Are You Ready for the Changes that Could Come with a Move to Autonomy?

Oct 01, 2026

I’m down in Louisville, Ky., this week for the Moving Iron Summit. This morning, Quint Pottinger, a no-tiller based here in Kentucky was part of a farmer panel discussion focused on the financial pressure on today’s producers. A lot of the questions posed to Pottinger had to do with the big steps he made in the last year as it related to autonomy.

Looking to slash equipment costs, Pottinger sold his two big-frame 8000-series John Deere tractors and two 40-foot 16-row planters and replaced them with a small 135-horsepower John Deere tractor and a 20-foot 8-row planter.

But the big kicker? He was going to start planting all his crops autonomously.

As Technology Editor Noah Newman wrote this summer, Pottinger bought a Sabanto autonomy kit, which retrofits to the 135-horsepower tractor. It includes antennas, a dual GNSS receiver, obstacle-detection sensors and video cameras.

Equipped with Sabanto, Panorama and Starlink, Pottinger became the first farmer in the Bluegrass State to plant his entire crop with a driverless tractor, joining fewer than 50 farms nationwide, according to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture.

Pottinger says by selling the equipment he was able to reinvest the money back into the community.

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

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