who you are and how you started. It’s actually part of you and it’s part of the customer, and the only shift you need to make is to be able to take that and rudder some of these other things to get a different outcome.

Don’t be afraid to think about the software first and then having hardware enhance what the software is doing. In terms of automation, it’s going to be software, and it doesn’t require hardware, but if you’re focused on the software and use that hardware to enhance it, that’s a better outcome. It’s lower cost and it’s faster.

Fulton: Where do we want to be in the next 5-10 years and where do we position ourselves? We’re at a point where in the next 5 years, the autonomous tractors are going to be commercially available. And it’s going to happen so fast. Then all of a sudden, you’re going to have end users thinking about, “Well, what can I connect to this tractor to take advantage of this technology?”

It’s going to give you an advantage if you’re thinking about the next 5-10 years. Some of your equipment sitting there today, would it work if we’re pulling it with autonomous tractors? Absolutely. But I don’t want to convince myself they can work for hours totally unsupervised. It’s still in a supervised phase, and if we’re going to take that next step, we’re going to need you to be part of that solution.

We’ve seen how fast the last 5 years have moved, and it has surprised many of us. What do you think is possible over the next 5 years, and what might be common 5 years from now?

Fulton: I think we’re within 5 years of autonomous tractors being more commercially available in North America. But in 5 years, we’ll be talking more about the automation around the automation. Take the drone business, for example. We still have to take the batteries out and fill the drones — it’s very clunky and not efficient. My point is, in 5 years we’re going to have automation here and we’re going to be talking about how we automate around the equipment that’s automated to make it most efficient for the farmers.

In the industry, about 15 years ago, there was a consensus that the future was bigger and bigger. Have you thought about how that applies to autonomy/automation?

Hunsaker: If we’re talking about it from a production standpoint, getting rid of backed processing, if you think about a big piece of equipment, it’s backed processed. If I have a $1 million combine that has a capacity of 300 acres per day but the probability of it going offline for a maintenance issue, compared to 10 smaller machines that have one-tenth the capacity, which is better?

Right now, the bigger machine is better because you have one operator, but if you get rid of the operator, the economics change. If I want to keep my uptime, having 10 smaller machines that do the same amount of work might be better. There’s also a whole host of reasons why that’s advantageous. Compaction alone is a big one because the equipment is so big and heavy, farmers are having trouble mitigating the compaction of the soil.

Schildroth: I don’t know if it’s going to be black and white though. If I have to put it (technology) on one piece of equipment instead of two, that’s cheaper. I don’t know if it’s going to be all a master build. It’s at least a start. You’ll still see the big stuff you’ve always needed and many of you will start to see some mid-sized stuff as well. But the really tiny stuff, we haven’t seen that work really well. There’s still some physics to consider — you need so much downforce to be able to get through the field.

It's a tough time for the entire industry, but the ag tech money is going to come eventually. If a shortline manufacturer chooses to sit on their hands because of tough times or not knowing where to go, what do you think about them being left in the dust with a startup coming in and taking what could’ve rightfully been the shortline’s space?

Garner: You’ve seen it over the last few weeks, a couple ag tech companies have died. You’re going to separate the wheat from the chaff here pretty quickly. The people who are doing well are going to be separated from those who aren’t because funding isn’t available right now. It’s dried up significantly. But there’s going to be a fresh new batch of companies that get funded later this year or a year from now and there’s going to be some good technology. I think you’ll see other folks say, “Oh, that company failed but I kind of know why it failed. Let me remake that and learn lessons from their mistakes.”

Hunsaker: There are divergent paths here that you guys have a lot of control over which path we go down, where the tractor in its current form becomes a commodity. It’s just a power element. I think the big guys will use it to their advantage and go home and figure some of this stuff out because there’s going to be a divergence where the technology meets at some point. There’s a window of opportunity that’s open right now and it won’t be open forever because there’s too much inertia inside those big companies to not try and solve the problem to their advantage. That’s a pretty stark challenge to have to deal with as an implement manufacturer. But I think the good news is you have everything you need to steer the outcome in a different direction.