John Deere and satellites?!

I rarely use the phrase "I'm excited about something" but this time I learned about a project that is so fascinating that I decided to write about it and share the emotions with you.

I come from a broadcaster background and am involved in satellite communications for over 20 years. From this perspective, this means of communication has it's gold era behind it and is in a mature phase of the cycle. Still cool, still evolving but not much to be really excited about.

So it is with great pleasure that I listened to this CNBC podcast

Not many people are aware that satellites have been an important part of agriculture for decades. GPS positioning is key and so are precise maps. But what 约翰迪尔 is doing is... out of this world.

Who would have thought that it's agriculture where autonomous vehicles (tractors!) will actually be used in practise - not as a gadget, but because there is a business case? It's pretty obvious once you think about it - fields are by nature of things areas separated from random traffic - pedestrian or other. Fields usually have a pretty regular shape are very well mapped - for important legal reasons. These are perfect conditions to implement remotely controlled or autonomous equipment (similar to trains running on separated track). The thing that is often lacking is telecommunications coverage. And this is where LEO and MEO satellites come into play - providing a biderctional link to the machines working in the fields but supervised remotely. It's already happening but being rapidly developped. And the potential for precision farming using such solution is limitless. Improving crop yield, reducing the use of chemicals and moving labour to other functions. Finding people to work in agriculture is becoming more and more difficult and the jobs in farming require far more skills and knowledge that most city people imagine.

This made me think about another subject that is close to my heart - the reconstruction of #Ukraine after the war. Ukraine is considered to be a granary of the world. You all heard stories how Russia's destruction of Ukraine has affected global food markets. What you probably don't know is that Ukraine's agriculture business is a modern industry. Blessed with phenomenal natural conditions, with huge fields stemming from communist times economy and with an existing network of well organised companies it is the perfect site to use automated solutions. On top of that, the lack of employees is acute in Ukriane - up to a third of workers were drafted or volunteered to participate in the war - thus making human resources scarce. The people will hopefully return, trained in new skills - the innovativeness and agility of Ukrainians defending their country is legendary. The new solutions researched and implemented by John Deere could play an important role in restoring this business to it's full glory.

And it's not only the typical agriculture use that comes into mind. Russia has littered huge swaths of land with mines making farming a very risky activity. What if we could use remotely controlled machinery to discover those mines and significantly reducing the lethal threat and saving lives?

As said before - this combination of modern technology in agriculture has limitless potential. And it warms my heart to learn how we still reinvent solutions that seemed to be mature to do new things. I strongly encourage you to listen to the podcast - it's eye opening about human ingenuity.

#JohnDeere #agriculture #farming #satellites #autonomousvehicles #breakthrough #innovation #podcast #CNBC