A new kind of farmhand doesn’t take breaks, doesn’t clock out and doesn’t even sit in the cab.
AKRS Equipment, a John Deere dealership with locations in Seward and Crete, now sells autonomous tillage kits.
Jeremiah Freidel, AKRS Equipment innovative technology product manager for crop care products, said John Deere has had pre-production, prototype versions of the kit out for the past couple of years, but 2026 is the first year that AKRS can order a kit and sell it to customers.
AKRS is currently demonstrating the machine to potential customers in the area, and weather permitting, will likely host a demonstration in Seward in May.
Freidel said the kits’ technology allows producers to remotely monitor and adjust their equipment without stopping their tractor. Using an operations center feature on a tablet, computer or phone, users can control settings such as speed and tillage depth.
Sixteen high-definition cameras mounted on the cab roof continuously monitor the tractor’s surroundings. If the system detects an obstacle, such as a plastic bag, it will stop the tractor and notify the operator, who can then decide whether the tractor should navigate around it or wait until the object is removed.
“The cameras are basically your eyes,” he said. “It’s going to look and survey everything that the tractors are doing throughout the field.”
If the obstacle is a vehicle or person, the tractor cannot be restarted remotely.
“The reason for that is safety,” Freidel said. “Safety is one of the biggest parts when it comes to autonomy, no matter if it’s a self-driving tractor, like we are talking about, or a lot of these newer self-driving cars. There’s a whole different area of safety that has to be maintained.”
Freidel said John Deere worked out any early issues with the machine during pre-production. For example, early units often stopped when cameras picked up excessive dust, but the company collected data and adjusted the software to reduce unnecessary interruptions.
“The way the machine is working now is it’s performing way better than what we even anticipated that it would perform,” he said.
Freidel said the technology has already received positive feedback from early users. One customer shared that the autonomous kit allowed him to attend his son’s soccer game while his tractor continued working in the field.
“That’s pretty much what kind of sold him on the system was, ‘Well, now I can focus on some of these other things and still get work done on the farm, even though I’m not there,’” Freidel said.
Autonomous tillage kits could also help address labor challenges during busy seasons.
“Here, you can take a tractor to the field in the morning, get it started in that field, leave it, let it do its thing and monitor it from the cab of your combine or from the cab of the grain cart, tractor or anything like that,” Freidel said.
He added that the technology can help producers make better use of their time, allowing them to handle other tasks while fieldwork continues. For those balancing both farming and ranching, it could mean focusing on livestock while tillage work is completed.
It also makes it easier for busy producers to be present for family events and other commitments, while still keeping farm operations moving.
The autonomous kit costs around $40,000. The kits are currently only approved for select John Deere tillage tool models but will later open to other, non-John Deere-branded tillage equipment. Eventually, the autonomous kits will work with other types of equipment, such as planters, sprayers and harvesters.
“I can’t say exactly in how many years for sure, but within the near future, a farmer will have the ability to have a complete autonomous fleet, basically, from the tillage pass all the way through the harvest pass,” he said.
