John Deere wants self-driving tractors to help with the U.S. farmhand shortage

The largest farming-equipment manufacturer in the world, John Deere, unveiled a new crop of autonomous tractors and trucks at CES 2025 earlier this week, as the heavy-machinery giant looks to capitalize on the buzz around all things self-driving.

If your immediate thought is that this sounds like a job killer... it is. John Deere has talked up its machines’ capabilities for precisely that purpose: to help alleviate some of the labor-shortage issues that farming faces, with the company’s chief technology officer, Jahmy Hindman, saying that “there is not enough available and skilled labor” to do the kind of agricultural and construction work that its customers do.

Though John Deere introduced its first fully autonomous tractor three years ago, the latest suite — which includes a couple of tractors, a lawnmower for commercial landscaping, and a driverless dump truck — comes plowing into a world where attitudes toward self-driving vehicles have softened.

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