Slashdot Asks: Will Farming Be Fully Automated in the Future? (bbc.com)

BBC has a report today in which, citing several financial institutions and analysts, it claims that in the not-too-distant future, our fields could be tilled, sown, tended and harvested entirely by fleets of co-operating autonomous machines by land and air. An excerpt from the article: Driverless tractors that can follow pre-programmed routes are already being deployed at large farms around the world. Drones are buzzing over fields assessing crop health and soil conditions. Ground sensors are monitoring the amount of water and nutrients in the soil, triggering irrigation and fertilizer applications. And in Japan, the world's first entirely automated lettuce farm is due for launch next year. The future of farming is automated. The World Bank says we'll need to produce 50% more food by 2050 if the global population continues to rise at its current pace. But the effects of climate change could see crop yields falling by more than a quarter. So autonomous tractors, ground-based sensors, flying drones and enclosed hydroponic farms could all help farmers produce more food, more sustainably at lower cost.What are your thoughts on this?

Comments

Re:No

[Rei]

You're going to see a steady conversion rather than some sudden leaps-and-bounds shifts. Step by step, crop by crop. Even the picking of fruits, nuts, olives, etc is increasingly starting to be done by machines. Even things you'd think would be too delicate for machines, like grapes.

Ag tech always starts out expensive, but it gets cheaper the more people who use it.

Re:Obvious way forward is obvious

[Mashiki]

Considering you can set your tractor to "auto drive" with some of the more expensive version along with your fertilizing and planting equipment completely? This revolution is already here. Pretty much every tractor out there has GPS built in these days to allow you to program everything in. Hell, a buddy of mine who owns a cattle farm(milk), doesn't even go out and deal with milking his cows anymore. It's all automated. The only time he even has to worry about it, is when the milker can't find the teats but that maybe happens one every 2-3 days. He's got around 1500 head, so it was a tedious chore before. You can even get equipment to do automatic vaccinations(as they come in for milking) and booster shots for your cattle, and everything from robot controlled egg immunization for chickens and turkeys and egg selection for breeding.

100% Correct

[Pollux]

And to add to the money side, there's banking, human resources (many farms use hired hands), filing and redeeming crop insurance...

The parent post best describes what farms currently are. My mom and dad can both talk about what it used to be like growing up on a farm; waking up at 5am, feeding livestock, cleaning pens, milking cows, their dads fixing the tractor and equipment, tilling, plowing, seeding, fertilizing, spraying, harvesting...and lots and lots of praying for good weather and a good harvest. But most of all, it was always a roller-coaster ride of two or three really good years, maybe including a boom year, followed by some break-even years, maybe including a few bust years, with never a guarantee that any year could make them money.

Those "family farm" days are disappearing. Farm sizes are growing, and the number of farmers are shrinking. But that's not to say that families still don't own their farms. Crops aren't rotated nearly as frequently. Livestock aren't kept on the side and graze the fields. Machines and automation have evolved, and farms now focus on one or two crops (or livestock) with greater efficiency. Farms have changed from labor-intensive diversified endeavors to an efficient, business-intensive farm.

My grandpa managed a 120-acre farm. Farmers around where I live talk about how they manage their 1,000+ acre farms. Automated machinery will just make these farms grow even larger and make it easier for farmers to own and farm more land.