How Big Tech Ruined Farming
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- Опубликовано: 26 июн 2024
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Writing by Sam Denby and Tristan Purdy
Editing by Alexander Williard
Animation led by Max Moser
Sound by Graham Haerther
Thumbnail by Simon Buckmaster
References
[1] www.cabidigitallibrary.org/do...
[2] prospect.org/power/rollups-bi...
[3] spectrum.ieee.org/john-deere-...
[4] www.waps.net.au/wp-content/up...
[5] careers.deere.com/careers?loc... States&pid=137461981889&domain=johndeere.com&sort_by=relevance
DRM ruined farming. Not allowing a farmer to fix the equipment they "own".
This comment needs to be pinned.
and now BIG TECH know every inch of your land, you will own nothing and be happy!
Don't read my name
DRM is going to lead to disaster if there's a major supply chain disruption to replacement parts. Large amounts of the US's food supply will disappear and there's going to be a lot of hungry people.
Fuck John Deer, broken bearing caused by a known design fault? oops there goes $15,000. What's a warranty?
Companies like John Deere are the reason we have to pass Right to Repair ASAP. Not being able to repair your smartphone, laptop or TV is one thing. Not being able to repair the machine that your livelihood depends on another.
reminder that it also happened for entire trains in poland
Not being able to repair your laptop IS many people’s livelihood. Large corporations might just buy new equipment and backup from the cloud/intranet, but not the little guy making it off his one laptop. individual people need to be able to fix at a time & cost that is feasible for them, no matter what equipment they need fixing.
Not just /your/ livelyhood. If enough of these "unrepairable" things fail at once, it could be devastating. And all just for a little more profits for the shareholders.
They're the same thing. If you can't repair your own property, it's not really your property. This is true no matter what it is.
They're the same thing. If you can't repair your own property, it's not really your property. This is true no matter what it is.
As a former Deere engineer, Deere's old stance of doing things right has changed to doing things for maximum profit, and John May is one of the biggest indicators of that. Layoffs are happening in both manufacturing and engineering to increase profit margins, production lines are being moved offshore, and technical leaders that made Deere the company it is today are being fired, in the interest of cutting costs. There is no longer anything special about Deere as a company, and in a decade there will be nothing special about their machinery.
As a side note, Deere is currently in a hiring freeze. All of those job listings will never be filled, at least in the short-term. In fact, Deere is actively trying to reduce headcount in their tech department, through enforcing return to office policies. They are planning on a 2% reduction in headcount.
So then 10-30% of the employees leave, and then they stagnate because they think they are a monopoly yes?
While I didn't know all of this, I knew a little bit of it and I'm glad I didn't invest in JD. Relying on brand power and market share is a proven way to loose everything, in the long run
Sounds awfully like Boeing.
Capitalism baby
Line gotta go up.
@@lelagrangeeffectphysics4120 Not exactly. CNH is currently doing about the same things and there's kinda the big 3 in farming so if AGCO is also doing it that's just the way it is and everyone has to deal with it
John Deere: Nothing runs over farmers like a Deere.
Don't read my name
Nothing ruins like a Deere.
@@godfreypoon5148 if a puma is hunting
I hate 'em.
People keep buying them though.
Welp, if we can't use John Deere, I guess its time to bring back the Lamborghini tractors
Clarkson style
Or go JDM with Kubota 😅
@@MarloSoBalJror go German with Claas. They're pro right to repair too
Lamborghini has continuously made tractors. There's nothing to "bring back" lmao.
Id be infinitely more likely to buy as Ive been boycotting John Deere for half a decade now.
@@moogle68 true they never quit, but they did fade from popularity
I've seen a huge uptick in the popularity of Kubota in North America over the last few years, particularly with small and medium sized farms, and it's obvious to see why.
The extremely obvious is the ability to repair your "own" equipment. Kubota is international, so they are not set on the "America ONLY" mindset like JD has been for a century
There also damn good machines that work when you need them to, good engineering still means something. And you can actually fix them yourself.
Kubota and Mahindra both: companies which sell to international markets where farms are smaller and farmers need to be able to repair their equipment in the field, quickly, with little outside help
Not to mention because the machines are gigantic, it's best to manufacture the machines in the USA
Was just on one for the first time today, they’re great man run so smooth and they’re so much simpler to figure out how to operate
Grew up on a farm in Germany. The new tech we get in the industry is amazing, not only for yields but also to reduce the use of agro-chemicals like fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides.
HOWEVER: In some countires the market is incredibly monopolized. Farming equipment has to be repaired locally because it's difficult, slow and expensive to transport long distances. In the US John Deere dominates the market in most parts of the country and is often the only viable option.
Tech in farming is great. The monopolies turn it deeply toxic. I'm glad that at least that part of german agriculture isn't one.
Edit: Just want to add that these monopolies aren't necessary to develop this tech. In a diversified market tractor manufacturers can not sell tractors that don't work with third party machines and third party machine manufacturers can't sell anything that doesn't work with the common tractors. It results in fairly modifiable machines that often either use shared standarts or independent systems that do not interfere with another. This also gives farmers the ability to retrofit systems, something that's incredbily important since these machines are investments worth hundrets of thousands of Euro/Dollars.
Monopolization is always the end goal of capitalism. That's why it has to be regulated.
same in poland.
@@austinhernandez2716 which is ironic, because it tells you that late-stage capitalism is just the same as having a dictatorship
@@SkyForceOne2Right on! Exactly! Corporations are just mini dictatorships. Capitalism is tyrannical.
@@SkyForceOne2 The first fears of late stage capitalism were first published in 1902 in Der Moderne Kapitalismus (Modern Capitalism). It is in no way analogous to a dictatorship, but throwing around such terms around sure makes people sound insightful and knowledgeable when there really just confabulating a story in lieu of reading dense books.
Sir I assure you that it is imperative to the function of your machine which pulls a thing over the ground, that it have a sensor who's sole purpose is to make the device inoperable if a part is replaced until one of our technicians, paid for by you and at a time convenient to them, physically connects their laptop to it.
Sounds like modern cars alright.
And one day that fully automated farming system will crashes, (being intentional, or by simple decay of the society) and there will be no food, and no farmer left to face the crisis. Looks pretty evil to me.
As a farmer whose family has ran Deere for 100+ years I must say this was very well done. We love Deere for their quality, reliability and resale value. We hate Deere because they are out of touch with the backbone of their customer base. Our local Deere dealer is empty of customers while full of tractors and combines. Their business model serves the biggest of customers first, almost cutting the medium to small farmers out completely. The profit first approach has alienated almost everybody, big farmers included. Instead of the dealer approaching the customer relationship as a relationship, they stab us in the back with overpriced parts, overpriced service and conflict as soon as an issue arises. They are also famous for poorly treating employee’s, which are our neighbours and friends. In the profit first attitude, they fired the trained staff then rehired new staff, trained them but cut the pay by 1/3. Not a good situation.
Beautifully said. My stance on John Deer has definitely moved to great products, horrible company. It's a real shame.
That's capitalism for you.
Also if "Ranch" implies you are raising animals for slaughter, you're committing slavery and mass murder for profit which is objectively ethically abhorrent. You must stop immediately.
The goal of John Deere is to destroy family farms and usher in corporate control of farming.
This is exactly what we've seen as our local dealers have been bought out by United Ag. Locations that used to have long tenured parts and sales guys now have a new crop of poorly trained employees who have no investment in the customer base. Especially for farms like us who run nothing but Sound Gard and New Gen era tractors
And yet you're still buying from them.
Buy from another manufacturer who doesn't take farmers for a ride.
It cost me $1,500 to activate Auto steering one time on a tractors built in screen. If I wanted to use a removable screen to move tractor to tractor it cost me $1,500 every single year to use that screen. They know how to squeeze every penny out of you. Other companies don't charge a fraction of this and don't hit you constantly with activation costs and fees
The subscription world. You own nothing and will be happy. For fucks sake, my offices COFFEE MACHINE is a subscription service... it's ridiculous.
It’s for the same reason college costs so much now, government subsidies. The government subsides farmers big time so Deere and other companies make everything more expensive to increase profit margins.
@@ldib7798 Are you kidding so subsidized collages caused John Deere to be so greedy in monthly fees and not allowed to work on your OWN tractor. As for government subsidies to farming is okay in America. Or maybe government subsidies are making JD lay off in America and move operations to Mexico. After the best profits ever.
John Deere sucks.
Its great technology, but a smaller farmer can forget about the feature that connects machines working on the same field.
im sorry but activation fee's are rediculous. I can understand the not letting farmers fuck with there data because it could lead to major errors in the code and then they might get sued when the crop fails but Activation cost is just saying you have to pay us to turn this on. put it in any other context, you have to pay me to let you use the faucet and get water, you have to pay me to turn the lights on in your home. you have to pay me to turn the cooker on.
Deere has pushed small farmers almost completely out of the scene. Costs get unreasonable very quickly. Have watched many of my childhood friends have to bag the farming life in one way or another. Some end up working for the big neighbor that buys them out, some lease out to the big guy, but the story repeats itself all too often.
I don’t think that’s John Deere’s fault but shifts in the market and the rising costs of everything making farming more expensive rather than the rising costs in tractors and parts
And the quality of life and birth rates plumet. The big company owners will be remembered by history more hatedly that the traders of the triangle trade.
John Deere's policies have driven the prices of used older machinery way up.
Capitalism is pretty cool, huh?
That's not Deeres fault, it's simply the reality of economy of scale.
Food production is a solved issue and relatively easy.
Small farmers are simply inefficient in mass production.
You want to survive as a farmer? Find your niche.
(High quality/a product only a minority is interested in/try to become the supplier for local restaurants/...)
Fun fact: John Deere's diagnostic software was apparently made with some open source components which might unravel their anti-consumer practices. Meanwhile Mack/Volvo/etc software is being reverse engineered by some nerds.
Basically these companies treated software as an afterthought, hence why stuff like Tech Tool has horrid UX and is only available on heavily locked down configurations of Windows. So the laptop is constantly updating slowly and even when it works you're waiting forever while a highly unoptimized program communicates on J1939.
Every software company that exists stole their stuff from one or two talented devs who were usually let go before the software even launched due to "creative differences" I've seen it countless times. If you're a talented coder, and you work for ANY big corp, you're the bad guy. Sorry coders...
@@daisy9181 My friend's Dad who was a master mechanic for 25 years and got into programming as a hobby wound up in tech. (I'm on a similar path atm)
As a SWE he points out that most people don't understand the diagnostic method and KISS.
He's tried to retire and the company just throws a fat pay increases at him, even when he's like "you've made me into a legacy maintainer" and he expects them to jump onto some new boxed solution or not be ready when he does retire, stepping on a tech debt landmine either way.
@@daisy9181 Talented coders need to incorporate the ability to sabotage their software at the coder’s will. That way if the company tries to fire them just before release, they can simply trigger the sabotage mechanism and take their hard work with them.
@@ethanlamoureux5306 You're basically implying a backdoor... that they could possibly be sued over later. It's not worth it. 🤦♂
@@megamanx466 I never said it would be easy!
John Deere has effectively turned their own products into the same servicing model as the ice cream machines at McD's. Key diff being that McD's franchises generally don't have to go out of business and close entirely whenever they have to wait literal weeks for the ice cream machine repair tech to finally show up and fix it.
You seen that episode too huh, you're right and I completely agree and remarked that same example in my comment.
Alot of companies do that BS McDs just being the most recognizable of the companies.
i have literally never heard of that happening. the stores just dont bother fixing those machines.
@@matthewbarabas3052 cause they don't own the machines, they rent them and they have to be serviced by a tech.
@@user-dm3rd2hy9t No, they own the machines, its just the intentionally obfuscated error codes that make it impossible to diagnose. Then McD corporate pulled the scare tactic to torpedo the company that made the diagnostic tool.
@@matthewbarabas3052 They can't. Hidden menus, obfuscated error codes, and 100% of the manual that isn't "Is it plugged into the wall?" lists the 'fix' as "Call the support number, $500 for the call + $250/hour."
My dad is a farmer. When the solar flares happened, my dad was one of few in our area that was able to continue planting. Because everyone else's planters have fancy GPS and they basically run themselves.
The fact that farming is becoming a lot more dependent on technology is not a surprise to me. Last year I saw drones spraying fields w/ nutrients and stuff.
Edit: I actually laughed out loud when you said "a sense of pride in maintaining straight rows". I was in the combine once and tried to stay on the rows. God, that's hard. And then he flexed on me and said he could eat while doing it.
Edit 2: I don't think family farms are dying because they can't afford the fancy new equipment. However, it's been near-impossible to start a farm without being in a family farm already for quite a while
Case IH is a behemoth all of its own.
farming is and has always been technology, one of the oldest we humans made...
Family farms aren't dying, but how many new people that aren't independently wealthy are able to afford the start up costs of a new farm in your area?
@@al99795 absolutely no one, i know there are some younger people farming but that's usually just the kids taking over the farm
If it's infeasible for a small farmer to enter the market without an inheritance of equipment/land, then family farms are dying. As some farmers kids grow and don't choose to be farmers, the pool of family farmers will dwindle until the market is completely dominated by big agro.
John Deere had genius marketing at CES because they got the press without having to bring anything new to the table. A couple coworkers and I went to CES this year and were laughing. We work for a GNSS (GPS) company and have been automating tractors and construction equipment for about two decades. So, this is nothing new. Deere was just brilliant enough to take it to CES. CAT was also there the last couple of years showing off their tech.
The Apple of framing.
But why? "Consumer" Electronics Expo. Wonder what their marketing dept thought they would get out of that.
@@curtisbme It was all over mainstream news. It brought huge publicity. People thought they had incredible new technology. No one cares about farmers or construction workers. There are huge conventions all over the world dedicated to precision agriculture and machine control (agritechnica, ConExpo, Bauma, etc.) and no one cares. Go into a mainstream show with very influential people who have never seen this, and it makes national news. It was brilliant.
@@curtisbme to add to the last, John Deere isn’t the only company that does this. Basically every tractor company (and basically every construction equipment company) has an OEM solution and then there are tons of aftermarket solutions for people who don’t want the OEM solution. So, Deere really looked like they innovated a lot more than they did.
And that recent sensationalism gave us this video, while largely accurate, a bit ill-informed about how long this transition has been happening. I’m from one of those family farms. We run some Deere, some Case, and a lot of smaller implement manufacturers and their own 3rd party “solutions.” The key to success has never been to put all your eggs in one basket. Deere is trying to make that happen in some cases, but we're not gonna take it unless there's a clear advantage (across all operations and costs) to do so. As another note, the B roll in this video is hilariously inaccurate. For most of talking about overlap they were showing a combine (harvester), which is not one of the metrics they later mentioned when talking about overlap. Harvest by far has the least overlap because it's clearly visible where you have & haven't been. They really need to run these videos by some actual experts & farmers before publishing.
We also need to do everything in our power to support competition. Competition is the only thing that brings prices down, technology has no effect on prices so long as there is no competition.
Bot detected
@@Galaxylama How do we know you’re not a bot? And regardless, she is right.
Compete with piracy
bruh i lost my fuckin mind when u said see n spray is a subscription charged per acre ... brooooooooooother
they really saw adobe and said hol my beer
To be fair, see and spray requires more personal care than selling software with a credit card enabled checkout screen
terrible, awful & disgusting. everything gotta be a sub now for that sweet, sweet recurring revenue. ugh.
In future there will be subscription to toilet paper per meter
@@maksimfedoryak Well, toilet paper has always been a consumable so one could very well argue that it has always been a subscription per meter
@@OleBrouer then there will be paper dispenser, which needs connection to server to provide toilet paper
The original john deere: "farming is too fuckin hard"
2024 john deere: "farming is too fuckin easy"
Newer sprayers BTW aren't anywhere close to $50K, try $500K!! A 2024 408R sprayer with all the bells and whistles including "see and spray" is gonna be at least $750K!! Plus once see and spray becomes prolific and everyone has it, chemical companies will raise the cost of spray, and it'll work out to roughly the same cost to the farmer anyways.
I love it when monopolies harm everyone in their pursuit of endless growth in fundamentally finite markets.
That's capitalism for you. There's nothing to stop the monopolization. They push for infinite growth and profit, which is impossible, and harms everyone else.
@@austinhernandez2716 Nothing to stop the monopolization? Companies have literally been broken up because they formed monopolies. Stuff can and has been done.
its not all harm, efficiency has gone up
@@HALLish-jl5mo The trustbusters are gone. When I quote Theodore Roosevelt to Republicans, they think I’m some Marxist radical.
@HALLish-jl5mo that's only true when it's not legal to bribe politicians into making regulatory bodies ineffective. I don't like Biden, but I'll admit he is the first president in years to have a doj willing to sue monopolies, but these cases can take years, or even decades. If you think companies getting broken up is common in America, then you have been misled.
We should change it from “beware of Greeks bearing gifts” to “beware of companies offering solutions”
I've never heard of that phrase but "beware of companies offering Solutions" is one I want to use
@@internetperson3436 My man gotta read a bit more. But agree with you, everything gradually becoming a service/solution will eventually lead us to become technopeasants.
beware of geeks
@@internetperson3436 its reference towards Trojan Horse
Former Deere engineer. I left the company in 2021 when May became CEO and all this "Tech" company stuff really took off, as I felt there was no longer a place for me. I enjoyed my time with Deere &Company and I made a lot of money there, but there was no longer a place for me as an old-school gear, beam, truss, lever-loving mechanical engineer. Many of my peer group have left the company as well. While I have no ill will towards Deere as a company, I'm not a software or AI guy, I'm a internal combustion engine and hydraulic cylinder guy. I feel like, going forward Deere will outsource more and more of the mechanical aspects of their equipment, as they focus on "solutions".
Once you've practically monopolized an industry, selling intangible solutions rather than clever engineering/innovation is pretty much the most effective way to get income. There's no need to compete with anything other than refining and re-pitching an intangible process.
There's no excuse to not allow customers to repair the farming equipment that they bought
I’m guessing safety issues would be one reason
then repair the equipment? its not hard...
@@forzaacmilan36 What safety issues? Do be specific.
@@matthewbarabas3052 Until you find that the vector encabulator is the thing causing you the issue. And because we are now using a digital vector encabulator you have to have it configured or the point metrics are going to drift and your lines are not going to line up. And because its digital, it needs the Proprietary Software.
@forzaacmilan36 since the equipment is only used on the private land of the owner who made the unauthorized repair, NO, safety issues are NOT a justifiable reason for the manufacturer to sabotage unauthorized repair or otherwise make it impossible!
Even if they were vehicles made for public roads, it's not John Deere's responsibility to make sure the customer maintains them in a safe operating state!
The family lost their warranty because we made repairs on our tractor. If we waited for the technician it would have taken three weeks. The alternator had to be programmed to the tractor so we still had to wait.
I worked for JD for several years, and I worked on the see-and-spray platform. I feel like the tech is solid and it seems like it provides value. I do not like how JD runs the business side though. I think they abuse the DMCA to prevent loading modified software on hardware that the user ostensibly owns (copyright and voiding warranties should be sufficient). I think they should contribute back much more to open source projects that they use. And they're definitely trying to be a Microsoft (e.g. locking in users) in the ag world.
What you’re referencing is not a Microsoft, at least Microsoft makes their software compatible with other companies hardware, it is an Apple. They limit your right to repair, they make it incredibly hard to use with other companies software AND HARDWARE, and they do everything in their path to make it so you need to go completely JD or there’s no point having any of their stuff. They make a monopolized ecosystem, not just a monopolized product.
The biggest problem is that big tech is a monopolistic system. There are no competitors to JD offering good programs; any time some competitor starts looking promising, JD simply buys them, and if anybody complains they say it'll be a net benefit to the consumer, the only antitrust test still standing thanks to the neoliberal shift of the 80s. (It used to be that trusts were regarded as inherently destructive, not just to the consumer, but to the workers, innovation and society at large, but the only test that courts and the FTC will apply now is whether there seems to be an immediate, short-term harm directly to consumers.)
Could antitrust laws prevent John Deere from further abusing its monopoly position?
@@zanewolf2509 Microsoft wishes it could.
@@zanewolf2509 Re: MS and compatibility, I'm thinking in the 90s when they became the de facto standard for a lot of things, and had "compatibility" but EEEed their way to functional incompatibility. Apple is worse but it's functionally the same.
In the end, the goal is to be a non-optional piece of the supply chain, then you can build a monopoly.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TALKING ABOUT RIGHT TO REPAIR!
This is so important. The industrial revolution is the most important thing to happen to humanity. . . And the very nature of it was studying other people's inventions and improving upon them. The nature of these founding companies keeping this technology proprietary is a hindrance to the scientific goal of improving society that all these inventors are supposed to have. Of course they're entitled to compensation, but at what specific cost compared to the handicap it creates?
There's a reason patents were severely time limited. The point was to give you a chance to be the _first_ to profit from your invention... not the _last_ . And even then, it's hilarious how almost completely that failed anyway.
@@LuaanTi So true!
You seriously underestimated the cost of the see and spray system. As a farm that just ordered a 612r with the camera spraying system I can tell you there isn't much change out of $1.2m
They're pretty far out of their depth already, so it's not surprising to see them be off by an order of magnitude here or there.
I am surprised that there's people who still bleed green out there though... John Deere absolutely hates their customers.
I am making foundry patterns for a tractor show....and we have many restrictions on what we can do with John Deere's likeness.
I also have worked at a company that built cabs for the construction side of John Deere.
I have learned so much, and I never was a farmer or came from a farm family. I now have my own welding/small manufacturing business and working on getting my ISO 9001 cert, because I will be working with big companies like JD.
I have grown to despise JD. As a capitalist business, they are genius. As a business owner with dignity, I see John Deere as part of the destruction of our economy.
And this is why Open Source is so important. The company here is actually limiting your potential to be what they have devised.
Open Source isn't the answer. It's great, but it's always behind the major companies once they get moving. Subscription services, despite being fraught with problems, fixed the problem Open Source was meant to solve.
True, but OS and FOSS do have their pitfalls as well...
Open source is always the answer. That isn't even a debate. The amount of shared knowledge, security benefits, stability and overall quality of product is always better. The problem here is greed. Yes Linux has "flavors" but at its core it is all the same and a true sense of what it means to act as a group of people for the better of the people instead of fattening investors pockets with bs ware.
This is the exact same thing Apple and the right to repair are going through. If I don't have the right to repair then it is a lease of equipment.
A company's team of developers isn't any match for the entire world.
@@bOOmbOOmProd Open Source is ruled by the major companies.
You can claim it's out of their grip all you want, but the most popular open source products outside of Linux started as projects in Big Tech.
Most subscription services are fine. Unreal, Microsoft, and Google all offer decent services that outpace open source almost by decades.
Firefox started as a company project. OpenGL, Vulkan, and anything by Khronos started as a collaboration between major companies.
Linux and small development frameworks are the only exception, and Linux only survives in the business world due to its easy-to-manage low-latency on embedded devices. Guess what, your Android phone is Linux also run by a major company.
Perhaps it depends on how you define Open Source, but Open Source in the traditional sense really isn't the answer. A bad company will inevitably shoot themselves in the foot on the free market.
@@poetryflynn3712 what? The subscription services wouldn't exist without open source software.
From what I learnt here, Big Tech didn't ruin farming, letting John Deere build a monopoly did.
Most underrated comment, here.
John deere stopping right to repair makes me think farmers are looking elsewhere for farming equipment
And rightfully, they should. Once that technology becomes more mainstream to other competitors, John Deere is gonna dig themselves a grave... covered in sawdust and compost
thats what it will lead to and thats why capitalism is great
@realbosstakea Yeah, until Deere goes and cries to daddy in Washington and foreign competition gets a 100% import tax thus creating a virtual monopoly.
@@realbosstakea **sees bad thing happening under capitalism** - "capitalism will fix this"
@@beefeeb It always does... How's the Soviet Union doing?
16:00 minute mark, a new-ish sprayer is $500,000, not $50,000. Your missing a 0.
0:40 really is a competition of "how many corporate slogans can you fit into one sentence". It literally checks all the boxes: AI, vision, solutions, compute, machine learning, analytics etc...
I am suprised they didn't say nano machines to boot..
That will be next, but when?
Nano machines instead of pesticide! Tiny hunters that seek, and hunt pests! 5$ for an acre worth at AI, integrated, GPS, solutions!
Nano machines in the plants to stimulate growth, cure disease, and repair damaged cells!
Nano machines that create nano machines!
Buy your own robotic nano machines dispersal unit now!
No, but seriously. John Deere humanoid robots to replace immigrants will be a thing sooner than later.
So true. In college classes, many teachers and even the academic articles are searching for the latest leading terms. Its why keywords are placed in the synopsis. Although its valuable, sometimes they should reason or explain their use of those terms. I remember companies withholding profit information, that meant that shareholders could trust their previous gains but realize there was a decline incoming. So similar to these throwaway terms, it could apply as simply that they reply to customer complaints with AI or automated messages.
Insert Weird Al singing "Synergy"
18:15 "JD has found itself in the middle of a battle over the right to repair" wow go easy on the euphemisms Wendover. They've declared war on people being able to repair the equipment they've bought.
They say solution because that is how B2B sales go. You don't sell products in B2B you sell solutions. Find a problem and sell a solution to that problem double points if that solution is also a subscription.
So its a worthless place one should never go to.
Subscription aka maintenance contract. You all are way behind on your trends. Businesses run on a different model than consumers hence why renting is nothing unusual.
@@brodriguez11000 And we consumers should boycont renting unless its something where renting doesnt harm us.
You know what? Boeing did something similar. Company CEOs went from being an engineer that use to work on big airliner or military projects to a CEO who only worked in marketing and only Wall Street liked. So they go there saying tech company this that using all the latest buzz words etc. Well Look how that worked out for them. Caring about stock price only and the latest keywords took them from crushing airbus the only competitor at the time and killing it with the us govt to a joke with more competitors. Hopefully Boeing will recover and hopefully companies like John Deere learn from the Boeing mistake but I fear they won’t and they won’t be the last. Enjoy the tech praise and up tick in stock while it lasts….
Mistakes by farming equipment won't kill hundreds like airplane crashes. They won't learn from it.
Well... The video makes it look like everything is more or less fine. A bit greedy and not very farmer friendly but fine as it's mostly just going with the times, increasing output in one way or another.
Thus I'd find the comparison to boing a bit off. There's only so much you can do with hardware. We understand the materials we use and how we have to use them pretty well. So as long as they have a good product and good quality control there won't be too many issues. There can't be too many improvements in hardware either. The fokus shifts to other fields of technology where bigger gains are possible. If GPS guidance etc weren't working farmers would stop buying them. There are other options after all (even though many farmers do seem to Fokus and be proud of owning one brand).
@@mad_max21 Well, depending on the mistake I think farming equipment actually has the potential to kill far more by mistakes. Spray to many chemicals (or not enough) now people can get sick from the food. A software bug reduces food production so now food prices go up which hurts the economy which hurts everything and unstable markets may collapse into famine. Hell the solar flairs nocking out autopilot is such an example. Have such an error for long enough at exactly the wrong time and now no farm that uses autopilot produces anything.
Individually it's not really a major issue. But the more widespread the tech (and issue) is, the worse it could be.
I believe it should be law that for a company of above a certain sice the CEO must have worked in the company for atleast 5 years. CEOs that dont know how a company or industry works and just get brought in to maximise proffit for the next quarter before the gamblers/shareholders can bale out leading to the companies demise in the long turn are a plague.
@@einfachnurleo7099 I find it likely that John Deere is growing more hated by the day and its only a matter of time before they start losing sales to individual boycots. Reputation is a very important thing for someone who wants to sell something.
eh, the "death of the family farm" has been a thing for as long as i've been alive, and probably for the entirety of the 20th century. big tech ain't new on this. we shouldn't romanticize mom and pop small farms; farming is brutal work and if lots of people really wanted to do it, generations of hard-working parents wouldn't have scrimped and saved to send their kids to school or to better opportunities off the farm (a phenomenon that continues all across the world). at a big picture, yields on mom and pop farms are going to be worse, and are not going to be adequate at feeding people at scale in a modern society.
corporate consolidation and the economic gutting of rural america are real concerns though, and i wish this otherwise well-produced video had focused even more on that as opposed to moments of misplaced--albeit self-acknowledged--nostalgia and big tech scapegoating.
Farm Aid was a thing 60 years ago. Today family farms and startups alike are vanishing like species in the rainforest, and land is either being consolidated, going fallow (not all bad), or being turned into housing developments.
family farms and corporate consolidation are your only two options. The "big picture modern society" you want ends in continued overpopulation and ultimately mass famine
oh great a malthusian
"eh, the "death of the family farm" has been a thing for as long as i've been alive" Yea thats exactly what has occured, it takes a lifetime to play out.
"and probably for the entirety of the 20th century." No, it was allright pre WW2.
"we shouldn't romanticize mom and pop small farms" We should. It is the only way to return to sutainable birthrates.
"farming is brutal work" Was, it isnt anymore.
"if lots of people really wanted to do it, generations of hard-working parents wouldn't have scrimped and saved to send their kids to school or to better opportunities off the farm" Parrents are not known to be able to predict the future. I hate cities with every ounce of my being and yet mother abandoned her family farm to ruin to go live in the city which I cant leave cos the skills and tools of farming where never passed down to me. Id have a better chance of becomming a youtuber to go back to live in a rural area than a farmer.
"a phenomenon that continues all across the world" Not Latvija where the rural urban plit has been 40% 60% for 30 years now.
"at a big picture, yields on mom and pop farms are going to be worse" So fearking what?
"and are not going to be adequate at feeding people at scale in a modern society." Yea they where. In the USSR 50% of food was produced on 1% of the land which was personal gardens. The big kolhozes with tens of times more land produced the other 50% of food cos nobody had any incentive to work on land they dont own to make food they wont eat or sell.
"corporate consolidation and the economic gutting of rural america are real concerns though" You literally just said it didnt. You didnt want families to own fields you wanted big companies to do so.
agreed. theres a *reason* its dying off. it just sounds so disgustingly inefficent nowadays to have family farms. that, and they are holding back the family from actual adequacy, let alone greatness.
17:55 bro legit be forgetting the countless farmers hacking their equipment. It's not that they don't know how to fix them. It's that they’ve been legally locked not to by the company.
In the UK they went from 30% market share to 24 in just 3 years. I don't know what it is today 4 years later. I just remember that big drop with the whole right-to-repair issue.
I worked for a John Deere dealer in service back in 2018. The technology then was fascinating but also crippling, one sensor malfunction and your machine was going nowhere and dealer diagnostics were about the only way you could find out what was actually wrong. A dealer is almost guaranteed required for sure now on any high end equipment from Deere
As someone that grew up with a wheat field right behind my house, a John Deere dealership just down the road, and now works as a software engineer, this video hit me hard.
(The field was literally right there, there wasn’t even a fence between it and our yard.)
I grew up in one of the towns that he said is dying. I see it when I go back to visit. The next town over, where I went to school, has gone from about 650 people to about 550 in about ten years.
When I was in high school there were about 64 students. Off the top of my head I can think of about 10 where were farmer’s kids. Many would miss most of the first couple weeks of class to help during wheat harvest.
Knowing that the industry I work in and I find so fascinating (tech) is crushing the community I grew up in is devastating.
What happens when we automate farming to the point where the farmers have nothing left to do? Who will be left that remembers our roots, and has a connection to our Mother Earth like no one else has? What do California tech bros care about the people whose livelihood they’re destroying?
I’m all for new tech. Like I said, I work in the industry! But I do believe we can bring new tech to the table without crushing the family farm. Is growing one company’s profits really more important than people?
Tech and Robotics is replacing the low-skilled jobs. Sure new jobs are being made too, but they often require more advanced education. And that all to reduce the cost of the final product or get more margin.
Tech itself isn't the problem. It has been consumed by city finance traders. All the CEOs are marketing guys that answer to shareholders only. The come in and tear companies apart from the inside for short term profits.
The problem is finance has gotten out of hand again, going mad since the 80s, and now all the long term costs are mounting up. We'll end up with the 1920s style trust busting crack down again, it's already starting in the EU and even initial noise of it in the US.
Thank you for this comment. It's a tragedy and also a difficult question to grapple with.
A tractor you can't fix in the field yourself is as useful as a brick trying to fly. JD makes it just about impossible to fix yourself in the field.
And yet they're still in business
Then don't buy it.
a farmer if siupposed to be self sufficent in *everything* thats why they are farmers. if they cant be self sufficent, they should sell their farms.
@@matthewbarabas3052 Except stuff will eventually break to the point where it has to be replaced. Then you stuck with that new 'smart' tractor that has a 'smart' cap for -insert relevant fluids- that once you open it, locks down the tractor until its 'authorized repair' is done.
Its not that farmers don't want to repair stuff, its that JD et al are actively preventing the repairs.
@@nickierv13 then they shouldnt buy any of the smart tractors....? this is a none issue, frankly, unless they completely stop making standard tractors, which they definitely cant.
I worked for an electro - mechanical company and we sold a lot of electronics to farm equipment manufacturers. This was 2015-2020. I was surprised how advanced farming equipment had become. The use of gps, automated driving, apps, etc really made me realize farm equipment manufacturers were becoming (hybrid) tech companies
This is nonsensical.
Equipment is tech.
These distinctions only exist as a means of exploiting a disengaged investment class that buys/sells on sentiment.
Same with construction equipment. It's wild.
@@crackasaurus_rox9740yes, ur comment is nonsensical. By your logic, the equipment today is the same as it was 50 years ago and 150 years ago. Oh wait, today’s best equipment utilize computers, apps, gps, self driving mechanisms, etc. the modern equipment is full of tech
@@crackasaurus_rox9740 And more and more tech is what has lead to increase yields which means we can feed more people with less land. We (global) now produce more food than what people need - starvation is down tremendously and is mostly only occurring in places of war or where infrastructure is lacking and preventing food from arriving at affordable prices
@@swissfreekyup! Company I worked for did 90% of business in agricultural and construction equipment. I’m actually surprised there aren’t more major players doing both in high volumes. The insides (cabins) look very similar with similar equipment inside them. The major differences are the attachments but often those still have lots of similarities that it shouldn’t be a problem for one manufacturer to jump from one to the other industry. I’m guessing it’s mostly a history of marketing and name recognition in those industries that is a barrier to some from jumping to the other industry
The Grapes of Wrath ...where this story begins...
I don't know why, but the consolidation reminded me of East Germany (and most likely other Eastern block nations) forming smaller, privately owned farms into massive LPGs, Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaften (Agricultural production cooperatives). They worked on a similar principle that farmers weren't their own bosses anymore, with the only difference that profits went to the state instead of some few people that own the company
So what your saying is we are moving back to Tenant Farmers working for huge land barons, just like 100 years ago
late-stage capitalism... everything old is new again
Feudalism
Yep. Poultry production has pretty much been that way for quite a while now.
Excellent observation.
Man I'd listen to Sam talk about literally anything. This dude can make anything seem like the most fascinating thing in the world.
I’d love if a new sprayer only cost 50k, it’s more like 500k+ these days
My Grandfather is a farmer and my family has many ties to farming communities. John Deere has alienated a lot of loyal customers with its practices on repair. Tractors aren’t McDonalds Ice Cream Machines. Those farmers need to either be able to repair it themselves, or take it to a local shop. They can’t afford to wait for a John Deere tech to come from three counties over two weeks later to grant his blessing, all while charging an arm and a leg for the privilege.
16:25 "medium-sized farm at 450 acres" My parents grew up on 27 raising 8 kids and 32 acres raising 5, while my grandaunt married the guy with the largest farm in the area at just above 100 acres.
450 to 1000+ acres in Ireland would be considered land barons and lords and we got rid of most of them a century ago.
Out in states like North Dakota farms are as big as 40,000 acres.
US farms are way bigger then in Europe. Have you seen how empty North Dakota is
1000 acres is small
Remember America is huge, Texas itself is the size of central Europe, literally from Poland to France east to west
My family owns 240 acres of pastureland in Kansas that we lease. Only provides around $7,000 a year in income, property tax is about $5,000 annually, so about $2,000 annual net. Takes much more to make real money, or you have to be in the cattle business.
Big tech is now collecting big money
And u make big tears
Completely unsustainably.
I live in France and I remember, 20 years ago, most farmers drove mid-sized orange Renault tractors, the other half had red Massey-Ferguson, blue New Holland, Claas, etc ... Now 80% of tractors I see are big green and yellow John Deere with agressive faces. I don't know how they did that but it's becoming scary
The whole inability/illegality of planting seeds from the last harvest also needs to be outlawed
If the cost of producing food goes down that means bigger profits for corporate land owners, not cheaper food for us.
"Repairs as revenue stream" that alone should be just not a thing. It should be an at-cost thing to keep your rep as good customer service not something you actively seek or even plan into your products to make more money.
car industry took the same path
Repair as an income stream is simple a scam. It leads to "planed breaks"
Any chance of linking this video to another one on how on earth the Dutch are the second largest exporter of agricultural products worldwide behind only the US in spite of being almost 235 times smaller in surface area?
You should add a qualifier there. They are the second by monetary value. There are lots of other that export more by volume, kaloric/nutrient value etc.
@@reappermen indeed, fair enough, but still!
@@juanjan__ one word: Tulips
@@Ramonatho🤣 they're the ones who started this whole speculative mess, the bloody Dutch
In South Africa many of the farmers simply refuse to buy this hi-tech equipment. Instead they'll own a basic tractor and sign short-term leases for the fancy equipment only at the times they really need it (usually at planting and harvesting time). These lease contracts usually include the operator who has been trained by, and works directly for, the manufacturer.
This system works well because if the fancy stuff breaks down then the manufacturer has to get it fixed while supplying the farmer with a spare. It costs the farmer slightly more, but avoids all the costs and hassles of owning this stuff.
I'm a farmer who is also a computer geek. Suffice to say, you don't need this equipment to turn a profit, and the expense of this equipment is grossly understated. A person with 4500 acres would not have a 50k pull behind sprayer, they would have a self propelled sprayer. A 2023 612R like in the video, used but low hours, is 500k. Maybe they could find an older self propelled sprayer with higher hours for 50k, but at 4500 acres, spending 100k wouldn't be unreasonable. I have a 1966 JD 4020 tractor, a late 70's-early 80's JD 7000 planter(with upgrades), and an early 80's JD 6620 SideHill combine, good enough for me. I get one of the cleanest samples (a small amount of grain that has been harvested with a combine) of anyone around(not my opinion, someone else), and can have much less loss in the field after harvest than someone who is directly across the property line from me (not my opinion, someone else). You can have all the sensors in the world, some of the best tools are your senses. Like last year after a corn head rebuild, I noticed I was having shatter loss at the head (corn stalk was being pulled too quickly through the stalk rolls, so when the ear detached, it would break kernels off and they would fly out of the head). So I slowed the head speed down. When you start harvesting a field of corn, you go a little ways, and look at the residue output of the combine. Are the cobs fully threshed, are they fully threshed but broken, are there kernels on the ground, how many in a sq.ft.? Keep adjusting everything until the harvest loss on the ground and "trash" level in the grain is acceptable.
I so miss those July days in the combine cab, listening to the Rockies on KOA, loading on the go, and making lines laser straight.
1:49 is that a bird's eye view of the John Deere Ottumwa Works in Iowa? I'm German but I was a high school exchange student in Ottumwa and that view looked too familiar!
I went to Job Corps in Ottumwa. I'm sad you had to see one of the worst places in the US. There were crack pipes everywhere in Ottumwa... meth capital of the country for a short period of time.
@@Ramonathooh that meth time was luckily shortly before I came. Ottumwa is not the best place for sure but I had some good time over there and I enjoy revisiting every few years!
16:36 did you just say "subscription"??? I can already see where this is going. Gross
It’s not just farm equipment this is happening to either. What error code does your washing machine or vacuum cleaner spit out if not working properly. Better take it to an authorized dealer because the tools and software you need to repair it yourself are unavailable or outrageously expensive. Either that, or just purchase a new one and trash the old.
This is also the franchise model applied to agriculture. The family doesn’t own the farm or the land anymore. At best, they manage the farm, crops, and livestock for a multinational conglomeration. Your equipment comes from one company. Your seed comes from another company. And, your products are first sold via contract to a third processing company.
These farms are no longer the metaphorical donut store or ice cream shop hanging a shingle in a small town. You now need big money to buy a franchise into a brand name ecosystem. Otherwise, you will be out competed into bankruptcy.
Change every instance of "company" and similar corporate terms to "lord" in this description (especially in the middle paragraph), and you've come pretty close to describing the feudal system of medieval Europe.
Though back then serfs only had one "lord" and his lackeys to worry about, instead of dozens of competing ones all fighting to claim you while promising protection but not *actually* giving it when needed unless you pay up and have followed their rules in a way they feel is acceptable (probably with frequently shifting goalposts).
...
...
... wait a minute. >_>
@@HumbleWooper Yes, but it is so much worse now. One finds out how really "essential" they are when one deals with different ranks.
Lord/Baron = Direct manager w/in company
Viscount = Corporate "partnership"
Earl = Local municipality
Marquess = County/County-equivalent
Duke = State level
Royalty = Federal level
Each and every one gets a cut of cash to protect your "rights" and "business". Even the mob is not that harsh. They just take your kneecaps, not your livelihood.
I'm surprised none of these tech CEOs accidently put the world "final" before solution
The family farm has been dead for decades, but the myth has lived on. Ask me how I know.
how do you know..? my grandpa had 40k acres in new mexico mostly for cattle but also some ag. his kids took over when he died, but their kids didn't want to live in the middle of nowhere and do farming so they left and eventually it shut down, selling the water rights and then the land to bigger operations.
Nearly, if not, all farmlands are corporate 💰💰 pits that create this persona that "The heart of America is with the farmers" while the devil [i.e.: politicians] grin behind that notion 😈
A damn shame 👎🏾
Family farming, or at least making enough food for local communities, will be back once humanoid robots are 10x more common than cars (which will happen in less than 10 years the moment the software is solved due to insane real world value). Also many more people will be growing their own food when they can have a personal famer, gardener and chief working 24/7 for free.
@@kazioo2 we have to solve the battery problem before any kind of humanoid robots are practical, and battery tech is hardly improved in the last 30 years
@@kazioo2Not a chance, infact, its going to happen the opposite way.
The world's gonna go through such a crisis, either a World War with nukes or a killer virus and we are going to plunge back into a neodark age. Way before we get those human killing robots.
John Deere: We're a tech company.
Everyone: No you're not.
John Deere: Our tractors require several subscriptions to run.
Everyone: Oh you ARE a tech company.
John Deere might have been the first tractor company to produce a GPS guidance system, but they certainly were certainly not the first to do it. In 1999 I started working for an Australian company that was steering tractors with 2cm accuracy and had already been doing so for several years using Canadian made GPS receivers.
It's all about making more profit margins from selling "extra options". They are simply following the car market some years behind.
Its incredible that one of the greatest improvements in reducing environmental pollution from pesticides is that we just were greedy and invented a way to use them more precisely due to their high cost.
Greedy? Most farms exist on the bloody edge of bankruptcy. Saving even a few percentages make the difference between continuing to operate and selling prime farm land to developers to build more McMansions.
"Greed, for lack of the better word, is good, greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms, for life, for money, for love, for knowledge has marked the upwards surge of mankind" - Gordon Gekko
Seems like you think greed is a bad thing, when it is actually the single most important factor we have as humans. How else would you feed yourself or those closest to you if you weren't greedy?
If you aren't greedy, you can write me a check with everything you have to your name. I'll take it off your hands because I'm greedy. But you won't. Because you ARE greedy.
John Deere knows the source of their income is reliant on farmers making money. In order to appease their customers, they need to fill their demands. So they create products that help farmers accomplish their goals. Is this bad? No.
I don't have a problem with John Deere making it hard to repair their products. In fact, the more difficult the better. You know why? Another company that allows their customers to repair their own vehicles will knock them out of business. Unfortunately, government usually gets in the way of these new companies and gets paid by John Deere to help maintain a government-sponsored monopoly. This is bad for everyone except the person who is on top of the monopoly.
@@davidthosome623Greed is not good. There's a stark difference between needing enough to pay bills, have some savings in case of emergency or to improve your life and absolutely unnecessary antisocial practices that harm the many to serve the few.
Squeezing those without much to pad the pockets of the wealthy has caused this inflation and worsening society in general.
And the greed absolutely does hurt John Deere in the long run because those that use their services will remember being squeezed unnecessarily and will jump to a competitor when the chance arises. Profit is necessary, but it should be about distributing some of that to their workers and the society in general because the highest good isn't feeding a cancerous need for infinite growth in an environment of limited resources which results in collateral damage to the masses.
John Deere’s business practices significantly degrades the robustness of the food supply system of society. It is literally a national security problem that farmers can’t easily repair their machines.
In case of conflict, digital systems is an easy target, so important machines like farming equipment should be able to work and be repaired easily regardless of John Deere’s servers availability, with parts found pretty much everywhere.
John Deere feels like a franchiser with the farms as the franchisees. The farmer pays their royalties to John Deere, is restricted to approved equipment and supplies, and regardless of whether they profit or loss, JD wins.
Just what I needed: another Sam video to have on in the background as I wait for some food.
Wageningen has entered the chat...
The fact it costs farmers upwards of 300 bucks to call out a certified Deere tech for software updates is insane. I work in IT and that is just unprofessional right there. I can see charging for a certified tech to come out and do it on the farm. As that is a house call, but not having a way for a farmer to goto a repair center to have it done. There can even be third party doing the update as it isn't that hard. Think of how some computer manufacturers have farmed out warranty repairs to companies like DHL or other sub contractors.
Something not touched on so much here is the increase in technology running these machines is driven by the need to reduce emissions and fuel consumption, what demands this reduction so dramatically...
Now you know what happened/happene to colonized countries, where the biggest share of land goes to few owners who don't care about community
There's a subscription for 'see and spray'? That's crazy. I doubt its much more than basic computer vision software that could run off a raspberry pi.
Raspi might be a wee bit under powered but not by much. But that is 100% being run local.
Right to repair equipment is the most important part to keeping farms private. Farmers are smart and can service their equipment with a laptop if the company would give them the software.
Farming is quickly going the way of all other industries; The big ones are taking over making it very hard for smaller farms to sustain themselves. Increasingly strict regulations and less affordable equipment on the market doesn't help either.
19:35 It's hard for me to believe agricultural land is peaking... Also a lot of food is thrown away which could easily be used if there were more people.
It's even decreasing because of desertification.
22:20 Feudalism II: Electric Boogaloo
No, this is not feudalism. Feudalism was a system where a noble provided "state like services" in exchange for peasants work/money (mainly security, being a judge, tax collector etc. etc.). What is funny it is technology companies that created something I would describe as neofeudalism. I mean Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft etc. where you basically cannot not used their products otherwise you are excluded in some sense from the society and economy, so they starting to have some state like characteristics. Off course John Deere would love to be in the same position as aforementioned companies and he really tries to make it happen. But it won't happen because automation of agriculture is just too fast (which in long term may be detrimental to John Deere's bargaining power). And automation of agriculture is what affected towns and cities in the 19th century, where a lot of people had to change jobs. It will be just economically unfeasible to operate small farms. Operating farms will become more and more like running a business with people working on farms being just workers, but not owners. And less and less people will be needed to work on farms.
Someone doesn't understand what feudalism is.
I don't understand why every company wants to be a tech company when most people hate big tech but put up with them
They've been at this for many years now. My friend is a farmer and he's been able to program his tractors and the attached equipment for like 10 years edit: maybe an error in the script, but a sprayer costs closer to $550,000
I live outside the quad cities We have a major road called John Deere Ave. I can walk on my porch and see a corn/soy field, and I see so many random farming equipment. EVERYTHING IS DEERE. Talk to any farmer... despite them being great at farming implements, they're pissed that they can't repair them themselves.
Also the corn and soy we grow here is for cattle feed, ethanol & other random shit. It's sprayed with so much anhydrous ammonia you'd get deadly sick if you ate an ear of corn. It's wild.
Spraying anhydrous ammonia? Are you sure about that?
Hate to break it to you, but anhydrous isn’t sprayed… It’s a nitrogen fertilizer that’s “injected” into the soil
@@howdyfolks7930 no offense taken. I don't work in the fields. Just drunken rants about work from my buddies.
@@t0dd1998 I am wrong. I'll eat it.
@@SirRichardHardenThicke 100% understandable. Enjoy the rest of your day
At 7:05 what does the SpaceX Falcon 9 and the ISS mission control in Moscow have to do with it?
lazy editing
Because during that section they are talking about a system that uses satellites. Thus, footage of a rocket launch for satellite delivery.
GPS accuracy was also changed on May 2, 2000 by turning off purposefully-introduced errors
Sam I gotta say,the accuracy of this video is amazing. I don’t know how you figured out that the geo storm knocked out our RTK system. Small details that you guys do research on is so cool.
What's so interesting is that John Steinbeck delves into this through his novel _Grapes of Wrath_ . Especially the fact that instead of human hands plowing the fields and finding pride in their work, the lifeless machines take over.
The first rule of automation is that historical automation was good and boosted productivity and freed us from labor, but new automation is scary and will destroy jobs and only benefit big corporations.
People today make the same arguments as ludites, but youd never see them argue that we should go back to spinning wheels.
We got too many mouths to feed to be fkin around with plows now.
If I'm understanding the example at 16:20 correctly, the farmer saves 40k (on 350k) in the first year, then 115k in the following years? This seems like a decent trade-off, but the video portrays it negatively.
It feels like the Wendover team started from the conclusion "agtech is bad", then worked backwards to justify that position instead of doing their research and then coming to a more nuanced conclusion.
Yeah it's really ridiculous. We need more efficient food production especially knowing the climate threat. If that means killing off small farms, then so be it.
Let them eat cake
you become a data collecting npc for big tech, they are ditching you 5-10 years dow the road. "farming as a service". John Deere Drone tractors plow your fields. JD is now a food company
I drove past a row of John Deere tractors today on the way home from work and I thought "i wonder how long before they try to get rid of even the migrant workers?". Didn't think I'd get my answer so quickly.
I was gonna say they need to mention right to repair. But they covered it near the end.
Already know im gonna make that mistake again. Good work Wendover team
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There are a handful of experts in the field. I've experimented with a few over the past years, but I've stuck with ‘’Aileen Gertrude Tippy’’ for about five years now, and her performance has been consistently impressive. She’s quite known in her field, look-her up.
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What you describe at the end, the owner of the land living timezones away and profits not being spent in the local economy, is what's been wrong with globalisation from the start, not just in farming. And it's similar to what's wrong with private equity. To the owner of a shop/ factory/ restaurant who sits in a boardroom many timezones away, the employees in that shop/ factory/ restaurant are just faceless numbers on a spreadsheet, not the mother of your kid's best friend or the goalie of the local foodball team. I'm not a communist, but capitalism is fucking up the world for all but a very small, very rich elite.
Oh, and as for "we need to produce more food with less land", let's start by wasting less food, then get smarter (like less beef), before we try to be more efficient and ruin farmland even further.
What you describe is corporatism, not capitalism. And yes, it's awful.
@@garrettrinquest1605what is better? Socialism or communism?
@@garrettrinquest1605 Corporatism and capitalism are the same thing.
I'd say no, America doesn't even have true capitalism, which would be bad anyway cause it breeds monopolies, however, we DO have Corporatism.
We have Corporations gaining rights as people, lobbyists who influence policy with millions of dollars, policies that our congressional leaders endorse, prioritize and implement to work more for Corporations than what the government is supposed to aid, The People.
Half of those in Congress ARE business leaders and former employees for some of the biggest corporations in America, some of whom return to CFO, CEO, ETC. to the same or different company after their term is up or they have mad stock in said multination corporations or other government subsidized industry. You got your Political think tanks and scientific studies with loaded pockets of biased research to sway the congress or the simple common man that big business and big government is good and that this society weve built up is pure, patriotic perfection, then no one wants to rock the boat cause they're trained to appreciate the crumbs.
And the ones that DO are labeled "Communists" who "hate" America and are ungrateful idiots from either side of the same, red and blue, two-headed political dragon. Most of whom are too rich to understand the commoners, what does Donald Trump, or Joe Biden possibly understand about the struggle of todays plebs, NOT a god damn thing, the super rich paid off by the ultra rich.
OK sorry I'm done ranting
“A.I. is contentious”
“Here’s a word from our sponsor with which you can learn to advance in the field of A.I.”
My family produced corn and soybeans from a farm that topped out around 2200 acres, for four generations. My dad and my uncles are probably going to be the last traditional farmers in the family. My brother and I don't have anything to do with it, and our cousins will likely be the end of our farming line. I remember talk about Starfire in the early 2000's when I was in gradeschool, and my grandfather was vehemently against it. We had no GPS or auto anything until about 2013, and at this point it's not really worth doing for as little land as the family manages. Those economies of scale offsetting upfront cost are real.
The only real solution is to change how corporations are governed such that the interests of stakeholders other than stockholders are represented in management.
I wonder if we have a word for that...
To combat this, we need standards (like usb-c) for farming equipment such that any tractor can use any equipment from any vendor.
Want a new nav system. Plugin a new nav system.
Want a new sprayer, plug that in too
As it happens Apple was pretty stubborn about not wanting to put USB-C ports on their phones even though they played a major part in developing the standard. Market leaders generally don't want to allow any more compatibility than strictly necessary. I suspect JD would fight tooth and nail to preserve their walled garden.
That's... not really what this is about. This is about things like not selling implements or parts like tires or combine blades outside of their system, which isn't sensible. Motors and proprietary software this makes sense for, but this isn't as simple as "plug in a new nav unit" or "re tumble your key lock on your tractor" this is actually stopping people from being able to do with their tools what they used to do.
I mean you pretty much can. You might need to have an adapter harness with the different connectors but that's not real difficult. The important part ISObus or CANbus communcation is standardized and can be looked up by anyone. Companies can have proprietary beyond that but you can 100% take a John Deere nav system and use it on a Fendt tractor. It's not perfect but certainly not impossible
Good thing your using usb-c, I would have to be up at 4am trying to flip the equipment over trying to get it plugged in 🙃
@@phoenix5193 it is a hack instead of a standard.
I a software developer, we make plenty of things "compatible" even tho they where never standardized or documented.
The difference is. Do you need to hack it together, or is it well documented and easily implimentable.
Diagnostic tools and software should be widely distributed and easy to aquire
By costing millions to buy equipment needed and making it impossible to do maintenance yourself. That said, the single biggest expense outsize land and equipment is the cost of gmo seed. Your profit is in the cost of your seed.
I work in the industry, while not a farmer but in the spare parts, accessories and other gear for farming industry. It's not just technology, it's also regulations and a side effect of reducing impact of farming on the environment. We see this across the western world. More regulation on pesticides etc. that force farmers to use high-tech solutions and GPS to ensure they comply. While this is beneficial for the environment it of course means the farmer needs better tools to comply. The problem is not the technology in itself, but the closed eco-systems of Deere and others. The closed eco-systems these companies create force farmers to stick with one brand, just like apple does. It also affects their ability to fix their machinery themselves increasing costs, that we the consumers ultimately pay for at the grocery stores. And the extra you pay for your food does not go to the farmers but to Deere etc.
Don't forget drones. They are the future of farming.
Big Tech and Private equity has ruined nearly every industry/field in the world. The world peaked in the early 90s.
In other words, capitalism ruined the world.
Explain the scenarios of “WTF happened in 1971?” Why is 90’s better than pre-1970’s
As u type on RUclips on your phone 😂😂
I can tell you my 80 series is the pinnacle of mechanical engineering. Its as quiet and comfortable as the latest lexus without the screens and electronics. A friend of mine with the lexus couldn't believe it... Plus has triple lockers no gimmicky traction control.
Was waiting through the video for why Big Tech was responsible. What seemed to ACTUALLY be responsible was Deere becoming a monopoly. The video mentions they bought their competitor that was doing BETTER than them. That kind of move is why monopoly-busting laws got created in the first place. The problem is politicians get lobbied by those monopolies to not use them, especially if they've become "too big to fail".
The old farmer job, where everything is made by hand and experience, is dying as handcrafted tools died when the industrial revolution arrived. It is a shame that huge robo-farms owned by big corporations are displacing the small producer, but what can you do? A tomato is just a tomato and unless you can make significantly better quality ones than te robo-farm, people will always buy the cheaper option.