Autonomous tractors could dramatically change farming

An Ontario farmer is taking the agriculture world by storm, turning the average tractor into a self-driving machine with the push of a button.

"It definitely is eye opening; it's very cutting edge," co-founder of GPS Ontario Jordan Wallace said.

The technology is Canada's first aftermarket autonomous kit and is currently available for two tractor models, the Kubota M5-111 and the Fendt 700 Vario Gen6.

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"Once we specify what the machine perimeters are and set everything up, it knows what to do after that," Wallace said.

Wallace is a farmer and the founder of GPS Ontario. He's helping to advance the world of agriculture with breakthrough technology like this. For him, it's about efficiency, doing more with less.

"We farm with this every opportunity we can," said Wallace. "It allows the farmer to go out and do other tasks at the same time, maybe it's cutting hay and this tractor comes in and does the tedding or the raking. One person could manage five or six of these tractors at the same time and that's where we are going to start seeing a transition."

It comes at a critical time when labour shortages are making it difficult to find people to do the work.

"We have about 65,000 foreign workers coming into the country every year to help out, to help farmers, but it's increasingly becoming more difficult to recruit," said Sylvain Charlebois, with Agri-Food analytics lab at Dalhousie University.

With fewer workers and more demand for food, the idea is a small family using autonomous technology could run an entire farm.

"These vehicles could run for 40 hours at a time, they don't get tired, they don't need a break," Ottawa Smart Farm business development director Susanne Cork said. "They alleviate a lot of the challenges that we would face if we had to have a labour force to do all of this work."

At a cost of roughly $90,000, Wallace said it practically pays for itself. He expects the self-driving machines to take over in the next five to 10 years.