Iron Giants & Electric Dreams
Notes from Agriculture's Edge
I slapped on the old denim jacket (yes, it’s the sherpa-lined trucker version, thank you very much), and pointed the family truckster west to the North Dakota State Fairgrounds in Minot ( why not?) to hit the forty-seventh-annual KMOT Ag Expo.
Lost in a thousand-exhibit labyrinth, I nearly sent for the National Guard after wandering around for several hours searching for the Legend Seeds booth.
For a moment, I considered loading the boat on Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) stock because they were handing Busch Light Tallboys (BLT) to anybody old enough to wear pants.
With my Canadian Tuxedo and a bit of luck, I’d fit in better than a hipster in a microbrewery.
From custom-designed boulders to log cabins to gun silencers (yes, you read that right), KMOT had almost everything.
Here are a few of the highlights:
Case IH Calls in the Heavies
Entering the ring at a dry weight of just under sixty-thousand pounds, the newest release from Case IH.
Some say the Steiger 715 QuadTrac lists for well over a million simoleons, bones, clams, or whatever the kids call them these days.
Attendants were losing their minds over this behemoth.
I stood in front of the latest entry in farming’s “Who’s got the biggest johnson?” contest, fearful this brute might eat me for lunch.
Here are a few stats to whet your whistle:
15.9 Litre Engine Rated at 715 Horsepower with a boost that’ll bring it up to 768 if you ask nicely and say pretty please
2,401 Foot Pounds of Torque…scuse me!? - That’s enough to uproot a redwood and fling it from Bismarck to Beijing!
519-gallon fuel tank - I’d probably cry every time I filled it but there would be enough go-go juice to drive around the world at least twice so idk it’s pretty cool I guess
Up to eight remote hydraulic valves holy crap that’s a lot you could hook up to like four chisel-plows at once isn’t this a great country?
GPS receivers are sold separately cause you know if you can afford this thing what’s a few extra thousand bucks for autosteer amirite?
A few comments overheard from onlookers:
Too bad it’s not green.
Dad, are you sure we can’t buy one?
Who needs that much power? Deere quit makin’ plows, ya know…
A million bucks? That’s only about six acres of Illinois farmland.
Wait til the 830 Deere comes out.
I’d hate to be the guy who gets this heavy bastard stuck…
I don’t know if there’s a more sarcastic bunch than farmers full of Busch Light tallboys.
And it seems there are a few jelly John Deere fans in Minot.
In a world where there’s talk of tiny robot tractors putting us all out of work (I have questions about that, more later) and about how cars, tractors, and the Popemobile will be electric by the end of the decade, equipment manufacturers continue to go the other way, releasing more enormous and powerful machines.
What a time to be alive.
John Deere is rumored to soon toss their hat into the Biggest Johnson ring with an 830 Horsepower outfit.
I wonder if somebody will tap a thousand horses before everything is tied to an electrical cord and the only internal combustion engine you’ll find is in a museum.
Technology has come a long way.
I often reflect on how much farming equipment has changed since I started in the 90s. Back then, I ran a one-hundred-seventy horsepower tractor with a cab so small that Natalie Portman would struggle to get in and out.
Imagine plowing with Natalie Portman…that’d be something.
One-hundred-seventy ponies no longer delivers the goods.
Companies like Bourgault are pumping out one-hundred-foot air seeders and seventy-foot cultivators.
Side note: I am not sure about the correct pronunciation of Bourgault, whether it is pronounced as Bore-Galt, or maybe it has more of a French ring, like Bore-jeau, or perhaps Bore-goh, idk. Since I’m a Northern hillbilly, I’ll stick with Bore-Galt until someone corrects me.
To pull implements that wide, you need some snort. Companies like Case IH and (allegedly) John Deere are stepping up.
I’m pretty sure this calls for a jovial Gee Cripes.
Makes one wonder what the ag landscape will look like in ten, twenty, thirty years.
Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m excited to find out!
That didn’t take long.
My Canadian-born fiance tells me it’s pronounced bore-goh. I guess that settles that.
Don’t Let the Juice (Not to be confused with OJ) Scare You
People are skeptical of electric cars and trucks, especially those of us in the Northern Tier, where gas and diesel-powered engines struggle to operate through our frigid winters.
A good portion of the ag people I follow on Twitter (I’ve washed my hands of this X nonsense, so it’ll always be Twitter to me) hate the idea of electric cars more than most, aside from Republicans and oil company execs.
Look, I don’t know if electric rigs are the future or hydrogen power will take over, or if we’ll all be riding around in rickshaws pulled by robots that look and talk like Tommy Lee Jones.
Again, your guess is as good as mine.
But predicting the future is not the point.
Listen, have you driven an electric car or truck?
The point is this.
I don’t care what you’re stance is on politics or elon musk or whats eating gilberts grape, these things are nuts. I mean, i’m not crazy about the looks of a mustang mach-e or a tesla cyberwhatever, but good lord, the performance of these things will permanently paste your ass to the seats.
Ricky Bobby can’t even handle that kind of fast.
At least take a test drive before sending tweet tears about the government taking away your precious internal combustion engines, which, by the way, won’t be happening any time soon, so go back to your shanties and tweet about something positive for once.
Okay, rant over.
My other question about agriculture automation is this.
Let’s say you have a self-driving robot tractor (that may or may not look and talk like Tommy Lee Jones, up to you this can be your fantasy too) planting your field while you’re doing whatever it is farmers will do when robots farm the ground, and it runs through a wet hole, plugging up the seed tubes.
Riddle me this.
Who unplugs the tubes?
Is Robot Tommy Lee Jones trained in tube cleaning?
Will we have to sit in a pickup along the edge of the field to babysit the robot, or can we like, watch it on the TeeVee and cruise out to the field when there’s trouble?
See where I’m going with this?
There are still a lot of kinks to work out, so let’s tone it down with the self-driving machinery scaries.
And the award goes to…
Larry.
Congratulations to our fearless leader for winning the Minnesota Crop Improvement Association’s Premier Grower award last week in Saint Cloud.
Unless he’s shooting the shit or a game of pool, I don’t think the man cares for a ton of attention, so I’ll only say this.
The guy cleans out air-seeder meters and combines better than any man I’ve ever seen.
He deserves that Premier Grower award.
End of story.
Amen, and goodnight.
See ya next week. ✌️
Oh, right. The jean jacket. Here it is, kids: (from the days of nicotine-stained fingers and popcorn lungs)
Personally, I prefer my tractors red! "If it ain't red, keep it in the shed!" I'm a Farmall-girl thru and thru lol. But then, I do all my farming without mechanical implements. Just good old fashioned lady-power!💪🙌
I grew up a John Deere junkie but became color blind with age. Thanks for reading!