Slashdot Mirror
New Autonomous Farm Wants To Produce Food Without Human Workers (technologyreview.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Iron Ox isn't like most robotics companies. Instead of trying to flog you its technology, it wants to sell you food. As the firm's cofounder Brandon Alexander puts it: "We are a farm and will always be a farm." But it's no ordinary farm. For starters, the company's 15 human employees share their work space with robots who quietly go about the business of tending rows and rows of leafy greens. Today Iron Ox is opening its first production facility in San Carlos, near San Francisco. The 8,000-square-foot indoor hydroponic facility -- which is attached to the startup's offices -- will be producing leafy greens at a rate of roughly 26,000 heads a year. That's the production level of a typical outdoor farm that might be five times bigger. The opening is the next big step toward fulfilling the company's grand vision: a fully autonomous farm where software and robotics fill the place of human agricultural workers, which are currently in short supply. Iron Ox uses software, dubbed "The Brain," to watch over the farm and monitor nitrogen levels, temperature, and robot location. Alexander hopes to automative every process of the farm, but human workers are currently needed to help with seeding and processing the crops. He cites the shortage of agricultural workers and the distances that fresh product currently has to be shipped for reasons why we need automated farming.
"The problem with the indoor [farm] is the initial investment in the system," says Yiannis Ampatzidis, an assistant professor of agricultural engineering at the University of Florida. "You have to invest a lot up front. A lot of small growers can't do that." Currently, Iron Ox is sending the food it produces to a local food bank and to the company salad bar.
"The problem with the indoor [farm] is the initial investment in the system," says Yiannis Ampatzidis, an assistant professor of agricultural engineering at the University of Florida. "You have to invest a lot up front. A lot of small growers can't do that." Currently, Iron Ox is sending the food it produces to a local food bank and to the company salad bar.
While this isn't going to replace industrial farming, it's a small step in the direction of autonomous crop management. However, what we should pushing to build robots to support outdoor horticulture farms. Monoculture is a weakness requiring heavy use of pesticides and herbicides which is harmful and unsustainable.
I for one would like to welcome our robotic farm overlords.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I've always wondered if robots could patrol for weeds and bugs on a farm
There are a few small weed-bots for home gardens.
There are also a few commercial products for farms.
There are many research projects at universities. I saw one in action at UC Davis last year. It seemed to work very well, and I have no idea why they aren't commercializing it.
Some of the weed-bots pull or zap the weeds. Others use piezoelectric sprays, like in your inkjet printer, to dispense small amounts to glyphosate directly onto the leaves of the weeds, getting none on the crop or ground, and reducing usage by 95%.
What happens to a world when one of the most significant employers of unskilled human labor (the food industry) goes all automated?
This has ALREADY HAPPENED in much of the world. 150 years ago, 70% of Americans worked on farms. Today 2% do. The world didn't end.
Will an increasingly automated skilled work force replace it? I seriously doubt it.
Why do you doubt it? It has ALREADY HAPPENED to over a billion people ... who have become the richest billion.
What I am saying is that we need a game plan for a very probable scenario.
You should start by reading a history book. For the last two centuries, moving a country's labor force off the farm and into the cities has be the key to prosperity, economic development, and higher living standards. It happened in the developed world long ago, and it is happening in China now.
Believing that agricultural automation somehow causes poverty, is astoundingly ignorant.
What happens to a world when one of the most significant employers of unskilled human labor (the food industry) goes all automated?
Unskilled human labor will be used to produce Soyent Green.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!