Meet the First U.S. Farmer to Plant His Entire Crop Autonomously

During the 2026 planting season, Quint Pottinger’s day started differently than it typically had. Around 5:30 a.m. with a text message, not a walk to the tractor.

The message wakes the computer aboard Geneva, a driverless tractor his family named after his grandmother. By 6 a.m., he has checked the cameras and hit go. Then the tractor plants corn on its own, hour after hour, until around midnight.

That’s the new normal for Pottinger, as this spring, the eighth-generation Kentucky farmer became the first in the U.S. to plant his entire crop autonomously. Pottinger did it without a company running the operation for him, and without a demo or research program to lean on, proving not only what’s possible, but giving hope for smaller family farms who are desperate for ways to farm with smaller, less expensive equipment.

For Pottinger, the move to autonomous was born of necessity. After three drought years that forced the family to cut everything from fertilizer to employees to equipment, Pottinger says he was running out of places to trim. A conversation with his lender pointed him toward one last option: cut costs or get out. And that’s when Quint decided to try something crazy: autonomous equipment.

Harvesting His First Autonomously Planted Crop

The Pottingers are now harvesting the first crop they ever planted autonomously, but harvest is still being done with a driver in the combine, and a grain cart operated by a person in the tractor.

The first season, though, was far from smooth. For Affinity Farms in New Haven, the crop year started with floods and heavy rains, and the family’s autonomous experiment was tested from the start.

“Some of our crops we’ve planted three times, with floods and heavy rains, and then of course you can get back in your fields,” says Ramey Pottinger, Quint’s father and a seventh-generation farmer.

But as the combines started rolling in recent weeks, the yields are a pleasant surprise. Quint, says the corn is coming out of the field at 30% moisture but yielding 200 to 250 bu. per acre or better.

“It’s a big surprise and a welcome, welcome surprise,” he says.

In an area that typically averages 150 to 170 bushels per acre, the crop could finally be a bountiful one, and it comes at a critical time.

“The last three years we’ve had bad, bad dry weather in July, and we’ve been making 100 to 130, so it’s been hard to pay the bill,” Quint says. “So this year is needed. We needed it. This was a big year for us.”

Three Years of Drought, and a Call From the Banker

The Pottingers’ farm has been planted for 245 years, and the last three were among the most grueling in its history. Quint says the stress of the drought years extended well beyond the field.

“You knew you were going to get a call from the banker, and you didn’t know what his mood was going to be,” he says. “Depending on how his mood is going to be would set your mood for the week.”

The family cut everything they could, from seed and fertilizer to employees, land and cash rent.

“It’s tough to cut, because you know you need things to make a profit,” Quint says. “But if the rain doesn’t show up, it doesn’t matter what you put in the ground, it’s not going to grow.”

Even after all those cuts, Quint received another call, and there was only one thing left to cut.

“We cut everything,” he says. “We even cut our equipment.”

A Google Search Changes the Plan

It was a talk with a lender that put Quint on a new path. His equipment costs weren’t out of control, the lender told him. He was running 10- to 15-year-old machines and carrying debt on them, but nothing massive. Still, the lender said, if he could find a way to trim even that, cash flow would improve.

“I’m thinking there’s nothing else I can get rid of and still be able to farm efficiently,” Quint says. “So I just Googled autonomy, and a company called Sabanto popped up.”

The company sells a retrofit kit that can turn a standard tractor into a self-driving machine. When Quint reached out, he learned the company’s applications were built for mowing. It hadn’t developed anything for row crops yet, though it wanted to.

“I thought, well, send the demo out. Let’s just see,” he says.

The demo worked, and Ramey urged his son to go all in.

“They came and demonstrated it last year, and when it got through to Quint, it was, ‘How soon can you get it in there?’” Ramey says.

Meet Geneva, Quint’s Tractor With an Autonomous Retrofit Kit

The tractor arrived on the farm looking like any other. But with the retrofit kit, it took an ordinary tractor into a driverless tractor, and a first-of-its-kind.

The Pottingers named her Geneva, after Quint’s grandmother. “It’s just a regular tractor that we can control with a cell phone,” Quint says.

Each job is called a “mission,” and setup takes about five minutes on what Quint calls a super-intuitive operating system. He can pre-plan most missions at the start of the season. When Geneva finishes one field, she asks permission to move to the next and sends a photo of any crossing along the way.

“I say yes, and then it goes,” he says.

The Pottingers first put the technology to work last year, with an upgraded John Deere 750 drill planting behind the autonomous tractor. They seeded 500 acres of rye, wheat and barley, followed by 300 acres of cover crop last fall. This spring, they took the leap to row crops.

Quint says the farm is the first to deploy autonomy at this scale in the world, planting a row crop without a company’s help, a demo or a research program.

“There are a lot of companies trying this, a lot of companies pushing it, but the engineers and the owners have control. The farmer doesn’t have the control,” he says. “We’re the first ones doing it at this level.”

Getting there wasn’t easy. Setting up the corn planter posed problems, and the family was working through them on its own. But Quint says he felt the weight of getting it right.

“If we committed to this and we did it and it was wrong, we could have set the industry back,” he says.

Planting From a Phone: A Day in the Life

During planting season, Quint’s morning starts around 5:30 a.m. with a text message that wakes the tractor’s computer and powers up its Starlink connection, replacing the cellular signal. By 6 a.m., he’s checking the cameras. When everything looks clear, he hits go.

“She plants for two hours, and then I come in wherever field she’s at, fill her up with fuel and seed, and do a full maintenance check on the drill and tractor,” Quint says.

Then he sends her off again, checking in at noon, 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., and shutting her down around midnight.

“Then I start it over the next morning,” he adds.

The hardest habit to break is watching.

“Sometimes when I go fill it up with seed, I sit on the seed tender and watch it run, and I’m thinking, you idiot, you got this thing for a reason. Don’t sit here and watch it. Go do something else,” he says.

Quirks and Lessons Learned

The technology has limits. Since Quint is the first to use the technology on a commerical scale, there’s been a lot of lessons. But one thing it can’t do is back up, and Quint doubts that will change.

The machine would need additional sensors and likely satellite capability on the implements. That means fields must be laid out carefully so the tractor ends each pass where it can reach the next without traveling far. Quint still has to fill in some corners by hand.

The wet spring tested the system. Some 300 acres were replanted three times, and Quint says each replant was its own mission with a different layout. He set up the last one while on a research trip in Germany.

Quint Says This Could Help Save Smaller, Family Farms

Each chapter in the 245-year history of the farm has come down to efficiency, and this one is no different. With labor costs high, Ramey says, going autonomous seemed like the best path.

“It saved us tremendously on labor this year,” he says.

Not only did it save on labor, it allowed the Pottingers to trade it much larger, more expensive equipment for smaller, less expensive machines. That includes trading it their 16-row planter for an 8-row, and trading their high-horsepower tractor in for a tractor that costs $90,000.

Quint doesn’t pretend the technology is for everyone. But as the commodity market evolves and the pressure to reach 10,000 acres grows, it helped give their 2,000-acre operation a fighting chance. And he expects it to draw more farmers in.

“I think it pushes some people into the autonomy space,” he says.

He sees the biggest opening on smaller operations. Quint believes autonomy can make a row-crop farm of 5,000 acres or fewer profitable, and it gives those farms room to diversify. The same tractor can pull a tedder, mower or baler, he says, and it’s “sized correctly to be able to run a diversified farm.”

“So no, maybe not for everyone, maybe not now,” Quint says, “but definitely has applications across a wide swath of growers that may use it.”

Other Growers Are Taking Notice

Quint’s neighbors aren’t the only ones watching. Word is spreading to farmers well outside row crops, and Quint says a vegetable grower is planning to visit the farm to see Geneva in action.

That grower runs a large tractor pulling a large disk, and Quint says he has $800,000 invested in those two pieces of equipment. Now he’s looking at autonomy as a way to change the math.

“He’s looking to get four of these units and go from 36 feet of coverage to 48, increasing his coverage and halving his cost, just to try to match what the market’s doing,” Quint says.

Next Up: Sprayers, and Maybe a Harvest Swarm

Geneva isn’t harvesting yet, but Quint has ideas. Next year, he plans to add a three-point-hitch sprayer, along with more mowing and seeding missions. Then there’s harvest.

“Could you imagine? A small 100-horsepower tractor like Geneva, two of them, pulling two small 400-bushel grain carts, working in a swarm to make sure the combine operator can keep going,” he says.

For a farm that has gone from mules to self-driving tractors, Ramey says the change is remarkable.

“When I was a kid, I rode with my grandfather behind two mules and a five-foot sickle mower, cutting grass and hay,” he says. “Now we’ve got tractors that’ll do it automatically. It’s amazing.”

Change Born Out of Necessity

For the Pottingers, the leap was about survival at first. Now it’s about staying true to who they’ve always been.

“My family’s been here for 245 years. We’ve seen a lot of change, and I think that’s just bred into us,” Quint says. “We’re always looking for how we evolve to make sure we’re serving our community, and that’s what the farm is supposed to be.”

The pressure that pushed him toward autonomy has eased. And today, he doesn’t feel like he’s still in survival mode?

“I don’t,” Quint says. “I’m having fun again.”