I’m down in Louisville, Ky., this week for the Moving Iron Summit. This morning, Quint Pottinger, a no-tiller based here in Kentucky was part of a farmer panel discussion focused on the financial pressure on today’s producers. A lot of the questions posed to Pottinger had to do with the big steps he made in the last year as it related to autonomy.

Looking to slash equipment costs, Pottinger sold his two big-frame 8000-series John Deere tractors and two 40-foot 16-row planters and replaced them with a small 135-horsepower John Deere tractor and a 20-foot 8-row planter.

But the big kicker? He was going to start planting all his crops autonomously.

As Technology Editor Noah Newman wrote this summer, Pottinger bought a Sabanto autonomy kit, which retrofits to the 135-horsepower tractor. It includes antennas, a dual GNSS receiver, obstacle-detection sensors and video cameras.

Equipped with Sabanto, Panorama and Starlink, Pottinger became the first farmer in the Bluegrass State to plant his entire crop with a driverless tractor, joining fewer than 50 farms nationwide, according to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture.

Pottinger says by selling the equipment he was able to reinvest the money back into the community.

The Shift with Autonomy

The future is now, Pottinger says, and the swarm style operation we’ve been talking about for years — as autonomy and robotics have been advancing — is what he’s looking toward. While it’s not what dealers want to hear, he says, he plans on shifting to smaller equipment that can run autonomously 24/7 (or at least close to it). 

While that’s just one man’s opinion, if Pottinger is right and what he’s doing takes hold and is an example of what we will see in the future, is your business ready for it? Are you prepared to shift your business model to focus more on 100 horsepower tractors and less on high-horsepower row-crop equipment? 

Pottinger spent about $200,000 total on the small tractor, no-till planter and autonomy kit, significantly less than his old equipment setup, which came with an estimated price tag of $750,000.

What are you seeing from your customers in terms of a potential move to autonomy? Do you have customers who are ready to put all their chips in on autonomy like Pottinger did?

In talking to dealers after the presentation, a good question popped up. Not only is this going to impact your sales mix, but what is it going to mean for service? Are dealers going to need to have a tech available to go out in the field at 3 a.m. if there’s a problem? 

Pottinger will be speaking at the 2027 Precision Farming Dealer Summit, Jan. 11-12 in Indianapolis. He’ll be touching more on the moves he made, why he made them and the impact it's having on his operation.