How John Deere Plans to Build a World of Fully Autonomous Farming by 2030
4th October 2022
The autonomous 8R is the culmination of Deere’s nearly two decades of strategic planning and investment in automation, data analytics, GPS guidance, internet-of-things connectivity and software engineering. While a good deal of that R&D has been homegrown, the company also has been on a spree of acquisitions and partnerships with agtech startups, harvesting know-how as well as talent.
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For the time being, Deere is creating value and profits with well-established automated systems that can be retrofitted to its existing tractors, such as GPS-based self-steering and precision seeding that measures how deep and far apart to plant. Those steps have to be in place, Volkmann said, before you can put full autonomy around them.
UPDATE: John Deere Just Swindled Farmers out of Their Right to Repair