How Technology Will Reshape Farm Machinery

Watch what the farm machinery companies are doing, says Scott Shearer, professor and chair of Food, Agricultural, and Biological Engineering at Ohio State University.

Shearer is leading efforts at the university to look at how technology is going to change and reshape agriculture. He joined AgriTalk host Chip Flory to discuss: 

“We've been having a lot of fun working with a lot of companies,” he says. “But also, as you might guess, from the research perspective, we're trying to begin working on those advanced concepts that we're going see in the future as well.” 

What’s coming next in farm technology? 

“I encourage a lot of people to pay attention to what the machinery companies are doing today,” Shearer says. “If we go back in time, they sold iron. Okay, they're continuing to sell iron and I don't want to minimize that, but the thing that they're adding to the equipment [is where to look].” 
Shearer sees a transformation taking place in front of our eyes as technology is enabling the deployment of automation.

“We're moving towards automation, which in other words, we’re removing functions from the operator and relegating those to machine controls,” he says. 
And he sees the next step isn’t just machine controls—but technology controlling and executing in-field decisions. In short—smarter machines doing more of the work themselves. 

“The next level that we're going to begin adding is what I would refer to as machine intelligence. So where the farmer or the operator used to think a lot and react to certain situations in the field. Hopefully, in the future, the machine will be doing that with that.”

He also sees machines not only getter smarter, but smaller. 

“I think we're kind of caught up in the cycle right now in order for farmers to be more timely in their operations they tend to buy larger pieces of equipment and we see that evidence by what the manufacturers are offering,” explains Shearer. “That’s predicated on that operator being on the machine. Once we remove the operator from that environment, I think things might change pretty markedly. I would expect to see the size of the equipment come down, and we’re just going to have more pieces in the field at the same time.” 

So which companies are bringing these principles forward? 

“There's two companies that I follow quite closely right now just because of what they're doing, and I think they will kind of give us a sign of what the future is going to be like. Here in the United States, I'm watching Sabanto Ag and they've been automating equipment in the Midwest. The other company and watching is out of Australia and that's Swarm Farm. They've been automating sprayers,” he says. 

Those two companies have two things in common---they are using smaller scale equipment and they are challenging a traditional business model. 

“In the past farmers used to buy the equipment that may not necessarily be the case in the future,” he says. “The business models of both of these companies is that they're providing services, and the equipment comes with the service.”

Is automation only for large-scale farming operations? 

Shearer says no. And he sees a scale-neutral future for farming as these technologies head to the field. 

“Certainly, large farmers will take advantage of autonomy and I think small farmers will as well,” he says. 

Are there other areas to watch in how machinery and technology are merged together?“

I encourage people to watch what's happening with John Deere right now and their purchase of Blue River,” Shearer says. “Right now they're spraying and reacting to actively growing vegetation in the field. But what I expect to see in the field, in the future is that sprayer is going to react to and differentiate between weeds and plants that you want to leave in the field. And then we're just going to apply herbicide to the actively growing weeds that we want to kill,” he says. 

In early estimates, he says such a technology could reduce application volumes by 70 to 90%. 

Shearer highlights how now is a terrific change for big changes in the industry as technologies are being stacked together and pulled in from other industries. 

“It's given that machine intelligence, these vision systems are going to be able to recognize and then the ability to selectively apply and targets those things we want to remove from the actively growing crop,” he says.