[HN Gopher] Wild bidding wars erupt at used-tractor auctions acr...
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Wild bidding wars erupt at used-tractor auctions across the U.S.
Author : SQL2219
Score : 117 points
Date : 2021-11-14 14:17 UTC (8 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| mrfusion wrote:
| We need an open source tractor. Who's with me!
|
| It doesn't even have to be great. Just minimum viable product and
| let iterations improve it.
|
| Maybe a billionaire would fund kicking this off?
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| The old ones are about as open source as you can get haha.
|
| I can see everything on my Mom and Dad's old Massey Ferguson
| tractors and every single part is available online from a
| plethora of vendors since there really aren't that many parts.
| rascul wrote:
| There was one on HN about a month ago.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28827785
| carbocation wrote:
| Check out https://opensourceecology.dozuki.com/c/LifeTrac
| markvdb wrote:
| Have a look at the plans for USSR tractors. Those were fairly
| well-documented. An acquaintance of mine working at a kolchoz -
| a USSR collective farm - told me whenever new rolling equipment
| came in, they usually took it apart and rebuilt it from
| scratch.
|
| The Belarus (MTZ) tractor factory [0] still produces a popular
| super maintainable model that hasn't changed much since the
| 1970's.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarus_(tractor)
| rzzzt wrote:
| Would three wheels be enough?
| dzdt wrote:
| There are two kinds of optimum strategies for farmers, and there
| has been a long term shift from one to the other.
|
| The older strategy is for a farm to be no bigger than a single
| family can handle, and to be as self-sufficient as possible. Here
| equipment is run as close to breaking down as it can be without
| actually being broken down. A tractor would be used <30 days a
| year (planting, fertilizing, weeding, harvest) and sit idle
| otherwise. It doesn't make sense to pay for a super-expensive
| machine to sit idle. The optimum is lowest cost to purchase,
| lowest cost to repair, cheapest option that can get the job done.
| A farmer builds a collection of nearly-broken down machines over
| years to have backup options if one isn't working when needed.
|
| The other optimum is to have the largest, most effective, most
| efficient machines and use them enough to justify it. This makes
| sense at the industrial farming scale or as a contracting
| business where the equipment is owned by someone who does
| contract jobs for many smaller farmers. For this case the tractor
| needs to be running and making money as many days a year as it
| can; any down time is money lost.
|
| The shift over years has been that the second strategy produces
| more crops with lower expenses than the first, and is taking over
| to the extent it is almost impossible to run a small farm without
| going bankrupt.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The shift over years has been that the second strategy
| produces more crops with lower expenses than the first, and is
| taking over to the extent it is almost impossible to run a
| small farm without going bankrupt.
|
| There is value in small-scale farming. If there is one thing
| urban hipsters love to pay for, it's artisanal, high quality
| organic food. There are farms where you can see pictures and
| datasheets of all the animals living there and you can pre-
| order certain cuts of the specific animal once it is
| slaughtered and processed.
| yalogin wrote:
| In the US, isn't this the case for a long time now? I thought
| the consolidation towards bigger and bigger farms is the trend
| for a few decades now.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| yes, quite a bit of consolidation after the 1980s in the
| farming sector. culture reference: Farm Aid
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm_Aid
| theptip wrote:
| > The shift over years has been that the second strategy
| produces more crops with lower expenses
|
| I read an interesting book recently (Seeing like a State) that
| makes the claim that large-scale monocrop industrial farming is
| only actually "optimal" if you don't price in the heavy
| subsidy, and if you ignore the non-revenue contributions of
| small-hold agriculture (e.g. the land might provide fuel,
| crafting materials, and otherwise support the farmers in a way
| that doesn't show up on the balance sheet). Not to mention that
| the larger farms tend to be extractive, in that they are using
| up water from the water table and nutrients from the soil, and
| so they will eventually degrade the land to the point where it
| cannot be productive any more.
|
| I did some digging and the farm subsidies in the US are truly
| eye-watering, and particularly notable is that the biggest 10%
| of farms take 90% of the subsidy, so we are not even
| subsidizing "traditional working farmers" or anything like
| that, just shipping hundreds of billions to huge ag corps.
|
| I wouldn't claim to be an expert nor to be certain about those
| economic claims though, and would be interested in others'
| thoughts here, particularly other books you found useful on the
| subject.
| toyg wrote:
| _> particularly notable is that the biggest 10% of farms take
| 90% of the subsidy_
|
| This is the real problem.
|
| I wish somebody would come up with a simple mechanism to stop
| all subsidies to companies over a certain size. Yes, it will
| be gamed, but it's still better than the outright crony-
| capitalism we have today.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Just stop subsidies altogether. Subsidies distort the
| market and encourage farmers to grow crops the market
| doesnt actually want.
| willvarfar wrote:
| Subsidies can be about ensuring crops are produced in-
| country instead of imported from cheaper countries. This
| is not the same as saying there is no market for the
| produce.
| simonh wrote:
| Who cares where it's produced? If farmers in a developing
| country can get off aid and earn a living, good for them.
| I do care how it's produced.
| azinman2 wrote:
| So many reasons why this is bad, but the most obvious
| reason right now is the supply chain crisis. It's one
| thing if you can't get a new car. It's another if you
| can't get new food.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Relying on imports for food makes your country a sitting
| duck in times of war. All the enemy needs to do is
| blockade you and then you can be starved into submission.
| PeterisP wrote:
| There are two main aspects.
|
| One is long-term food security - even if global trade is
| mostly fine right now despite the current hiccups,
| there's no telling how it's going to be in a decade or
| two, and it's hard to ramp up production (due to lack of
| skillset, machinery and infrastructure) if you suddenly
| need it; so it makes all sense to pay some fraction of a
| percent of your GDP to ensure long-term strategic
| security of your food supply, especially if it looks like
| global tensions will eventually rise due to climate
| change.
|
| The second aspect is that even in the current
| circumstances we're seeing rapid urbanization and
| depopulation of the countryside, which is generally seen
| as a problem for many areas. In a "natural" regime
| without rural subsidies this would happen even faster.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Tariffs are an option
| cgio wrote:
| If the demand is unelastic, stopping subsidies or
| introducing tariffs will increase prices ending up with
| the consumer and most probably hitting the poorest people
| worse. From that perspective, billions shopped to mega
| corps could be an ironically capitalist way to socialist
| means. Better ways perhaps to achieve the same but don't
| know if they would align with a capitalist worldview,
| e.g. socialise the production, or cap profitability etc.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| We already provide food assistance to our poorest, we
| could always redirect those subsidies directly to poor
| families
| etempleton wrote:
| The problem is that the whole farming industry is proped
| up on subsidies and if you ended it tomorrow almost every
| small to medium farm would fold and get bought by a large
| farm or sold to build a housing development.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| That isn't consistent with 10% of the farms taking 90% of
| the subsidy.
|
| The subsidy argument is a scam anyway. It's a commodity
| market. The margins will be razor thin, the end. If you
| subsidize production, prices go down. It will eat the
| whole subsidy and leave the margins razor thin.
|
| The only way the subsidy helps you is if you get more of
| it than your competitors. Now who do you think that
| applies to, the family farm or the huge corporation with
| lots of lobbyists?
| ars wrote:
| If 10% of them grow 90% of the food then it's completely
| consistent.
|
| Your misunderstanding is that a subsidy is not aimed at
| one US farm versus another, it's US farms versus foreign
| farms.
|
| The reason should be pretty obvious, without the
| subsidies they would be no US farms. And then in time of
| war there would be trouble.
|
| There are a huge number of US industries that exist only
| to make sure that US capacity will remain even in time of
| war.
|
| The same goal could be accomplished with tariffs, but
| then the price of food would be higher.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > If 10% of them grow 90% of the food then it's
| completely consistent.
|
| The claim implied that the small farms get _more_ of the
| subsidy, i.e. that they would be the ones wiped out
| without it.
|
| > The reason should be pretty obvious, without the
| subsidies they would be no US farms.
|
| Why would there be no US farms? Real estate in San
| Francisco is much more expensive than it is in Mexico
| City or the like, but farmland in Oklahoma is not
| uncompetitive with farmland outside of the US.
|
| If this was the real reason then the subsidies wouldn't
| be suspiciously concentrated at the location of Iowa
| caucuses.
| klyrs wrote:
| Lower food prices are good for the consumer. Exclusively
| focusing on the supply side is a mistake.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The consumer is the one paying the taxes that fund the
| subsidies. That isn't helping them.
| theptip wrote:
| I get the general point you're making, but in a
| progressive tax regime like the US, the poor (who benefit
| most from lower food prices) are paying proportionately
| less of their income as tax than the rich, so this is
| helping them. Many US families paid no tax in 2020 due to
| tax credits, so they won't pay for the subsidies.
|
| I would definitely argue that there are simpler ways of
| helping low-income families to afford food though, if
| that is your goal... just lower their taxes further, or
| give them negative tax / UBI if they are already paying
| no taxes, rather than adding lots of complex gears to
| distort the economy to try and affect the same outcome.
| Or more food stamps if you don't like the idea of poor
| people spending their tax rebate dollars on non-food
| items that they prefer.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I get the general point you're making, but in a
| progressive tax regime like the US, the poor (who benefit
| most from lower food prices) are paying proportionately
| less of their income as tax than the rich, so this is
| helping them.
|
| That's assuming that you would lower taxes uniformly
| instead of e.g. lowering them for the lowest tax bracket,
| which is in no way required.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| I'd say that this is _a_ real problem, but there's a larger
| issue: _lying_ -- which includes not just outright
| falsehoods, but _the spin applied to facts to make them
| more widely palatable_.
|
| When I look into nearly anything I find some distortion of
| the truth in service of profits.
|
| The problem is that we're entirely comfortable with lying,
| and have done so much of it the truth of everything is
| obscured by the spin. This I feel is at the heart of what
| ails the USA and the world.
|
| As a European friend told me once over beers: _"All you
| Americans are always selling something, and doing it badly,
| by lying until you get the sale"_
| jml7c5 wrote:
| >particularly notable is that the biggest 10% of farms take
| 90% of the subsidy
|
| How much crop production do the biggest 10% of farms
| represent?
| theptip wrote:
| It's a good question, and I don't have the answer. Here's a
| reasonable jumping-off point that I've started
| investigating: https://www.cato.org/commentary/examining-
| americas-farm-subs...
|
| And here's a more detailed NBER paper digging into
| distribution of subsidies:
| https://www.nber.org/papers/w16693
|
| My general impression so far is that the subsidies are not
| being disbursed pro-rata to production rates, and larger
| farms (having more legal resources) are much more able to
| capture these subsidies; for example with exotic ownership
| structures of lots of subsidiaries, to maximize the capture
| of subsidies. These financial/legal engineering strategies
| simply aren't available to smallholders. It's the same sort
| of incentive structure that produces outcomes like the
| biggest companies paying the lowest tax rates.
|
| Also, correction, I believe I have mis-quoted the stats off
| the top of my head -- the Cato article suggests it's more
| like 80% of subsidies to the top 10%. The general point
| still stands.
| SilasX wrote:
| >It's a good question, and I don't have the answer.
|
| It's really the kind of thing you want to resolve
| _before_ spreading a statistic like that.
| shalmanese wrote:
| > I did some digging and the farm subsidies in the US are
| truly eye-watering, and particularly notable is that the
| biggest 10% of farms take 90% of the subsidy
|
| Well, yeah. The 90th percentile farm makes $7665 in farm
| income per year [1] so how much subsidies could they possibly
| absorb?
|
| "Farms" in the US are overwhelmingly used as a tax avoidance
| strategy. Only a numerical minority of farms are actually
| designed to grow food.
|
| [1] https://aei.ag/2019/02/25/what-is-median-farm-income/
| akudha wrote:
| Isn't this generally true in other industries too? Small cafes
| can't compete with Starbucks, there are no mom and pop
| pharmacies, small grocery stores can't compete with huge/ugly
| chains...
|
| At this rate, the entire planet will be ruled by a few dozen
| mega corporations. This sucks, but I don't know what can be
| done to mitigate the situation.
| Beaver117 wrote:
| Well, shoplifting and other petty theft has been increasing
| otikik wrote:
| > I don't know what can be done to mitigate the situation.
|
| Something about the means of production, perhaps.
| chillingeffect wrote:
| (Most of) us don't have to work for them and (most of) us
| don't have to buy from them. If we mindfully shop looking at
| the big picture, we can support smaller operations.
| akudha wrote:
| When I lived in NY (upper east side) there were multiple
| pharmacies within walking distance. Nearly every corner had
| Starbucks (I used to give directions using Starbucks - not
| making this up).
|
| Number of small cafes or pharmacies within walking
| distance? Big fat zero. This situation will happen first in
| big cities, then proceed to smaller areas too (as long as
| there is profit).
|
| I was looking for an apartment. Guess what? Multiple
| buildings in the area I looked at, owned by the same
| company.
|
| Consolidation is not new. But the scale at which it is
| happening is, and it is terrifying.
|
| Just 4 companies control 80% of American meat supply, for
| example.
| [deleted]
| im3w1l wrote:
| Why can't the family farmers share a pool of highly efficient
| tractors?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Excepting unusual conditions, most nearby farmers needing the
| same equipment will need it at similar times. You can get
| around this by transporting machinery long distances as
| migrant workers do to hit multiple harvests in various parts
| of the country, but that gets expensive.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Well big ag was supposedly able to solve it right? Vertical
| integration helps coordinate I suppose, but I don't see how
| it should be impossible without.
| foepys wrote:
| In Germany you can rent equipment and operators for this
| equipment. A lot of farmers do it for crops they don't
| usually harvest but are required to to keep the land fertile
| or to collect subsidies.
|
| The problem with this model is that, as the sibling comment
| already pointed out, harvest is done typically within one or
| two weeks or even in two days, depending on the weather.
| Harvesting too late can make the crop go bad. So renting the
| equipment and getting it to the field can be a hassle. It's
| still being done a lot but it's not risk free.
| sjwalter wrote:
| This situation has interesting second-order effects as
| well. Most "custom harvesters" require farmers to schedule
| their combine/truck well ahead of time, giving them little
| leeway in which specific dates they can harvest their crop.
| So instead of for instance letting the corn dry out in the
| sun, they'll spray an assload of glyphosate on it to cause
| it to dessicate to ensure it'll be at the right moisture
| level right when their custom harvester shows up.
| nanomonkey wrote:
| There is a third option, often called "Market Gardener", where
| a tractor is not used because it is a waste of space and
| resources. Tractors require a lot of extra turn around space,
| and area for the wheels to travel that can be utilized for
| planting. Instead rows are built at 3 ft wide and perhaps 60 ft
| long to utilize human scale planting and weeding techniques. In
| this case the soil is not tilled, but instead allowed to build
| up. Covers are used to suppress weeds when the row is not in
| use. Rows are more easily rotated with cover crops or nitrogen
| fixating plants to improve the soil nutrients. These are of
| course smaller family farms 1-10 acres.
| structural wrote:
| This is absolutely true. A related trend is that many family-
| owned farms are no longer operated by the family: they own the
| land and lease the farming rights to an industrial-scale
| operation. The difference in efficiency means that the large
| operator can pay almost as much for the lease as the individual
| farming family would realize in profit if they worked the land
| themselves and still have a viable business.
| [deleted]
| foxhop wrote:
| It's not impossible, you are thinking from the wrong paradigm.
| The industry is already shifting if you pay attention to the
| proper news sources. The chemical agriculture war on pests and
| nature is coming to an end. These chemicals are making us sick,
| these monoculture are collapsing the ecosystem globally.
|
| The good news is nature abhors a vacuum and will heal if we let
| it. The wu Wei. Small farms will rise, food is just too
| important for the economy and with rapid inflation there is no
| way around it. We are all going to have to become farmers or
| know our farmers.
|
| Ref: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC1eySW_9TiI5wnvTnIIw2Nw
| h2odragon wrote:
| Well observed. My experiences include a lot of farms that
| operated with big yards of scrap iron; were always repairing /
| rebuilding something, and did contract construction work to
| keep the machines running when they weren't using them for
| their own concerns.
|
| There's very few operations running that way anymore, the "odd
| construction contract" market for them dried up before and
| faster than the farming side of those operations. USDA Soil
| Conservation flood control projects used to be a large source
| of work there.
| cmroanirgo wrote:
| I live on my family farm. We have a 50yr old tractor and your
| basic premise seems correct. All of my neighbors follow the
| same route.
|
| I would add that small farmers are typically _not_ mono
| culture. We used to have various fruit varieties. One neighbor
| is mixed veggies, another cattle and flowers.
|
| Our farm has been forced out of fruit because of corporate mono
| farms who inevitably cause gluts in the market due to over
| supply. In my local experience, corporate farms are typically
| 5-10 bigger as a _minimum_ than their surrounding neighbors.
|
| When a small farmer loses _any_ percentage income, he must
| quickly change income stream. Hence, our fruit trees are gone,
| and we 're now raising sheep, and are forced to be double
| income. Our tractor & other super reliable (but very clunky)
| machines remain.
| oopsyDoodl wrote:
| I think it's great.
|
| It's the story of humanity moving on from "I am my own
| industrial island" to inclusive effort at scale to automate
| away and normalize often dangerous logistical work (I am 41
| and have limbless, digit less peers who had to work on family
| farms as teens.)
|
| Family farms are, to me, simply a legacy social and technical
| effort.
|
| The problem is old politics refusing to take reality
| seriously. Americans who carry on about their legacy of
| revolution, moving history forward, disruption!, exporting
| that mentality to the world, are all sad their lives are
| disrupted by others wanting the same agency.
|
| Moral relativism worked for Americans while we bombed the
| world, impeding other nations progress, but they caught up
| anyway.
|
| "There's a warning sign on the road ahead; a lot of people
| saying we'd be better off dead. Don't feel like Satan; but I
| am to them; so I try and forget it any way I can."
|
| If you didn't sign a contract to be a family farmer for life,
| oh well. America.
| bunabhucan wrote:
| https://archive.ph/8ZKDl
| SQL2219 wrote:
| Coupled with right to repair issues, farmers are really in a bad
| spot.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| problem is that many of the corporate farms are owned by hedge
| funds who are also invested in BigAg companies, so they don't
| really care about right to repair. Hedge funds are also jacking
| up land prices because they have access to near zero interest
| loans for land
| shmageggy wrote:
| Got any links where we can read about this? Shit like this is
| the root of all evil
| noefingway wrote:
| https://thecounter.org/who-really-owns-american-farmland
| https://www.motherjones.com/food/2021/05/bill-melinda-
| gates-...
|
| where I farm our (60 miles from DC and Baltimore) not very
| productive red clay is going for top dollar and not to
| farmers. Not necessarily hedge funds, but high income
| earners buying up property for investment.
| etempleton wrote:
| I am familiar with this area and soil type and I am
| always shocked farming is viable at all. Most grass
| doesn't even seem to grow well unless you put a heavy
| layer of topsoil down.
| loonster wrote:
| Sounds very similar to McDonald's Ice Cream machines.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Farmers need a coop that designs and builds farm equipment to
| avoid legacy manufacturer rent seeking.
|
| Edit: open source hardware design and fabrication should be a
| part of 4-H programs, lots of overlap with maker/hacker spaces
| imho
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Would it be possible to source designs from expired patents?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Can't see why not. I'd also imagine patenting new
| technology and allowing open access would also be possible.
| myself248 wrote:
| I got tapped by 4H to judge a computers/electronics design
| event a few years ago. My background is in hackerspaces and
| OSHW, and the overlap with what the kids were building was
| staggering.
|
| It's been a while and I'm curious what they're up to lately.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Buy tractors from Belarus. They are nearly completely analog.
| What few plastic parts there are haven't been minimized. And
| if it's anything like it used to be in the Soviet Union, you
| get instructions on how to make the replacement parts
| yourself in the manual.
| wwweston wrote:
| Where can I learn more about the soviet culture around
| industrial equipment that you're describing?
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| I talked to people who emigrated to Cuba for around a
| decade. And it's not comfortable equipment, like it's
| lacking all kinds of "features" that American equipment
| has, and that are actually nice, but that never got
| incorporated into the design. So I'm reading up about it
| but remote controls were never a big thing, it was not
| like in America where they were an obvious part of the
| television, in the Bloc you had to manipulate the knobs
| mounted on the device, and that meant getting up every
| time. It was all about the basic bottom line
| functionality.
|
| So I hear that in Cuba the Soviet air conditioning is
| basic and brutal, for better and for worse. Apparently
| most Soviet electronics sacrifice efficiency (energy
| efficiency, and light weight, and economizing materials)
| for effectiveness. There is a reason for this: under
| Socialism, capital goods were always short, but they had
| to be available. Demanding an air conditioning was
| basically done as a political favor, and the economics
| weren't good. Therefore what the factory wanted, really
| really wanted, was for the customer to take his air
| conditioning or tractor and never come back. No planned
| obsolescence, repeat customers were the bane of their
| existence. So they made them last.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I'm pretty sure 4-H relies on corporate sponsors.
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| If ever there was a rebuttal of a business model... share holders
| should pay attention.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Old iron is better built, less "electronic", and far easier to
| understand the designs and fabricate parts yourself. As well as
| cheaper to purchase.
|
| Folks I worked with in the 80s were using Michigan dirt moving
| equipment from the 60s [1], and a quick look shows there's still
| similar machines being traded [2].
|
| The market for tractors is far bigger than specialized
| construction equipment, but all the same factors apply. The
| bigger units, say 75HP and up, counted as "construction
| equipment" for us, certainly. Today's farms are bigger and
| today's farmers have little need for smaller machines.
|
| [1] https://www.constructionequipment.com/michigan-elevating-
| scr...
|
| [2] https://www.machinerytrader.com/listings/for-
| sale/michigan/s...
| jasode wrote:
| _> Old iron is better built, less "electronic", and far easier
| to understand the designs and fabricate parts yourself. As well
| as cheaper to purchase._
|
| I thought that big farms take advantage of newer tech on
| tractors using GPS RTK for sub-inch accuracy and increased
| productivity? Therefore, depending on the workload, the
| decades-old "cheaper" tractor can turn out to be more costly
| because the farm's yield isn't keeping up with competitors. It
| seems like a tradeoff between old & new.
| julianlam wrote:
| I believe the argument is that these new tractors are not
| repairable by yourself, leading to expensive repair and / or
| replacement cost
| jaclaz wrote:
| At least on construction equipment (agricolture may be
| different) the point is not only about costs (and
| frequence) of repairs, but rather on machinery down time or
| production loss.
|
| I have managed in the past some high production sites (road
| tunnels) with a specific sequence of operations and having
| a jumbo or a wheel loader or an excavator down meant severe
| delays not only in excavation, but on all the following
| works (concrete pouring, impermeabilization) and on all the
| "ancillary" works (ventilation, electric cabins moving,
| etc.).
|
| One of the machine at the excavation front broken for more
| than a few hours would have meant literally days of delays,
| complex scheduling modifications, etc., a total mess.
| jasode wrote:
| _> the argument is that these new tractors are not
| repairable by yourself, leading to expensive repair_
|
| Correct, but the tradeoff calculation includes offsetting
| the expensive repair costs _with potential increased
| productivity_. Or likewise with the other option, the
| "savings" from cheap low-tech tractors may be negated by
| _lower productivity_.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Things will break. Costs isn't everything, time to fix
| matters. An older tractor can usually be repaired on the
| same day on-site, causing a few hours of downtime; a
| newer tractor that will be returned from service in a
| week causes a _huge_ loss of productivity.
| zinekeller wrote:
| That might be justifiable if the service network is
| basically as fast as a DIY repair, however from what I
| read it is still treated to be a week-long turnover which
| might be fine for a low-stake consumer device but a
| downtime here means that net productivity will be lower
| than having less efficient but easily repairable
| machines.
| ThemalSpan wrote:
| You can retrofit gps control systems onto older machines.
| jasode wrote:
| _> You can retrofit gps control systems onto older
| machines._
|
| The highest precision accuracy of RTK devices has vendor-
| proprietary encrypted signals. E.g: https://www.google.com/
| search?q=rtk+signal+encrypted+gps+%22...
|
| So it seems like retrofitting for "precision ag" also
| depends on what commercial "RTK network" is offered in the
| farmer's local area. I think regular GPS is only ~10 ft
| accuracy so not sure of farmers are retrofitting tractor
| steering for that lower resolution.
| myself248 wrote:
| Yeah but you don't need commercial services to get down
| to the inch anymore. Running your own base station has
| gotten cheap and easy; witness Sparkfun selling their RTK
| Express kit like hotcakes.
|
| Integrating it into the vehicle is a fun second ROS
| project for someone who already built a toy robot car.
| There's a substantial population of highschoolers
| building the necessary skills, the trick is just to
| connect them to the jobs.
| mcculley wrote:
| >I think regular GPS is only ~10 ft accuracy
|
| This has not been true for quite a while. The equipment
| used on surveying, farming, and construction equipment is
| much more accurate thanks to the availability of multiple
| GNSSs (e.g., GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou) and
| terrestrial base stations to remove error (WAAS, DGPS).
|
| See:
| https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/
| snovv_crash wrote:
| New 'dual-band' GPS systems have 30cm / 1ft accuracy
| without any basestation requirements. The chips cost $250
| instead of $10, and they require different antennas, but
| 1ft is at a point where dropping further IMO has limited
| gains.
| rdtwo wrote:
| If you add a serveyed ground station you should be able
| to do way better than that
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| well that sounds like marketing, which sometimes marketing
| can be correct, and sometimes it can be a bunch of BS. I
| don't know which is the case here but my hunch would be that
| if it were correct then old iron wouldn't be worth more than
| new to the people who would be best suited to know if it were
| BS or not.
|
| There at any rate seems to be a discrepancy between what is
| supposed to be the case, and what people who should know seem
| to believe is the case.
| jasode wrote:
| _> sometimes marketing can be correct, and sometimes it can
| be a bunch of BS. I don't know which is the case here but
| my hunch would be that if it were correct then old iron
| wouldn't be worth more than new to the people who would be
| best suited to know if it were BS or not._
|
| I don't know if the auctions bidding wars are driven up by
| homeowners managing their small homestead farm or by bigger
| commercial operations. Homeowners don't need to compete so
| buying 30-year old tractors is an easier decision.
|
| I agree that using old tech can be an _counterintuitive_
| cost-saving strategy -- like FedEx deliberately using a
| fleet of very old planes that are gas guzzlers instead of
| buying the latest jets that are more fuel-efficient. Maybe
| some big commercial farms deliberately buy used low-tech
| tractors. When I drive around, all the big operations seem
| to use the newest tractors. They seem to always trade up
| instead of down. But maybe the latest John Deere "lock in"
| and repair costs will make them reverse that buying
| pattern.
| fy20 wrote:
| In my (post-Soviet) country it's still quite common to see
| Kamaz construction equipment (actual construction, e.g. light-
| weight cranes) from the 80s and 90s being used.
|
| It's not that new equipment is not affordable (if something
| needs a 100t Liebherr crane, it'll come), but all the emissions
| equipment on new vehicles is a lot more expensive to maintain,
| so it's simpler and cheaper to keep old vehicles running.
| universa1 wrote:
| Hmm, early 90s "we" already had about 180hp... Nowadays more
| like 300 to 400 for a tractor, and more for caterpillar like
| stuff... With the electronics obviously being a double edged
| sword... You kinda need them to efficiently use those big
| machines...
|
| The smaller stuff is still around, but from my experience
| mostly for "hobby" farmers in Germany :-)
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| From the heavy equipment operators I watch, a lot of them have
| an extreme dislike for DEF and the regen cycles that all modern
| diesels over 25hp (iirc) require.
| dboreham wrote:
| Yes "emissions" engines have a reputation for unreliability
| and costly maintenance.
| SQL2219 wrote:
| Lamborghini still makes tractors https://www.lamborghini-
| tractors.com/it-it/
| ilamont wrote:
| If right-to-repair and ease of maintenance are such huge issues
| for farmers, why doesn't some up-and-coming manufacturer fill
| this niche?
| structural wrote:
| They do! They make parts for old tractors (really, old tractor
| chassis once everything else has been replaced a few times).
|
| As far as why doesn't a new tractor manufacturer start up, they
| have to compete with a few things: first, the market for old
| tractors and parts (if they are repairable basically forever
| and the amount of land used by agriculture isn't changing, this
| is not a growth market). Worse, it's much more difficult to
| design a small engine for sale that is both reliable and will
| pass current environmental regulations. This is a major barrier
| to entry that didn't exist decades ago.
|
| So if you're a startup in the ag space, it makes eminently more
| sense to make small parts for someone else's platform, which is
| why you see companies doing things like deploying GPS, cameras,
| lidar, datalogging systems. There, the market opportunity is
| "all tractors could benefit from this", the competition is
| initially "other small companies", the exit strategy is "get
| purchased by a large manufacturer who would rather buy than
| develop the tech themselves", and the regulatory environment is
| much more friendly.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Does farm equipment need to pass environmental regulations? I
| didn't think it did. If it does I doubt there will ever be a
| startup in this area.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Most farm equipment will be driven on roads, so yes, it
| will have to comply with emission regulations.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| That's neither necessary or sufficient -- farm equipment
| is given passes for most car requirements and I know does
| not strictly meet existing EPA regs, but I am unsure if
| it has absolutely no regs or not.
| Osiris wrote:
| 1. Capital requirements 2. Patents
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| There will be a lot of demand for less electronic cars too. Once
| the mandatory intoxication and automatic braking takes effect in
| 2026, demand for older cars will go up.
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| Belarus has problems right now, but US farmers on the side of R2R
| have been buying old John Deere tractors as in the article and
| modern ones from more repairable vendors like Minsk Tractor
| Works.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| If I'm reading the graph right, this is about the same prices as
| 2008-2013?
|
| So although the prices have been lower between then and now, it's
| suddenly a crisis when prices are what they were 7-12 years ago?
| [deleted]
| gremloni wrote:
| Mahindra tractors from India are used all over the Midwest. I can
| see why- they're solid but can still be fixed by a farmer.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Interesting... I remember encountering Mahindra vehicles in
| South America and wondered why I they didn't seem to be in the
| 'States at all
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