When we got our first auto-steer in 2001 it changed my school holidays.. Instead of having to drive mind numbingly slowly I was able to read books, and then progressively shift onto movies etc with the first video iPods etc. awesome. Huge increases in productivity and reduced inputs.
On the other hand, our neighbours who have often got seasonal workers to drive tractors have lost several tractors due to the workers not paying attention and running into power poles etc.
I have heard that the biggest obstacle to self driving machines has been the legal implications of having a tractor with no driver. It would be great to overcome this but there's still a way to go because at the moment no system I have seen can handle obstacles, specially if they haven't been programmed in (at the moment you can place a mark near trees, and it will beep when you near the end of your run to alert you to turn around) - also each implement requires very précise monitoring that may change markedly in the same field depending on the conditions in terms of ground speed, implement height and a host of other factors.
Awesome technology
In terms of accuracy, here's a metric to think about: due to fewer overlaps and misses, yields were up 7.6% and cost savings were up 6.8% - and this was with just recent tech advances.
So does my $200 cell phone...
Through recent research I developed the distinct impression that anyone who has managed land for an extended period+ with and without modern industrial farming methodology seemed to say that the general outcome of such was dependence on external entities for seeds, technology, energy, fertiliser and pesticides... and this seems to include both academia and government bodies in charge of agricultural knowledge dissemination.
The most lucid illustrations of this quandry I have yet encountered are Masanobu Fukuoka's One Straw Revolution (a few decades ago) and the USDA's Alley Cropping instructional video series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8Kwb5yInPM
Basically, the claim is that higher yields with lower maintenance are possible through non-industrialised methods that rely on crop diversity and natural systems.
My impression is that the US (and Europe) heavily subsidise or artificially protect a lot of their agriculture whilst burning loads of fossil fuels to plant, maintain and harvest them which is a situation that has partly evolved to cater to vested interests in government and energy sectors.
China wastes loads of food, leads the world in agricultural research, and certainly does not yet have anything like a food crisis. Not only that, but their population is stable or dropping.
Overall, this article is pretty FUD.
+ Not I!
