In the future, agricultural machinery manufacturer John Deere wants to deliver its equipment such as tractors, combine harvesters and seed drills with a connection to Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet. The two companies have agreed on a corresponding cooperation agreement. The reports the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) citing the provider’s head of technology, Jahmy Hindman.
Hindman told the WSJ: “This brings us one step closer to ubiquitous connectivity everywhere in the world”. The problem from John Deere’s point of view is that this networking is actually not ubiquitous worldwide and, particularly in rural areas, lags far behind the infrastructure in urban centers. Starlink is intended to close this gap for John Deere.
The stated goal is to make John Deere’s existing software technology available to more customers with a connection to the Internet. This in turn should help with the increasing automation of agriculture and increase John Deere’s sales. By the end of the current decade, the company wants to generate around 10 percent of its revenue from software fees.
Before the contract was now announced, the two companies tested the feasibility of Starlink for agricultural machinery for months. The plan is for the service to initially be used in Brazil and in very remote areas of the USA. The antennas for connection should be specially adapted to the dusty and uneven agricultural environment. According to John Deere, it has not yet been decided what the antennas and the use of the service will ultimately cost farms.