High tech farming has come into its own in the last decade. A blossoming of highly innovative agricultural technology has seen farmers go from a group of people who made the Luddites look progressive on technological change, to some of the more digitally connected people on the planet. But predictably, it’s not all milk and honey. Controversy has boiled over into the mainstream with the publication of a Wired article slamming the proprietary technology involved in high tech tractors.
Technology fail
Thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), some farmers now operate in a legal grey area where changing the engine timing on their own tractors potentially makes them a criminal:
“When [high tech tractors] break or need maintenance, farmers are dependent on dealers and manufacturer technicians—a hard pill to swallow for farmers, who have been maintaining their own equipment since the plow.”
“The cost and hassle of repairing modern tractors has soured a lot of farmers on computerized systems altogether… demand for newer tractors [is] falling. Tellingly, the price of and demand for older tractors (without all the digital bells and whistles) has picked up… “There’s an increasing number of farmers placing greater value on acquiring older simpler machines that don’t require a computer to fix.””
One way to work around proprietary systems is to go open source. Farm Hack is an online community of farmers, designers, developers, and engineers that build and modify their own tools, and share their hacks online and at meet ups.
Child’s play drones
That said, high tech tractors are a bit of an outlier; the majority of high tech ag equipment is relatively easy to maintain. Drones in particular are quite low maintenance, especially for the cost. Some of the top players in agricultural drones today include Oregon-based HoneyComb’s AgDrone, the carbon fiber and fiberglass AgEagle, Aerial Technology International offers custom multi-rotor drones, and Precision Hawk’s Lancaster is aimed at first time flyers. These companies offer rugged drones priced anywhere between $1,000 and $20,000.
Indestructochips
With no moving parts to go wrong, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips power today’s livestock ear tags, and are fairly bulletproof. They communicate with antennas placed on feeding troughs so you know when and how much your cattle are eating; changes in eating patterns can indicate something is wrong with a cow. RFID tags can cost as little as 50 cents or as much as $50 depending on the type of tag, the application, and the volume of your order.
Keep it simple
Automated grain bins are another piece of technology utilizing the Internet of Things to upgrade prosaic equipment few used to think about very much, and saving thousands of dollars in the process. Improperly stored grain is vulnerable to mold, insects, condensation and more (too much moisture leads to mold; too little causes grain to lose weight and value). Automated grain bins monitor bin temperatures, humidity and other factors that can cause damage, allowing them to, for example, sense an overnight dip in humidity and shut off the fan to avoid drying out grains, and turn it on again if temperatures and moisture levels call for it.
Given the obstacles to easily fixing high tech tractors, both because of the complexity of the equipment and software, and the proprietary code seemingly designed to force customers to pay top dollar to fix otherwise minor problems, many farmers are going back to simpler, pre-digital second hand tractors. No doubt market forces will eventually force a correction to this business model, but in the meantime, high tech tractors remain the preserve of the extremely well capitalized. For everyone else, technology such as RFID ear tags, automated grain bins and ag drones continue to boost productivity and ensure farmers’ fields are only fallow by choice—not because of technological failure.