What Happened To The Autonomous Promise? | The Granary

00:00 Why has the promise of autonomous farm machinery not delivered, or has it? That's what we're digging into in this awesome episode of The 00:00:07 Granary. You ready for a conversation with some real farmers about real issues? The best part, you're invited. So pour yourself a drink, 00:00:17 grab a snack, most importantly, pull up a chair. Welcome to The Granary. Hey, guys. 00:00:32 Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of The Granary. I've got my farmer friends, Texas Todd Kimbrell, Arkansas Matt 00:00:38 Miles, and Iowa Kelly Garrett, XtremeAg guys, and they are digging into this topic that I said I really want to get into this. 00:00:45 In 2014, I worked at the Farm Science Review in Ohio. It's basically like a smaller Farm Progress show, and I was excited because I was there working for a seed company, and the one thing 00:00:57 that was going to happen at the Farm Science Review, Case IH was going to debut their autonomous tractor, and I was so excited, 00:01:04 geeked out about this, and I'm not a high-tech guy. And I got there, and it looked like they just took a big four-wheel drive, modern, not quite the Magnum, whatever the next series of Case IH 00:01:14 tractors is, and took a blowtorch and cut the cab off, and it drove around a circle, and they said, "That's it." I was so underwhelmed. 00:01:21 I thought, "Holy s**t. We're never going to have autonomous tractors if this is what they're showing us." And then I saw another one from the other company, the 00:01:28 green company. I'm like, "This is kind of underwhelming, guys." That was more than 10 years ago. Here we are. We are recording this in the spring of 2026, and 00:01:36 I'm going to throw it out there. If you ask me, it looks to me like we do not have autonomous machinery. Well, I know you can say, "Oh, well, we got some stuff that 00:01:44 steers itself." Come on. It was 2014, 2015, and we were told, "Oh, this is going to be in all the fields here in another decade or so." We're a 00:01:50 decade or so, and it ain't happening. I think one big reason is the technology's still not there, and I think that also, there's the cost. I'll throw this one last thought at you. 00:02:00 Purdue University, a guy that I had on one of my calls said, "I've got some studies that say labor needs to be more than $150 per hour before you can justify the 00:02:11 expense of autonomous." So is it technology not there? Is it price? Is it price versus labor? Or are you going to tell me, "No, autonomous is there"? 00:02:20 I don't think that it is, and I'm not sure we're going to get there anytime soon. Kelly? 00:02:23 I think it's just like the other episode of The Granary we shot earlier today. It comes down to cost. We're talking about greater nutrient use efficiency and 00:02:31 things like that because of the costs that we're incurring, and margins are tight, and now you're talking about $150 an hour 00:02:39 labor to equal the autonomy cost. It's not going to get adopted. Matt? 00:02:43 Well, yeah, and that's the deal. Every time we get something cool, whether it's a seed technology- 00:02:50 Yep ... we got ThryvOn in cotton to help with plant bugs. Well, they just went up what a plant bug spraying was. Anytime we get anything, we got to seed and spray. 00:03:01 Well, the cost of the seed and spray application subscription is as much as the chemical was. 00:03:06 Yeah. Yes, we're not putting the chemical out, but- Your point there is the seed was supposed to make it so you didn't have to use this chemical, but if it's the same cost, then what the hell difference does it make? 00:03:14 Okay, maybe I saved a step. Maybe I got some convenience. The issue with seed and spray. Yeah, you're going to use less herbicides. 00:03:21 It's only going to spray when it sees a weed. Well, that's cool, but the cost of technology versus glyphosate or whatever it should be, 2,4-D, or name the 00:03:29 chemistry, it doesn't wash unless it's convenience. And then I was saying, "I don't see autonomous machines being out here." We've been hearing this for a while. 00:03:38 I think it's at least a decade away. But then our old buddy Texas Todd Kimbrell, proving that he is a progressive farmer, has got 00:03:48 autonomous tractors ordered. Yeah, we're supposed to pick them up this month, but I would like to tell the story about, I think it was two or three years ago, I was running a bedder, pulling up 00:03:58 rows for my cotton ground. Only I would understand that, probably. Well, I was doing tillage. 00:04:05 Okay. And I was actually running the tractor that day, and so I was messing with the turn automation. 00:04:11 After messing with a few settings for about 20 minutes, I figured out how to make this thing drive itself. Next thing I know, I've done a 200-acre field, 00:04:18 and the only thing in that tractor that I touched was the radio. Not the steering wheel, not anything, not raising the three-point up on the 00:04:25 end. I didn't touch anything. So were you comfortable enough after 200 acres that you were going to say, "Hey, Lindsay, I'm coming home for lunch. 00:04:32 This tractor's going to take care of it from now until midnight by itself," or did you stay in there because you still don't quite trust it? 00:04:38 Well, that did not have autonomy, so it didn't have all the fail-safe parameter stuff on it. So it didn't. But it immediately got my wheels turning. 00:04:46 I picked up the phone that day, and I called my Deere dealer, and I said, "Hey, what about autonomy? What's going on?" And he said, "Well, funny you say that. 00:04:53 We've got some machines coming through. That didn't pan out. We didn't get to run them, so we're actually going to try two this time." 00:05:01 How's it going to work? I can't say yet, but I'm telling you, I sat in the tractor and watched it do everything. And I'm not talking about a perfectly square 00:05:09 field. I'm talking about a field that had point rows. Yeah. And at the end of that thing, I was like, "I don't really believe what 00:05:17 I'm watching here. This is real. This can happen." Now, there's all this stuff on the exterior, like if a person walks out 00:05:25 or a pickup drives in front, all that, but from what I'm told, they've got that refined pretty well. 00:05:32 I don't know the exact cost of the autonomy subscriptions yet, but the way I view it, I could have one guy in one and one guy in the autonomy. 00:05:42 He could be watching that tractor. Or if we're in a big field, and say he's a quarter of the way done, he can hit the button and let that thing finish through the night. 00:05:53 Or maybe he needs to run to lunch. You're a little younger than me. There was a movie that came out on the ABC Sunday night movie when I was a little kid, and it was called Killdozer, where a tractor 00:06:01 with a bulldozer blade- Oh, boy ... had a mind of its own and came and started killing people. So I'm still not quite there 00:06:07 Did we ever think AI would work like it's working? No. I think the biggest mistake I make, and you've heard me say this before, the biggest mistake I've made is I will tell my 00:06:18 son, "That won't work. That's not going to happen. There's no way they can do that." We have an episode of this show called "Proving That Won't Work Here Wrong," and 00:06:26 when we say that won't work here, that's actually slang for Matt Miles. And every time, it kicks me in the a*s. 00:06:32 So, I'm definitely not going to say it ain't going to work. We started working with the turn automation on the X9 we rented last year. 00:06:38 Mm-hmm. And all he's got to do is pick the header up. Okay, so that's not true autonomous, because autonomous is supposed to be- A hybrid 00:06:44 ... yeah, that it goes out and does it on its own, and we used to have auto steer. Geez, what, 20 years ago we had auto steer? 00:06:49 So you pulled up a thing on Grok, and I want to get into this, because we are tech people, and we do use AI because we're keeping up with what's going on in 00:06:57 agriculture. And I said, "Well, go ahead and just ask..." Or our producer said, "Will," I asked you, he said, "Well, ask Grok or whichever AI 00:07:04 search you use, 'Why has autonomous farm machinery not caught on?'" Because it's my assertion 00:07:10 you are in the absolute half a percent. I'm not seeing it, and I've been here my-- I went to a field day for a company called Dot clear back in the year 2018 down in Maricopa, 00:07:20 Arizona. Same deal. Hey, this is coming. Sprayer, planting, all that. Eight years later, I'm not seeing it. 00:07:29 Number one is economics, the high cost, which we talked about. Number two is technical reliability and versatility 00:07:36 limitations, which you feel like, at least what you have seen and what you've seen in your X9- 00:07:42 Yeah ... the reliability and versatility has been there while you're sitting in the seat anyway. 00:07:46 Yeah. Mm-hmm. So, I don't- So that one may be less. Economics is pretty glaring. The versatile and the, what was the other part of that? 00:07:55 The practicality. Practicality. Yeah, like being able to do four rows. Getting out of the seat is about putting your crop on a liquid diet to most 00:08:01 farmers, though. Getting out of the seat? Oh yeah, because then it's, "What do I do?" Right. Well, you're scared to death something's going to happen, number one. 00:08:09 Yeah. Number three is regulations and liability concerns, and it talks about some outdated rules of letting a machine go by itself in certain 00:08:18 areas. It references California here, things like that. Does it say anything about that movie "Killdozer?" I haven't got to that yet. 00:08:25 Okay. I haven't got to it. Maybe that's number five. Farmer trust skills and infrastructure gaps. There's what I'm talking about. 00:08:31 Yeah. Many farmers are risk averse with high stakes operations where a failure during a narrow planting or harvest season can ruin a season. 00:08:38 And that, I think that's how we all feel. Well, yeah, if it's out there going, they say, "Oh, it can go all night," and you can't, you need to go to bed, great. 00:08:46 It drove all night with the planter was actually not putting seed in the ground. But my inputs are, it put everything out but the seeds. 00:08:56 So all my inputs are out there. Now I've got to redo 400 acres, 00:09:01 because it didn't put inputs- No, it'll stop. You would have arms. You'd have arms going off. I can see right today if my planter's run, not autonomously, but I can tell if 00:09:10 a planter is missing a row. So that'll be easy. In our no-till, what if a root ball gets into a row cleaner? Cameras. They actually have cameras to prove. 00:09:19 I saw it the other day. It's crazy. Okay. Does the camera tell the machine to stop, or is the camera so that you have to tell it to stop? 00:09:25 No, it's a- Because then you're looking at your phone the whole time, worried. It's like looking at Blink on my- 00:09:29 It tells it to stop. It can see. It's actually watching everything turning. I'm told if you have a bearing go out that you might not 00:09:37 be able to see, it'll see it and stop. It'll see it and stop. Yeah. 00:09:40 Because it'll know it. That's right. It might know it from a draw or a- Right 00:09:43 ... fill in the draft. Yeah. But to have all those cameras goes the $160 an hour employee. Right. 00:09:49 Well, I tell you what, sometimes the way an operator goes, I don't know if they stop in time either. 00:09:55 Oh, you're right about that. Labor dynamics aren't uniform. H-2A workers, things like that. Autonomy is more appealing where labor is truly 00:10:03 unavailable or prohibitively expensive. And with the war and some of the H-2A limitations and stuff like that, if they had shut down our H-2A program, we might be in 00:10:13 trouble. They'd be getting on board pretty quick. Well, and obviously this has been the story for a long, long time. The old fable, John Henry versus the steam shovel to dig through a mountain. 00:10:20 Well, why did a specialty crop go to Peru and leave California? Well, because it takes $26 an hour to hire someone to come out and weed the broccoli in California, and you can get that done for $2.60 an 00:10:32 hour. I don't know. I don't operate in Peru, but it's an ungodly, drastic discount in 00:10:38 labor rates. But that means if it's going to work anywhere, it should work here. Autonomous machines, if they're going to work anywhere, should work in the United 00:10:44 States, Canada, and Europe. Because of the cost of labor. Well, that's what it... I would look at it, I would like for it to 00:10:50 maybe take one guy and turn him into 1.5 guys. Or two. Or, of course, I would love that, but I think realistically- Like you talk about, if you had two tillage machines- 00:11:00 Right ... with one guy in the same field. Right. I could real-- That's how it'll start. I remember- 00:11:04 So one keeps an eye on the other. Yeah. I remember when we started with auto steer, and first, it would only go in a straight line. Well, that did not work for us going 00:11:12 around with our contours and stuff on our hills, and I'm like, "That'll never get here. It's just going to go in a straight line." Because I could 00:11:20 never dream that it could be where it's at today. And that's- Curve track changed your life, didn't it? 00:11:23 Yeah. Curve track changed. And now we don't have markers on our planters. Yeah. 00:11:27 And so first, I started adopting the auto steer because I felt like it was driving every bit as well as I was, and there's still farmers, "Oh, I can drive better." Well, why would you want to? 00:11:37 Yeah. You know what I mean? And the way the auto steer works now, so it'll come, but all of the technology we're using today, I would've never thought we used. 00:11:44 So you think the technology is there, it's going to be the cost? Right now, it's the cost. 00:11:48 And adoption. But- And adoption ... yeah, the adoption. Like, "That will never work here. Why would you need it?" Things like that. 00:11:53 Lane will do it eight years before he would, or more, and that's the nature of an older farmer base. The average farmer is 00:12:00 60 years old, all that kind of stuff age-wise. In about '03 is when we got the first corn head with header height control. And other farmers had them, but my dad at that 00:12:11 time was running, he said, "We don't need that." We don't need that. That's just a luxury. We don't need to pay for that. 00:12:16 Then we traded, and it's when we went from 38-inch rows to 30-inch rows, and the head came with it on it, and then about a week into it, 00:12:24 that quit, the header height. Something broke on the sensor, and all of a sudden- It was a fake 00:12:28 ... I come back with the truck, and he's shut down. I said, "Well, why are you shut down?" He said, "Well, the header height control broke." I said, "Well, two weeks ago, you said we didn't need it." 00:12:34 You said we didn't need it. It's a luxury we don't need. "And now we need it." He said, "Well, just, it needs to be fixed." He didn't want 00:12:37 to talk about it, but it needed to be fixed. And that's the way those things are. It starts as a luxury, and it becomes a need. 00:12:42 That, yeah, look at your car. That's the way I felt with- Yeah. Yeah 00:12:45 ... yield monitors. Yeah. When we first had yield monitors, if we was running three machines and one yield monitor broke down, I didn't care. Keep cutting. 00:12:52 Hmm. Yeah. And then I would go trying to look at the yield maps to make decisions the end of the year, and I'd be like, "Lane, what'd you mess up?" "Well, you- 00:13:00 You said we didn't need it ... kept me running. Keep running." You said that in one of the first Cutting the Curve episodes, podcast we did 00:13:05 when I joined these guys, because you said, "I thought that combine can still go. We don't need to yield monitor." Well, when it comes to then 00:13:12 decision-making on that field or on that crop next year- You need that data 00:13:16 ... data, you need. So anyway, what are you excited about with this autonomous machine that you're getting? The paycheck, I mean, I'm sorry, the bill? 00:13:23 Yeah. You're pretty excited about that? Yeah, I'm excited about that. Can you tell us how much you're spending? 00:13:27 I really don't know yet. I don't know what the autonomy portion of it is going to actually cost yet. That I've yet to been told exactly. 00:13:34 How big are these? Are they- They're, they're- ... matching tractors? Yeah, they're John Deere 8R 410s on wheels. 00:13:40 Okay, so it's a- So a regular tractor with a seat and a steering wheel- Yeah 00:13:44 ... with the autonomy- Yeah. Yeah. Right ... operation to go. And what's that, a 350 horsepower tractor or what? 00:13:48 I don't- 410. 410. 410 horsepower tractor. Okay. So, you're excited about it, and you're going to go full tilt, and now it's a matter of they're going to have a tech come out and tell us how the 00:14:00 embrace of this is going to work. Tech comes out and spends an hour with you? Not sure yet. I know a lot of it works on your phone. 00:14:06 I've watched a little bit on that, but yeah. I can just think of so many scenarios. If we're in a field and I need to meet with the fertilizer guy, 00:14:17 chemical guy, whatever it may be, I need to go check something. I've got this thing set up. I'm going to let it go until I get back. 00:14:25 There's so many scenarios to make you a little bit more efficient, I think. That's how it'll start. 00:14:29 Now, I don't know dollars. I can't tell you that today because I don't know. I don't know how it's going to work out. 00:14:34 So you didn't make this decision based purely on an economic analysis. You just said, "I think this is where we need to go." 00:14:39 Yeah. It's more of a trial type basis, right? It's sort of a trial. My dealer really wants to get some pushed out, and since I 00:14:47 reached out to them about it in my interest, they really want me to try it. So, we're excited. 00:14:53 Terrain's going to make a difference. You go to your bottom farm- Yeah 00:14:55 ... I can see it working there. You go to Kevin Matthews', eight acre fields, and then you move down to four lane to the next eight acre 00:15:02 field. So it's going to fit some farmers. It's not going to be a one size fits all. Well, it was going to be that autonomy would run the grain 00:15:10 cart, because that was easy. It just sort of almost had like a magnet, I imagine- 00:15:15 Yeah ... a magnet via technology that kept it next to the combine until you then pushed it and send to semi, and then it goes to the semi and dumps all that. 00:15:22 Goes to the gate, home waits, and the trucker has to dump himself. So that all made sense to me. I can see it. 00:15:28 I see it in massive fields in, say, the Prairie provinces much more than, yeah, to some area where you have two or three patches. 00:15:35 Rock talked about larger corn and soy operations in the Midwest or the small grains in 00:15:40 Canada. Yeah, likely. But yeah, some of my little fields, it probably... Because are you going to have to put the end rows in yourself- 00:15:46 So, I will- ... and then come back? No, I was going to talk about that. You actually have to do a driven boundary with the same accuracy, so it 00:15:55 requires SF-RTK. So you'll actually have to do a driven boundary, like with a Gator or the tractor. But once you get all those 00:16:02 set, then those boundaries are- Repeatable ... set, yeah, repeatable. The tractor's not going to go outside that boundary. 00:16:08 Correct. And any interior boundaries, so telephone poles. Everybody brings up telephone poles or gas pipe. 00:16:15 Anything, any obstacle in the field. Yeah, standpipe. Tiles- Yeah. 00:16:19 Tile standpipe, terraces. All that stuff. You'll have to have that mapped out. Can you imagine watching it with the planter the first time it was going to go by a 00:16:26 light pole? You'd be like, "Ah!" Because it's going to go by probably seven each. I get a little anxiety just thinking about my planter going through there. 00:16:35 Well, I'll tell you, I'm joking here. I'm joking here about this. Well, you know there's the movie Christine from the '80s where a car took over and had its own personality, and 00:16:44 it killed people also. Are you quite a sci-fi fan or something? So in my neighborhood, in my Arizona neighborhood where you guys have been, 00:16:52 there are these cars, Waymos, that are driverless cars. It's like Uber, but there ain't no driver, and they've got mirrors and cameras all over the place. They stage right down the street from me, so I'm out walking my 00:17:03 dogs in the morning, and they stage there until they're going to get picked them up. Seen three at a time sitting there. It bothers you a little bit. 00:17:11 Then it was driving by me when I was walking my dogs. I'm thinking, I'm scared. It slowed, saw me, moved, et cetera. 00:17:19 So, it's technology obviously coming. I have a funny story about that. I actually rode in one of those with my John Deere dealer of all people. 00:17:28 Yeah. And we were completely amazed. It was in Austin, Texas, and we were going through downtown, tiny street. 00:17:35 I was a little bit nervous. So sure enough, tiny street, someone flung their door open that was parked- Yeah 00:17:41 ... on their side of the road, and I thought, well- Yeah ... this is... The thing slowed down, moved over real slow, went 00:17:47 right by, then it took back off. I just, I couldn't believe it. Well, first off, you got two questions there. 00:17:52 Is this more unsafe to be in a Waymo that drives itself than hopping in the back of a cab with a guy from a third world country who's also just smoked a 00:18:00 bowl of weed? It's not that different. And secondly, where's- I've been in some cabs in Vegas where I felt like maybe autonomous would be safer. 00:18:08 Yeah. Yeah, there's no question. I agree. There's no question. Well, then if you think- 00:18:11 My first trip to Hershey, Pennsylvania, by the way, people said, "Oh, you did a gig in Hershey, Pennsylvania? I heard the whole town smells like chocolate. 00:18:17 Is that true?" I said, "I don't know, but the back of the cab smells like body odor and weed." I can tell you that. But- 00:18:22 Well, if they can navigate cities- Yeah Surely we can navigate a- So that's the second part I was going to say. Which one's more dangerous? 00:18:29 Downtown Austin, outside of a convention, some woman hops out of a car and it didn't hit her, it didn't take the door off. 00:18:41 Or out here in rural America, doing a sprayer application or something? Sprayer. I mean that- 00:18:52 What's the first thing you see autonomized? Tillage. Tillage. Yeah, tillage would be first. Then grain cart. 00:18:59 Well, grain, yeah. Grain carts are already- Kind of are. We use the Machine Sync. We use that a lot. Yeah, the Machine Sync to fill it. 00:19:06 But you don't have to drive itself to the truck. Yeah. That's different. Yeah. I would think, 00:19:12 maybe not because of the magnet thing, but if you put the boundary around the field, and then you just tell it to go back and forth and basically paint the whole 00:19:17 field then, that seems to me to be an easier thing to program than to drive from the truck to a random spot in the field where the combine is, but maybe 00:19:24 not. So it seems to me that the tillage would come first and then the grain cart. Well, so the thing is, it doesn't seem that hard. 00:19:31 I just don't know still why the hell we're not there. This is year 2026. I heard this was coming 11 years ago, 12 years ago. 00:19:36 Well, how long have the autonomous cars been out? Have they been out that long? No. 00:19:41 No. But they've made bigger headway faster. Cost and regulation and fear. You said you were scared when they drove by you. Yeah. 00:19:48 I- But they're- Are you going to be the lawmaker that's going to sign it into law that it's okay? Well, I don't know. They're driving in a metroplex of 5.1 million and 00:19:56 obviously, I know a gal that takes Waymo all the time. She said, "I like it because I don't feel like I have to talk to the Uber driver." It's actually very smooth. Like, the way it drives. 00:20:06 I refuse to get in one in San Francisco, so I'm not getting in that. I haven't gotten in one yet either. I'm a little scared. 00:20:11 So we said what's coming next. Tillage. Okay, that's great. But again, on a cost standpoint, we might have just gotten to where we still 00:20:18 are... It's a neat, cute luxury, but also, it's cheaper just to put somebody in the tractor. 00:20:22 Yeah, it's going to have to be feasible at some point. When does that line cross, right? I don't know. And I don't know the numbers yet. 00:20:28 It's one of those things I'm going to have to run to see. $8 corn, $15 beans. That's when it'll happen. 00:20:33 Well, but then labor rates obviously is what we're talking about. Yeah. 00:20:35 That's the real number is the labor rate. Yeah. And we don't know any of that. Where do you see things going? Because obviously, we're now to the point where we use drones. 00:20:42 That's not autonomous. You still have to do this. Do drones become autonomous? Do you get to where you just say, 00:20:49 like on screen, "Spray herbicide on the Heiner field?" It's a little bit of a gray area. The drone is autonomous now because you're going to program out plants a field, just like you got to 00:21:03 drive around, just like you got to go field the boundary in with the tractor. And you could, like we talked about this before, the drone 00:21:11 operator still has to put the foliar in. It's just not a very big tank. You're still going to have to go fill the tractor with fuel. 00:21:18 It's true. After that point, we made that point earlier, the drone really is as autonomous as the tractor is. It just doesn't have as big a tank. 00:21:26 So how long until you just are hanging out and all your farming happened by you're on your phone, you're driving around. 00:21:32 You run around checking on robots. I don't think it's going to be that quick. It's just going to be very situational for now, in my opinion. 00:21:41 Like I said, all those situations I talked about, honestly, I think that's going to shine pretty good. I really think I'm going to come back and say, "You know what? 00:21:50 This was a good idea." But we'll see. I don't know. What if Todd is sitting on the road in his mobile office, in his pickup, conducting some sort of business, buying or selling grain, 00:22:01 and there's four tractors spread out around him in two, three, four different fields all doing the tillage, and he's managing all four of them. 00:22:06 They made a commercial like that one time. I think it was a Deere made the commercial, where the guy got up in the morning with his coffee and sat down. 00:22:12 Yeah. Yeah. And he's moving screens around and doing all that kind of stuff. Yeah, they did. 00:22:15 Until you p**s them off and they attack you. I've seen this stuff in the movies. It's real. All right. What happens first? 00:22:21 Terminator? What happens first? Labor rates in places like California and Florida and part of Texas, because do we have robots out doing the work in a cauliflower 00:22:33 field, or do we have a tractor that's doing more of the work in your part of the field? Tell me the timeline. 00:22:39 Which one's... Oh, timeline for either one of those? Well, we're talking about back-breaking labor versus sitting in a car. 00:22:46 Which one would I want roboticized first? 100%, though. Bending over and cutting cauliflower heads. Yes. 00:22:52 Yes. And I've seen- But sitting in a tractor with air conditioning and an otter steer is pretty damn easy. 00:22:55 I've seen some articles about where they're working on that. I actually think that the one that's the biggest impetus is probably the 00:23:02 robots to take care of cauliflower. I just keep using cauliflower because it's my favorite vegetable. But versus putting somebody in that tractor seat. 00:23:10 I can find people to sit in tractor seats a hell of a lot easier than you can find somebody to go out and do 12-hour days of cutting cauliflower. 00:23:15 And there's another thing coming, too. I know you've all seen it. The robot weeders. 00:23:19 Yeah. To take the weeds out by mechan- Well, they have mowers now, lawn mowers now. But the weeding thing, that has a lot of merit, in my opinion. 00:23:27 I think that- You're not using as much chemical ... right. That's going to catch on, I believe. That would catch on from a sustainability side. 00:23:33 Exactly. Because if you could plant a field and never use a herbicide at all. Well, there's another angle on that also. 00:23:39 The compaction, so you're not beating the hell- Yes. Yeah ... because it can go 24 hours a day with the exception of refuel, re-battery, 00:23:44 right? Right. So you're not using a piece of equipment that weighs 20 tons that's backing the hell out of your soil. You've got the environmental angle. 00:23:51 You're not using harsh herbicides, et cetera. So that one- They're just slow. They're going to be slow. 00:23:56 Like those mowers they have- Well, they have one that works 24 hours a day because- Yeah 00:23:59 ... they move along like that. The mowers they've got now that are autonomous, what do they mow, a half acre a day? 00:24:05 Yeah. Something like that. Maybe a quarter acre a day. So, I mean, a weeder. I looked, we was at RealCrop Exchange, and I looked at a robot they had there. 00:24:13 And it basically scouted your field, plus it had a seed and spray on it. But it would take at least one of those for every... And it filled up itself. 00:24:21 So it went and docked at the tote and took one tote off, put the other tote on. The problem is, we'd have to have 40 or 50 of 00:24:29 them- To do any good, unless you had 60 a- In vegetables that'd work a lot better because you get smaller acreage. Well, I mean, we keep going back to we all see this happening, but it's been a 00:24:38 while coming promised to us, and it hadn't happened. Waymos are driving drunk kids home from the bars in Scottsdale, Arizona, and we still haven't got a tractor that can just go out and drive around and field 00:24:48 cultivate. I would've loved- We do. We just haven't adopted it yet. I would've loved for someone to tell my dad- 00:24:54 Mm. Mm ... when he was on a two-row picker, that they would eventually have a cotton picker that made its own round bale- 00:25:01 Mm-hmm ... and it set it on the ground. Mm-hmm. And see what his reply was to that, because that all came true. Mm-hmm. 00:25:08 And so- It did ... this is coming. It's going to come. It may be Lane's lifetime, not mine. Yeah, because it used to be the cotton picker only did two rows as opposed to eight 00:25:15 or 10 or whatever yours did. Well, then we had a module builder, then we had a round bale. Then you take it somewhere and dump the load, and then it got com... Yeah, right. 00:25:22 I'm excited for it. I just wish it was happening faster. I'm a little disappointed, frankly. 00:25:25 I think that we looked like we were at the front end. Now we look like a laggard. Well, think about it. I mean, just sitting here thinking, I've seen, I think it's 00:25:32 AgCo that has a one-row autonomous planter, battery. Then you add the weeders, and you spray it with a drone. You could near... I mean, not completely. You could get a lot of field work done without putting a 00:25:43 tractor or sprayer in there. Now think about how that would work. Well, then the next question is, is this the savior for a smaller 00:25:50 operator if we finally get it? I think it could be. Too expensive. I'm a smaller operator. Okay, smaller or not 00:25:56 smaller, meaning- I disagree. I disagree because I have a friend that's a smaller operator. He's looking at going to drones to replace his sprayer, and I think that'll be the 00:26:04 trend. So in other words, maybe autonomous equipment is little, and it's more affordable because it becomes little, and it takes a bigger, 00:26:13 lesser footprint. I think I- If it's down the road, that's the other one. These damn machines right now, you can't get down the road with a combine without 00:26:20 almost- Yeah ... hitting people. And what do you do down the road? Does it drive itself to the next field, or do you know that yet? 00:26:25 No, you'd definitely have to drive it down the road. That's definitely not autonomous, and I don't think it will be. Reason why I was asking is the taxis, but I guess the width, height, all those- 00:26:35 Yeah ... restrictions come into play. Yeah. Do your tractors smell like body odor and weed? I hope not. 00:26:40 I've had some that have before, I promise you. Right. I'm kind of eight-balling them. Anything else out of Grok got you thinking right there? 00:26:47 Because I think that we're going to get there, but I'm not impressed by the pace. I'm just not impressed by the pace at all. 00:26:51 No. I see the stuff. I get excited about it. But I don't think the pace is because of the technology. The pace is because of adoption and cost. 00:26:56 I think, and it's probably true. Yes, and the higher value crops. When we talk about a smaller acre farmer, the higher value crops. We're talking about trying to put in some sweet corn to 00:27:05 be commercial going into the city and Omaha, things like that. Or 00:27:09 Will and I, we were in Illinois yesterday. We stopped at a vegetable farm. Mm. 00:27:13 And they're talking about growing bell peppers and things like that. And all of the picking, all the harvesting is by 00:27:20 hand. And the autonomy, they're coming somehow. I could see that before- Yeah, that's where I, and I don't- 00:27:25 Like you talked about at your farm ... I can either agree with Matt or disagree with Matt because I'm not sure. When I said, does the autonomous, especially if equipment gets smaller, 00:27:34 bode better for a smaller operator than... Well- Well, let's say vegetable growers. Yeah, I got... Well, also- 00:27:39 Right ... look at milk. There's a lot of dairies that are smaller scale dairies that put in robotic units that 00:27:46 isn't happening at the 10,000 cow dairies. It's happening maybe at the 2 or 300 cow dairies, and it's kept them competitive. And then they can just not have a bunch of employees and then say, "We don't have 00:27:55 to do the milking. We just now breed the cows, treat the cows, do this, this, this, and this." So. 00:27:59 What hung me up on that's the 160 an hour, 40 or whatever it was. Yeah, right. Yeah. 00:28:03 That's going to... For it to work. Yeah. You know? But you said... I relate it to the drones. I hate to keep going back. How long have these drones been spraying? 00:28:15 Three years. Three years, four years. Yeah, and so three or four years ago, there was a lot of people apprehensive. 00:28:21 No way that'll work. Yeah, no way that'll- My staple. No way that'll work. Now I've got a friend that's talking about replacing his older Deere sprayer, so why would I do that when I can buy this drone and do it all with 00:28:31 one man? Now I don't need a guy hauling to me. Right. I can do it all. So you can be a smaller operator without hired help, and then 00:28:37 utilizing technology, especially if it stays smaller. That's the thing. Mm. 00:28:41 And I think the impetus for it to stay smaller is this equipment is so large to go down the highway, and you're like, "You mean a combine that's like one of them 00:28:48 combines from the '60s where it's only this wide?" I'm like, "Maybe," because you have a dozen of them. 00:28:52 Yeah. Well, the co-op owns a dozen of them- Mm-hmm ... and you just rent them like a rental car, and the smaller operator owns one. Maybe that's it. 00:28:59 Well, the drone, though, it still doesn't have the quality sprayer that a sprayer has. I agree. 00:29:05 And that's what they've got to perfect. Completely agree. Yeah. 00:29:07 Once they get that perfected- Mm ... then they get a bigger tank. It's a quality job. 00:29:11 Well, like we were yesterday- Completely agree ... we roll up at a stoplight, and Todd said, "Well, there's one of those Walmart drones." I said, "What?" 00:29:19 And there was a, looked like a mini airplane. It was just flying across. And he said, "Walmart's right over there." We drove over there, and that sucker was 00:29:26 just landing right there delivering packages. Or picking up packages. In the middle of Dallas. 00:29:31 Yeah. So if they can navigate that airspace with a drone now, what's the future? 00:29:39 Hmm. I don't know. So you don't think the Killdozers- That's crazy ... and Christine are real? 00:29:44 Never seen anything like it. Those machines kill you? I hope not. Are you excited? 00:29:49 Yeah. Are you excited? Yeah. More for Lane. Yeah. You're going to probably not be the early adopter. You never are. That won't work here. 00:29:56 Trey's going to have to run mine. He might. I promise you, he'll be the one. Right. 00:30:00 Trey was on the couch yesterday trying to show me how to use TikTok. All right. 00:30:04 And I think I said- Well, you're- ... "You're too old for this" ... there's no question about that. 00:30:07 I have to have your kid help me figure out new apps and new stuff on my phone. All right, we're talking about autonomous, and has it been a disappointing, shall 00:30:14 we say, introduction, and why is that? Well, we can talk about money. We can talk about also about maybe it just has been a little bit frightening, or 00:30:20 there's some technical issues, and there's also some practical issues with that. So I really like it. So you know what? Stay tuned. 00:30:25 What we'll do, when these machines get going at Todd Kimbrell's, I will make sure that I cover it on my Cutting the Curve show, and we might even cover it again 00:30:32 right here at The Granary. Until next time, thank you very much for joining us. This is an awesome show. It's brought to you by my friends at Nature's. 00:30:38 That's right. If you want to find out how you can use an all-liquid plant feeding program on your farming operation, go to natures.com, 00:30:46 N-A-C-H-U-R-S, natures.com. We thank them very much for sponsoring this show. We are joined not only by Todd, but also Matt Miles and from Kelly Garrett. Till next time, thanks for being here. 783 00:30:56.472 --> 00:30:58.792