Will The Farmer Become an Endangered Species?

Self-driving tractors: coming soon to your farm?

We’ve been reading a lot in the news about self-driving cars: Tesla, Google, BMW and other luxury car brands are all going that way, and yes, we’ve had our first few self-driving car crashes too! But how far are we from self-driving tractors? Wouldn’t it be great to send your tractor to work while you get a good night’s sleep? What are the implications for jobs in agriculture?

Concept stage tractor too clever by half?

The Land reports that a concept self-driving tractor has been unveiled in the US. But driving off-road isn’t the same as driving on roads, and tractors have their own operator challenges. Already, the self-driving tractor can account for implement widths, adjust its route based on terrain, and avoid obstacles by coming to a dead stop and sending its remote operator a notification.

The makers envision a single farmer being able to control a fleet of tractors remotely, using a simple tablet. Driverless tractors will even be able to monitor weather data, moving from wet fields to dry ones, or ceasing work when conditions are unfavourable. And who knows? Maybe they’ll be able to gather and act on other data soon too.

Adapt an existing tractor?

Of course, most of us can’t afford a whole new fleet of tractors, but the exciting thing is that you’ll likely be able to adapt existing tractors to driverless technology, at least that’s what experts said at the US demo of the driverless tractor. There’d probably have to be quite a few modifications, but then your tractor would be ready to work while you do something else.

What has this got to do with sheds?

Well, we’re wondering how long it will be before farmers are calling us up because their driverless tractors have flattened their sheds…

Ok. Kidding. Obstacle avoidance is pretty basic technology, and provided it works, we won’t have any flattened sheds out there. We just think this is a fascinating advance that could save farmers a lot of labour. Will it put them out of jobs? Surely not, but it will reduce the number of jobs available in agriculture. After all, why have a tractor driver when your tractor can drive itself?

Automation is inevitable

What will the farmers of the future look like? Will they go from being the sun-bronzed people of the land to sun starved homebodies who make a living pushing buttons? Are the farmers of today the tech geeks of tomorrow? Time will tell!

Already, high tech data is making farming more efficient, algorithms are being used to predict plant growth and radio frequency tags are used to monitor livestock. That’s just the tip of the iceberg!

What about a high tech shed?

It’s no joke. Soon, we’ll have to start designing sheds around all this new technology – and it’s likely to go beyond basics like automatic doors. We certainly live in interesting times, and you can be sure that we’ll be moving with them. Who said farming was low-tech?

The post Will The Farmer Become an Endangered Species? appeared first on ABC Sheds.