Pivotal Issues Blog

By: Dave Mowitz The advent of tractors in the Deere family brought with it the desire on Charles Wiman’s part to raise the bar for harvesting machines. Wiman, Deere’s president, asked his engineers to create a homegrown combine that fit the needs of the average farmer in the Midwest. At this time, the market was […]

By: Dave Mowitz In March 2015, I was covering a Ritchie Bros. auction outside of Chicago, Illinois. On occasion, the auctioneer calling the sale would mention where the buyer for a piece of equipment was located. I particularly remember that when it came to the sale of large construction equipment, he would mention it was […]

By: Laurie Bedord There was no shortage of ag tech advancements in 2017. Following are 10 areas seeing innovations that look to transform how farmers do business now and in the years ahead. A number of companies are working to incorporate robots into their portfolios. Introduced by AGCO Fendt, Xaver uses small robots that work […]

By: Laurie Bedord Two of the biggest pain points buyers experience when searching for needed equipment are how difficult and how time-consuming the process is. By gathering listings from thousands of equipment dealers from all over the world, Dan Pinto and Dmitriy Rokhfeld are making that process effortless for buyers. “Dan and I understood that […]

By: Gil Gullickson Mergers and acquisitions picked up in the agricultural arena in 2017. The Big Six in the agricultural seed, chemical, and traits area – BASF, Monsanto, Bayer, Dow, Syngenta, and DuPont – are rapidly becoming the big four—BASF, Bayer-Monsanto, DowDuPont, and ChemChina-Syngenta. Acquisitions also took place in the machinery arena with AGCO’s purchase […]

By: Laurie Bedord A major theme at the 2017 Agritechnica is automation. Companies not only present technology that can be put to use today but also offer future possibilities. Following are five companies that have developed innovations that streamline processes across a farmer’s entire operation. Read More

By: Laurie Bedord As we look ahead to 2018, Ivan Tolchinsky, CEO of Atlas Dynamics, a young aerospace company providing autonomous and semiautonomous professional drone solutions, gives his predictions on where he believes the drone industry is headed. 1. Regulation will increase. This will be driven by concerns over safety, privacy, and the illicit use […]

By: Laurie Bedord As customers of Indiana-based Spensa Technologies, Inc. work with farmers to scout fields, they can now subscribe to receive up-to-date aerial imagery of all of their fields, as well as synthetic maps and analysis throughout the growing season, using TerrAvion’s image delivery platform OverView. “We have learned that our customers are thinking […]

By: Mark Moore When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, it paved the way to the explosion in smartphone technology that has integrated the devices into everyday life. A driving force behind this technological revolution is the sensor. In many cases, these sensors are part of a microelectromechanical system (MEMS), which allows for data […]

By: Laurie Bedord Until ag overcomes the three main obstacles below, fully autonomous tech won’t go prime time. 1. Technology isn’t quite ready. “Auto steer relies only on RTK GPS technology,” says Khasha Ghaffarzadeh, IDTechEx Ltd. Fully autonomous tractors require a number of different and often overlapping sensors to navigate properly if GPS is not […]