Ep. 227 - What We’ve Learned After Two Years of John Deere Autonomous Tillage
Agriculture Technology Podcast
RDO Equipment Co.
4.4 • 49 Ratings
🗓️ 19 January 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode of the Agriculture Technology Podcast, host Tony Kramer sits down with Tyler Zima, Product Manager for Tillage and Autonomy at RDO Equipment Co., to break down John Deere’s autonomous tillage solution and what it actually looks like in the field today. After two years, four tillage seasons and more than 13,000 autonomous acres covered, Tony and Tyler share real-world insights from working directly with customers across multiple operations. In this episode, you’ll learn: • Which equipment is compatible with John Deere autonomous tillage • How Precision Upgrade Kits (PUKs) allow existing equipment to run autonomously • How autonomous tillage is operated using Ops Center Mobile • What happens when the machine encounters dust, water, objects or people • What RDO and our customers have learned after multiple seasons in the field • How autonomous tillage can improve flexibility and quality of life on the farm • Where autonomy is headed next and what customers should consider before adopting
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Tony Kramer, your host of the Agriculture Technology podcast, and I'm sitting down with |
| 0:06.7 | agriculture technology and equipment experts to help you enhance your operation for today, |
| 0:12.2 | tomorrow, and into the future. In this episode, I talk with Tyler Zimmer about the John |
| 0:18.7 | Deere Autonomous Tillage Solution. |
| 0:23.8 | Very excited to welcome back to the show, Tyler Zima. |
| 0:26.9 | So this is actually your second time on the show. |
| 0:29.7 | We recorded an episode not long back out in the field, actually, at one of our field days. |
| 0:35.4 | So why don't you just reintroduce yourself, tell our listeners again a little bit about |
| 0:41.9 | who you are, where you come from, and how you got to where you are today. |
| 0:45.2 | Yeah, so good afternoon, Tyler Zima. |
| 0:47.9 | I've been with audio now for two years and it was kind of fun. |
| 0:51.6 | My first day on the job, I got to go to autonomous tillage meeting with John Deere. |
| 0:56.4 | And here we are two years later, four seasons later, now running seven tractors. |
| 1:00.4 | And it's just been a fun ride to just work with the customers and help John Deere along with this autonomous solution that they're offering. |
| 1:08.6 | Yeah, absolutely. |
| 1:09.1 | So product manager of the tillage and autonomy |
| 1:12.7 | kind of world within RDO. So you got to work, like you said, very closely with the |
| 1:19.4 | autonomous tillage. And we'll talk a little bit about our experiences with RDO and the |
| 1:24.8 | customers that we've worked with with autonomous tillage. |
| 1:28.0 | But before we do that, I want to talk a little bit about what is autonomous tillage, |
| 1:33.6 | what tractors are capable of being autonomous, what tillage tools out there can we hook up |
| 1:39.6 | to those autonomous tractors? |
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