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Bringing Affordable Robotics To Big Agriculture
kkleiner writes "Boston-based Harvest Automation has made good on its mission to bring robots into the world of agriculture by introducing Harvey, a bot tasked with the rather modest job of moving plants around in nurseries and greenhouses because people aren't keen on doing the laborious work. At a price point of $30k each, two bots would cost the same as three unskilled human laborers who earn about $20k annually not to mention medical bills due to injury. Harvey's job may not be flashy, but considering the potted plant industry is valued at $50 billion, the bot's little impact could translate into significant money."
Living in the middle of Illinois there's a lot of farming news and farm shows around here, and you see an awful ot of impressive tech, and even science. They have self-driving combines and harvesters that use GPS, cell phone apps very useful to them (some control machinery), chemical testing of the spoil and plants available... you have to know a lot to farm these days.
I know someone's going to complain "BUT JOBS!!!" but the jobs the tech in TFA are jobs are jobs only the most desperate want. Agriculture has been constantly replacing jobs with technology for centuries. It takes fewer and fewr to feed more and more.
Someone's going to bring up GM, GM isn't used much around here, most seed is hybrid -- but the biochemists and agronomists have DNA study of the plants they breed.
There's a TV show that comes on here on Sunday morning at 5:30 AM and it's the only OTA show that's not an infomercial, and It's pretty interesting. Here's their website. I'm not a farmer but it is pretty interesting.
I wouldn't consider potted plants "Big Agriculture." That's soybeans, corn, and wheat.
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...two bots would cost the same as three unskilled human laborers who earn about $20k annually not to mention medical bills due to injury.
That depends on the "unskilled" labor you're talking about.
People legally able to work will get $7.25 per hour (minimum wage) only when they are scheduled to work. In other words, they will work when needed and it'll be seasonal. So, said worker will be really lucky to make $7,000 for the year at that job. AND the hours will be sporadic - he won't know what days he's working or even he's going to work that week. And some of these jobs, you show up at 5AM to get in line and wait until 7AM to see if you work that day - ALL UNPAID.
I know because I had to do it to pay bills. And no, if HURTS your resume if you are a white collar worker. All those employers who say that they want you doing "something - anything" when looking for a "real" job are full of shit. If you work as a laborer, they think that you aren't good enough to work in your profession.
It's better to be unemployed than "taking anything to work."
Now illegal workers, that's a whole different ball of wax.
This is another move toward producing what humanity needs without human working. How many persons we need to feed the USA today?
At some point we will have to admit that there must be an universal income regardless of work done, Otherwise the end of the story will be robots producing goods that nobody can afford except the robot owners.
I was recently picking blueberries at a u-pick. This is easily the best year I have ever seen. Literally the bushes were breaking under the weight of the blueberries. You could eat the berries off the bushes like corn on the cob. The problem is that most berry areas are having a similar banner year along with there being a huge amount of berries planted. All this has resulted in a price crash. This crash has made it borderline uneconomic to harvest the berries. But if you had a robotic harvester this changes the pricing quite a bit. Once you have purchased the machine the price to run it should be very low and the amortized costs are there regardless if you run the machine or not. Thus you can harvest the berries even in banner years. Another option is to also plant excessive crops of different types and then focus your harvesting on the most profitable crops in any given year.
It is my firm belief that robotic agriculture will change the entirety of how we produce food. A few simple examples of changes that few people discuss would be the terrain that is used for harvesting. Two of the key advantages of flat land for grains is that the crop will develop consistently across large areas and thus when harvested be of a predictable quality when turned into bread and whatnot. The other is that it is far easier to build the massive harvesting machines if they don't have to contend with any variations in the terrain. The goal of the massive machines is to vastly increase the ability of a single human to do a huge amount of work.
But with robotic planting, tending, and harvesting you don't need to "multiply" the work of a single human. Thus the robots can be fairly small. Also the robots can adjust the feeding of the plants so to grow a fairly consistent crop in inconsistent terrain. Then in the end when it comes time to harvest. The robot can methodically harvest at the perfect moment for any given plant (repeatedly bypassing those not ready) plus it can methodically sort even down the single grain.
Another advantage is where the cost of the entire cycle of agriculture can be so low that you could robotically convert marginal land into low producing land and still produce food at a very low cost. The return on quality land would be higher but by being able to cheaply bring marginal land into production it will form a scenario of relentless competition thus holding down prices. Plus once again due to the nature of robot economics once marginal land was in production the cost of continued production would be very low. This could also be carefully factored into the logistics calculations where a less efficient production is competitive where it might reduce some other cost such as shipping.
This last factor might result in it being cheaper to produce greenhouses and then produce goods year-round much closer to the point of consumption rather than shipping them half way around the world.
Also robotics can be used inefficient ways such as massively processing marginal land making it quite productive. Normally this is a time eating process that is not worth it. But if you can leave some robots cooking away in a forest for a few years and come back to find nutrient rich terra pretta then again the economics change.
What I can't foresee is which direction agriculture will take. I have a feeling it will be mega massive monster farming companies with very few employees that depopulate the rural farm communities. But at the same time the low barriers to entry might mean that many people will jump in the moment a competitive opportunity is perceived. Personally where food is such a fundamental part of living (right there after clean water) that I don't believe that any small group of companies should be allowed to concentrate ownership of any nation's food production. If they get it wrong, or play evil games, massive numbers of people could suffer.
One prediction that I will solidly make is that there will be very very very very few people employed in agriculture in 20-50 years.