Can John Deere become one of the leading AI and robotics companies in the world alongside Tesla and Silicon Valley technology giants over the next decade? That notion may seem incongruous with the general perception of the 185-year-old company as a heavy-metal manufacturer of tractors, bulldozers and lawnmowers painted in the signature green and yellow colors. But that is what the company sees in its future, according to Jorge Heraud, vice president of automation and autonomy for Moline, Illinois-based Deere, a glimpse of which was showcased at last January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where Deere unveiled its fully autonomous 8R farm tractor, driven by artificial intelligence rather than a farmer behind the wheel. The autonomous 8R is the culmination of Deere's nearly two decades of strategic planning and investment in automation, data analytics, GPS guidance, internet-of-things connectivity and software engineering. While a good deal of that R&D has been homegrown, the company also has been on a spree of acquisitions and partnerships with agtech startups, harvesting know-how as well as talent.

This article was originally published as a TechRepublic cover story. Marcus Hall was nine years old when he first drove a tractor on his family's sprawling Iowa farm, eschewing Tonka trucks and Matchbox cars for long rides on heavy machinery. Growing up on a multigenerational family farm is common in an agricultural state like Iowa, where nearly 27 million acres are devoted to cropland--out of the 35 million acres that make up the state. Hall grew up with all the trappings of a future farmer, but a penchant for technology led him down a more experimental path--to the test farm of ag equipment giant John Deere. As manager of the test farm, Hall gets to run field trials of John Deere's high-tech farm equipment before it goes to market. "I just enjoy being out on the tractor," says Hall. "Plus, it's fun being part of this type of technology and the leading edge of what's out there." Download this article as a PDF (free registration required). It's a warm, breezy day in late May 2018, when we meet up with Hall at John Deere's test facility in Bondurant, IA. The farm sits on an unassuming patch of land framed by two-lane roads.

Xinghua, China (Reuters) - A brand new combine harvester buzzes up and down a field in eastern China without a driver on board, chopping golden rice stalks and offering a glimpse of what authorities say is the automated future of the nation's mammoth agricultural sector. The bright green prototype was operating last autumn during a trial of driverless farm equipment as the government pushes firms to develop within 7 years fully-automated machinery capable of planting, fertilizing and harvesting each of China's staple crops - rice, wheat and corn. That shift to automation is key to the farming sector in the world's No.2 economy as it grapples with an ageing rural workforce and a dearth of young people willing to endure the hardships many associate with toiling on the land. Other countries like Australia and the United States are taking similar steps in the face of such demographic pressures, but the sheer scale of China's farming industry means the stakes are particularly high in its drive to automate agriculture. "Automated farming is the way ahead and demand for it here is huge," said Cheng Yue, general manager of tractor maker Changzhou Dongfeng CVT Co Ltd, which provided an autonomous vehicle that was also used at the trial in the rice field in Xinghua, a county in the eastern province of Jiangsu.

For many years, precision agriculture has largely been compartmentalized with the promise of true integration being just out of reach. Now, through the use of super-computer Watson and artificial intelligence (AI), IBM says it will draw all the disparate bits together into a whole that will usher in a more efficient, easier manner of growing crops and doing business through the agricultural chain. To explain the company's vision and what it expects in the near future, Mark Gildersleeve, vice president, Head of Business Solutions Watson Media and Weather, spoke with Delta Farm Press in late November. "As a personal story, I did a startup in precision agriculture in the late 1990s that ended up getting sold. Coming back to agriculture now, I was surprised at how little progress had been made over the last 25 years. "The problems that farmers have are still here.

Environmental author Wendell Berry might shudder at this comparison, but farmers are like data scientists. To make decisions, they ferret out meaning from a sea of data. That data just happens to be related to environmental conditions like temperature, rainfall, salinity, nitrogen, pests, commodity prices, and other variables. What that data often shows is trouble: increasingly costly or scarce water supplies, new and more voracious pests, herbicide-resistant weeds, and extreme weather. All of this can result in lower farm yields and higher costs.

Artificial intelligence, blockchain and robotics are all powerful new technologies that are not only making changes in agriculture, but are also plowing up new legal issues for attorneys, state governments and producers, presenters said during a national ag tech and law conference. The first-of-its-kind conference, Ag Technology and the Law: Advancing American Agriculture, was held this week at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock. The conference, which drew representatives from 35 states, was sponsored by Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, the National Agricultural Law Center and the National Association of Attorneys General. Rutledge welcomed participants on Wednesday by reinforcing the importance of agriculture. "Meeting with Arkansans face-to-face each year, including more than 400 farmers, I have heard first-hand about issues with feral hogs, dicamba drift, black-headed buzzards, Waters of the U.S. and many other issues," said Rutledge.

At 180 years old, John Deere has become a household name that conjures images of farmland, tractors and rural America. But what's less known about the iconic company is that it's become a leading tech innovator in the precision agriculture space, and in many ways, serves as an example of how every business is digital. A year ago, John Deere bought a Silicon Valley-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup called Blue River, and it's now working to incorporate machine learning, deep learning, and robotics into the brains of its farm equipment. The goal is to use automated driving technology, computer vision, telematics, and cloud-based mobile applications to help farmers double or triple their yields -- a feat that will be key to keeping up with global food demands as the Earth's population grows over the next thirty years. "By 2050, there's going to be nine billion people on the planet," said Terry Pickett, manager of advanced engineering for John Deere's Intelligent Solutions Group.

John Deere announced that it is using advanced software innovations, including artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things and open APIs.