Name: Deere: Smart tech coming to big farms
Uploaded: 2014-04-09
Duration: 4 min 51 s
Description: John Deere CEO Sam Allen says that the merging of smart technology with farming and construction equipment is an area of great opportunity.

[ MUSIC ] Where, technologically, are Deer's greatest opportunities now? The, the greatest opportunities are always gonna be around our big, hyperly productive equipment, whether it be the, construction equipment, the forestry equipment we make, or large ag. In the case of large ag, it's really going to be still about enabling tractors and combines, and sprayers to work smart or faster. But what is really interesting, at this point in time, what we're really starting to see is what we call smart implements. So we just introduced a bayler, that has sensors on it, that as it's bayling straw, there's an optimum moisture content. And as that moisture content changes, you either want the bale to be denser, or less dense. Which means you want the tractor to go faster, or, or not as fast. The, the baler is sensing that, the operator doesn't, in the tractor does not touch anything. And then the bailer is sending a signal to the the tractor, okay, you gotta faster now, denser bail, now you've gotta go slower. We're also seeing then, on a tractor to a combine, where a combine is now ready to unload, and it sends a signal, and the tractor, without an operator touching it, will drive right over. With the grain cart behind it and then they'll be able to unload. And then they'll break, decouple and they can go on. And then, we're not too far from being able to do that, if you will think on planting where every, every row of the planter will be sending an signal and, and in order to assure that you get the precise depth and spacing. Because again, back to yield improvement a tremendous amount of that comes from getting the precise planting of the seed. Both from a space to space as well as depth stand point. You mentioned a irrigation. Water is fast becoming one of the most valuable commodities on Earth. Can the technology help conserve water? there's, an answer is yes, and in two different ways. You've got, from a farming practice standpoint, you have a number of people are going more and more to to till. And with no till, you do conserve water, since you're not busting up the ground. There are places in the area where you have to bust up the ground or plow it, so it can't work all over. We, we do have an operation in that space, precision drip irrigation. It the advantage is much much more efficient over what's done in the majority in the world today, is just flood irrigation. And that's actually why so much of the waters consumed for agriculture. It's not the US. It's consumed in places like India where flood irrigation is used and therefore there's, and, and not even efficiently. So there is, we think eventually, it will continue to move down of how can I continue irrigate, but be more and more efficient with the water I have. And the enabler of that ends up having to be either you don't have enough water, or a more practical answer would be you start having put value on the water and paying for it. And, and if you have to pay for it, then you wanna to consume less. It, it sounds as if Deere is, in some senses, changing as a business, in that it's becoming more of an info tech business. Does that change the way you think about it, or the way you manage it? No doubt that we're having to think about the information side of it. One of the big changes besides GPS system and auto steer, is when we put on telematics on our equipment. Which gave the equipment the ability to communicate with each other and communicate with us back in the office. And part of that is that there's a heightened level of sophistication that you have to think about when you do that. Most people don't realize that for us, an 8000 Series tractor has more computing power on it. Then the first space shuttle. So it is really a, a computer right there. But we're having to do more with that and, and as a result of that we actually have reorganized the areas that touch that part. So that we can have a group that does what we've traditionally done well which is the hardware side of it and the embedded software that goes with it. But we've got another group, and actually brought in outside people from places like Microsoft to help us think about that, how do we get the application side of this right? Like how do we open up our open architectures to allow others to help us, for the farmer. Make that much more efficient.

John Deere CEO Sam Allen says that the merging of smart technology with farming and construction equipment is an area of great opportunity.