Russia: Cognitive Agro Pilot, an autonomous AI-based driving system for farming equipment which was designed by Sber and its ecosystem member Cognitive Pilot – has succeeded in industrial use across 35 regions of Russia when reaping the 2020 harvest. From June to October 2020, over 350 New Holland, John Deere and CLAAS autonomous combines equipped with Cognitive Agro Pilot system farmed over 160,000 hectares of field and harvested more than 720,000 tonnes of crops. With the help of Cognitive Agro Pilot as many as 590,000 metric tonnes of grain crops such as wheat, soybeans, barley, oats, sorghum, buckwheat, among others, were harvested over 130,000 hectares, and some 130,000 metric tonnes of row crops and roll crops (corn, sunflower, etc.) were harvested over 30,000 hectares in Kaliningrad, Kaluga, Kursk, Belgorod, Tambov, Penza, Rostov, Tomsk, Kurgan, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk and Stavropol regions. Thanks to the use of Cognitive Agro Pilot, this harvesting season stakeholders were able to save – on fuel and other related materials, shorter harvesting time (machine hours), equipment depreciation, extended active use of equipment before capital expenditures, fewer human errors, optimisation of business processes, and other parameters. According to the estimates of project members, in the next three years, every 10th harvester in Russia may become autonomous.

Automated farming equipment has perhaps never been a hotter topic than right now. Adding fuel to the fire, farm equipment giant John Deere had a big splash at last week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, NV. Last year was a tough act to follow. In 2019, it exhibited its machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) enabled S-Series combine. This year, Deere brought out the big guns with its R4038 sprayer.

Amy A* is 24, a Millennial in every sense of the word, a graduate of the Community College of Cantril Iowa, and she is a farmer. Yes, you read that right. She is a 24 year old farmer in a country where there are 2.1 million farms, 88% are family owned and the average age of a farmer is 58.5 yrs. Industry consolidation had suggested that Amy, who had grown up on the farm her father ran, was not going to become a farmer. But she ended up at Cantril College and realized that the proliferation of technology across other heavy asset-based industries presented an opportunity for her family to maintain ownership of the farm and land.