YORKTON - One increasing barrier to farming is finding staff. The modern tractor, or combine, or sprayer is a technological marvel with amazing capacity to collect data and cover ground. Sit in a modern combine cab and it reminds more of a spaceship than the tractors of my youth.
Overlay that with the investment in a large piece of equipment, a four-wheel drive tractor or new combine will chew through near $1 million, and you need a highly skilled operator.
That translates into a situation of finding qualified operators and then affording those with the requisite skills is a challenge.
So producers must be watching the emergence of autonomous technology.
The idea of an operator-less tractor isn’t new, but as with any emerging technology gains are being made quickly. The autonomous tractor of five years ago will be a ‘Model T-equivalent’ to what rolls out a mere decade from now.
The ability of sensor technology to grow allowing for ever greater uses for autonomous units will open the door to broader on-farm usage.
Initially the greatest usage may come from high value, high intensive farms, such as those growing vegetables, but a tractor that can pull a cultivator over a field essentially 24-hours a day without an on-board operator has to intrigue big acre grain farmers.
Of course the autonomous units might also be powered by non-fossil fuels, which depending on one’s view will be an added bonus, or a waste of effort.
That said politically the push again from fossil fuels is real, so that will be an overlay of a ‘complimentary-technology’ on autonomous units.
Unless our world regresses – and you might create a doom and gloom vision out of a more virulent COVID-like bug, or the threat of a third world war with the likes of Vladimir Putin out there – farming will most certainly continue to become more technological.
Of course evolving tech has always been at the heart of farming – the horse to steam tractor to diesels to the autonomous electrics of today an obvious example.
New technology has always allowed farmers to cover more acres, raise better crops, deal more effectively with weeds and pests, and one should expect that will continue.
And one should expect the autonomous power unit – they will be more than a tractor – will be at the vanguard of the next generation of tech.
