Raven Industries

[Misterjade9]

I see a fit for a DOT like piece of equipment to do the little jobs like picking stones or rolling fields after sowing.

[Sodbuster]

I see Dot coming to us soon, a farmer would take his quad or Utv with gps and mark perimeter and other obstacles and wet spots. We’re not doing us any favours towing a 80,000 lb unit with a 60,000 pound tractor, this where I see the biggest advantage. One person could run 3 or 4 of these units and you could run these 24 hours a day if needed. Manpower is getting harder to get on farms.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

I see Dot coming to us soon, a farmer would take his quad or Utv with gps and mark perimeter and other obstacles and wet spots. We’re not doing us any favours towing a 80,000 lb unit with a 60,000 pound tractor, this where I see the biggest advantage. One person could run 3 or 4 of these units and you could run these 24 hours a day if needed. Manpower is getting harder to get on farms.

And compaction is our biggest enemy out here. I see a fit for that reason alone.

[GDR]

I think we are at a very very early stage on this stuff. In 15 years is when I expect I could get in. Work the bugs out. A year ago there was a couple quarters of fall rye planted with the DOT not far from me. It was watched pretty closely and lots of tinkering going on. I am a loss though as to why so many seem feel threatened by this tech? I am not pointing fingers here but on facebook there was negativity towards it. Are those people insecure about their own future in agriculture ? Does it not fit the narrative of "old McDonald had a farm" ? I do feel that if this tech could perfected for the vegetable harvest with all its very excessive hands on people demand the change in that part of agriculture would be massive.

Likely coming sooner than later and likely are some good applications.

There are many reasons why people fear technology and automation. Biggest reason is our sense of value. It is scary to think we will no longer be needed or valued and can be easily replaced by a machine. Farmers especially are defined by what we do... I am a farmer, not a programmer.

Beyond that I personally hate technology, past experience has shown me that with some exceptions tech has made my life worse. Some examples. Computers were supposed to curb paper usage, well from what I see more paper gets printed than before they were common. Stand in line at a business to make a sale, a hand written receipt and a cash transaction used to be faster than an electronic receipt and paying by debit. I refuse to use self checkouts because they take away jobs and, never fails they are problematic and the attendant usually gets called anyhow. Equipment that breaks down, almost always a sensor these days. Emissions systems are lots of fun.
Paper records I can find in a hurry, organization with alphabet or numbers is easy. But electronic records I gotta struggle to locate at times, often device, or connection troubles, and then usually the battery is dead when you need it. And you sure better have it backed up. Bottom line sometimes I think simple is better. Some people probably think I'm simple, but that's ok.

[agstar77]

Operating equipment is not the big issue . Servicing and maintaining it is.

[Taiga]

I like the concept and my fields are perfect for this (all multiple perfect rectangles 60-80ac in size max, no interior obstacles, tree lines between field edges). However I am not likely to be a buyer simply because I own the existing conventional equipment already, and one still has to standby and watch it work and refill it with seed/fert. And then hassle of moving between fields etc.
I am a one man show and I don’t see it helping me out enough to reduce my workload significantly.

[blackpowder]

Depends on cost of labor.
I have been on a state farm in China where they planted 10s of thousands of acres of rice in a week with 10' planters, 3 men each.

[Austrian Economics]

Interesting developments. Raven, I believe, had a facility in Stockholm, SK which they closed. Now they have opened up one in Regina, which will probably be involved in more than autonomous vehicles. I have followed the DOT product since inception since I know some of the people involved. I was told that units were to have been made available for sale in limited numbers since last year. Obviously that didn't happen.

I think they have a lot of bugs to work out. Some applications like rock picking or land rolling would be pretty straightforward, but tillage and swathing could be troublesome due to residue plugging. There can be significant problems with satellite signals and my understanding is that liability concerns need to be worked out or insurance companies will not touch these things.

There's some use of these devices in more intensive farming operations like vegetables and that's where the development work will likely have to evolve before you see autonomous vehicles in broad acre operations.

The mining industry uses similar machines, but someone sits in an office and operates the equipment while viewing it remotely. The advantage is that one operator can run more than one unit at a time. Liability is not a concern since the machine is constrained in a mine.

[Austrian Economics]

The other factor is zero percent interest rates. A lot of projects that would never get off the ground with market driven credit facilities will get off the ground because central banks incentivize ultra low interest rates. Raven is big enough that it can borrow at a much larger discount than your average bear.

[Rareearth]

I’m glad they chose Saskatchewan

There main research is in South Dakota near the Hefty farm and field day.