DES MOINES, Iowa – John Deere released a request for proposals (RFP) from the satellite industry to connect and automate the operations of 1.5 million agricultural machines by 2026.

The agricultural giant boasts that tens of thousands of its machines are already connected to terrestrial cellular networks, allowing farmers to control and monitor their machines in the field without needing to physically be there.

"It is the collision of our past – the progress we've made over the last decade, having seen the value of connectivity – and the future of where we see technology going," Deanna Kovar, VP of production and precision ag production systems, told a group of reporters at John Deere's test farm on Thursday.

"We knew how important connectivity was and was going to be," she said. But when Deere began digging into the state of global connectivity, "it's not as good as we actually thought it was in the places in which we need it," like the middle of a farm field, for example. It might be the case that the roads near the field have connectivity, but that's unlikely to extend past high-traffic roads into rural areas.

Since network coverage isn't up to par in areas with lower population density, Deere is exploring satellite connectivity options instead. The company plans to connect 1.5 million of its intelligent machines by 2026 using SATCOM technology, Director of Emerging Technology Julian Sanchez said.

To take the SATCOM route, each machine would require a ruggedized terminal that transmits to the satellite in orbit. But most terminal solutions are designed for small volumes, rendering them cost-ineffective for a project of Deere's scale.

"There isn't a solution today on the market" that matches what Deere requires, CTO Jahmy Hindman said.

To address these gaps, Deere gathered a group of satellite industry representatives, including spectrum owners and constellation and terminal providers, at its test farm outside of Des Moines to discuss new and collaborative ways to create a cost-effective SATCOM solution for always-on connectivity and autonomous agriculture.

"We need an order of magnitude reduction in terminal costs. That's how significant – that's the request," Hindman said.

While the cost of SATCOM tech seems to be a driver of Deere's RFP, price isn't a solution requirement the company is dictating. "We want to bring the industry together because we think if we can put the best minds together, we can come to an outcome [and] us laying out a number out front may not be the best," Kovar explained.

Data fees are another pain point in Deere's SATCOM ambitions. "We move petabytes of information around, and the data structure is also going to be important to making the economics work," Hindman added.