John Deere's road to autonomy began decades ago. 'They're just looking to figure out how can they get more jobs done without a human in the seat.' Not reinventing the wheel John Deere views it as the simplest task to automate.įarmers 'are clamoring' for 'more and more and more,' said Deanna Kovar, vice president of production and precision ag production systems at John Deere. And with tillage, if something happens to go wrong with the self-driving tractor, a producer has time to fix the problem before spring planting. By automating the task of tillage, John Deere hopes to take away one responsibility from farmers' long lists of duties. Some farmers - pressed for time and lacking workers - skip that process, but that makes them more reliant on chemicals to help their crops grow. That may bother some farmers, many of whom are already irritated by John Deere's refusal to let them repair their own expensive tractors.Īt first, the new tractor system will only be able to till fields, which is the process of turning over the earth to return nutrients from recently harvested crops to the soil. Hindman said it would be 'significant' - as much as 10% of the total equipment cost, or as high as $50,000. John Deere will initially rent out tractors with the autonomous equipment already added, but it hadn't yet determined the price for adding the autonomous equipment when CNET met with the company.

A regular 8R tractor and the 2430 chisel plow will set a farmer back over $500,000. One ongoing criticism of John Deere's tractors is the price, and the new autonomous system won't come cheap.

In November, about 10,000 unionized workers ended a five-week strike that won them better pay and benefits. While John Deere may be popular, it also has faced its share of troubles.

John deere traktor video