25 ms·

Japanese firm to open world’s first robot-run farm

171 points by evo_9 11y ago

make3 11y ago
I'm probably talking out of my hat here, but it feels like Japan opening up to immigration more would probably be a more efficient help to this particular problem
- aksquestions 11y ago
  They prefer to build robots and retain their homogenous culture than import and nurture a slave class.
samstave 11y ago
This is awesome! We were just talking about this on HN the other day. I want to build a fully robotic (automated) talapia fish farm on alameda island if anyone wants to join me?
- ph0rque 11y ago
  Have you heard of aquaponics? You can raise both fish and grow plants in an ecosystem.
  - samstave 11y ago
    Yes - this is precisely what I want to do
narrator 11y ago
I'm a bit puzzled that the reaction on the Guardian to this development is primarily one of fear that robots are taking our jobs. Isn't anyone excited about how all this production and efficiency is going to make food extremely cheap?
- imtringued 11y ago
  Food is already extremly cheap to the point where producers throw it away to artificially raise prises. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-01/milk-spilled-into-manure-pits-as-supplies-overwhelm-u-s-dairies http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-01/milk-spill...
  - asdfologist 11y ago
    I don't see anything in that article that supports your position. The article says that farmers are dumping milk because the supply has been outstripping demand and inventory costs aren't cheap. That's completely different from "throwing it away to artificially raise prices."
  - thangalin 11y ago
    Everyone thinks about food in terms of economic costs. Few people consider the time that's involved. Yes, yes, yes, food is already cheap, but it isn't free because of the time humans spend involved in its production. Imagine removing humans from the food equation. Production (vertical farms), harvesting (automation), distribution (electric vehicles), clean energy inputs (geothermal, solar, fusion), and maintenance (growing crops that can be used to manufacture replacement parts [e.g., organic polymers and carbon-based electronics] combined with modular robotics) needs to be addressed. Difficult, but not insurmountable. Once food is actually free (not merely inexpensive), how will it affect the economy? A large part of our economy is based on trading work (indentured servitude!) for food. Such trades probably predate agriculture. Hunger, humanity’s everlasting, unrelenting stressor is timeless and impelling. Hunger calls us all to consume, to feed corporate machines. Machines that were forged in the flames of the Industrial Revolution, when rich men hammered out schemes for our future. Their plans, perhaps unwittingly, followed the template of slave-driven civilisations wrought throughout the ages. Caste societies wherewithin the wealthy commanded the masses through control of food and knowledge. The printing press and, on a larger scale, the Internet liberated our minds. Wholly automated, indoor farming has the potential to liberate how we spend our time. In 1974, Henry Kissinger (a national security operative of the U.S. government) once proposed rationing food in developing nations to restrict population growth. Starve people today to prevent people from starving tomorrow. How brilliant. Decades later, researchers learned that empowering women to make educated decisions about their own wombs reduces birth rates. Imagine that. Kissinger was shown to be wrong, but it took time to discover the flaws in his logic, the errors in his proposal. With the pressures of work, family life, and other societal impacts, time is the most precious of commodities. What if the majority of the world didn't have to work for food, but, instead, could invest their time dedicated to something they love? (Yes, there are people who have the opportunity to love their work, but I assure you, when compared with the global population, they are an insignificant minority.)
dkarapetyan 11y ago
Now this is innovation.
ooo000ooo 11y ago
And they don't even need immigrants.
searine 11y ago
Neat, particularly for urban applications, but it'll never be as cost effective as actual field planted crops. The future of robotic farms is in the fields, not in the factory.
nostromo 11y ago
> The robots will do everything from re-planting young seedlings to watering, trimming and harvesting crops. Has the author been to a farm in the past 20 years? Most crops today are not planted by hand, or watered by hand, or harvested by hand. (Harvesting is still the most labor intensive part of farming for a few fruits, but automation isn't far off.) I think the most interesting part of this farm is not the automation, but the water saving, the reduction in pesticides, and the decision to use grow lights indoors instead of sunlight.
- bpodgursky 11y ago
  Japanese farming is notoriously manual, inefficient, and protected by heavy tariffs.
  - sithadmin 11y ago
    It shows - in a good way - in the quality of the produce, though.
    - bpodgursky 11y ago
      Pretty skeptical about that. Rice is rice.
      - sithadmin 11y ago
        >Rice is rice. Coming from a long line of rice farmers...I can assure you that this is really not the case. Rice has HUGE variations between various rice cultivars, and HUGE variations in the end result depending on how the grains are polished. Environmental factors and cultivation/growing methods also influence the taste and nutritional profile of the grain. A lot of people, particularly in the West, just simply aren't aware of these differences because they've historically never had access to much other than regular milled white rice. You're also overlooking the fact that Japan's farmers grow nearly every sort of vegetable and fruit produce imaginable.
      - veidr 11y ago
droro 11y ago
Artificially-lit indoor farming is neato and will be a great technology to bring into space, but makes almost no sense on earth. Basically, it requires expensive infrastructure and way too much electricity (https://gigaom.com/2015/12/29/indoor-farming-good-for-cannabis-not-so-good-for-food/ https://gigaom.com/2015/12/29/indoor-farming-good-for-cannab...). Maybe robotically-farmed greenhouses won't have this problem.
- guimarin 11y ago
  I'm just going to file this one away for 20 years from now when electricity is 10-100x cheaper than today and indoor/underground farming is the most economical due to pest, density, and environmental concerns. Could you also say this technology will never make sense? That would be very helpful.
  - petra 11y ago
    Currently ~50% of the cost of residential electricity is due to the grid, not generation - and it probably affects commercial electricity.
- thescriptkiddie 11y ago
  If the electricity for the grow lights is produced locally via solar power, it is actually more efficient than using sunlight directly (provided LED grow lights are used). This is because the grow lights provide only the narrow bands of wavelengths that plants absorb most efficiently. Only about 45% of visible sunlight is usable by plants, compared to around 95% for photovoltaics, which more than makes up for conversion losses. You also get the ability to stack the plants vertically, and the lack of windows makes for lower heat loss in the winter.
  - lololomg 11y ago
    Solar panels are only about 20% efficient though, you're still losing out.
  - vectorjohn 11y ago
mmanfrin 11y ago
Having a tiny rasp pi controlled greenhouse in my backyard is something that really interests me. Can put little chain-driven slides above grow areas to shuffle around 'arms' that can plant/pick/prune/water; garden through code.
- dwiel 11y ago
  Have you seen farmbot? It is almost exactly as you describe.
belltyler 11y ago
I read this "robot-fun farm" and was very intrigued, haha.
pierre 11y ago
The company behind this farm have a nice website with a lot of specification / technical detail for their farm [1]. They claim that this farm will produce 10M lettuces per year on 3500m2. They are also looking for partmers to franchise their technology, inside and outside of japan. [1] http://spread.co.jp/en/technology/ http://spread.co.jp/en/technology/
pierre 11y ago
The company behind this farm have a nice website with a lot of specification / technical detail for their farm [1]. They claim that this farm will produce 10M lettuces per year on 3500m2. They are also looking for partmers to franchise their technology, inside and outside of japan. [1] http://spread.co.jp/en/technology/ http://spread.co.jp/en/technology/
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
What is always left unsaid in the article: they're farming lettuce, a food that has 59 calories per head and is 95% water. One can hardly call that farming in the sense of the word people expect when hearing about robot-run farms. This thing doesn't really produce meaningful food, it produces fluff in a salad, i.e. when you eat half a lettuce on any given day, you'd get about 1% of your calories that day from lettuce. Further, the robotisation isn't really meaningfully new, either. Controlling lighting conditions for food? Old news. Moving around plants with machinery? Old news. It doesn't get much fancier than that. For example this factory-farm still requires you to plant the seeds yourself, no giant innovations here. Is it cool? Absolutely, and it's fun to explore. But I'm not seeing the thesis on a new way of farming that I'm hoping to see. The economics and sustainability of traditional farming, when done well, seems overwhelmingly better, and the practicalities of producing real food in meaningful quantities, economically and sustainably, in an automised facility, is far away and quite different from this project. Lastly, as most Guardian articles on tech, completely devoid of technical/economic details. What's the lettuce going to cost? Who knows.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > What is always left unsaid in the article: they're farming lettuce, a food that has 59 calories per head and is 95% water. Which crop would you be more interested in seeing farmed robotically? Pick one and I'll go get you a link to the machinery that does so.
  - iamcurious 11y ago
    Don't feel any obligation, but as long as you are offering, I would be interested in rice farmed with artificial light.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Bookmarked to come back to when I'm done working for the day.

171 points by evo_9 11y ago

make3 11y ago

I'm probably talking out of my hat here, but it feels like Japan opening up to immigration more would probably be a more efficient help to this particular problem

aksquestions 11y ago
They prefer to build robots and retain their homogenous culture than import and nurture a slave class.

samstave 11y ago

This is awesome! We were just talking about this on HN the other day. I want to build a fully robotic (automated) talapia fish farm on alameda island if anyone wants to join me?

ph0rque 11y ago
Have you heard of aquaponics? You can raise both fish and grow plants in an ecosystem.
- samstave 11y ago
  Yes - this is precisely what I want to do

narrator 11y ago

I'm a bit puzzled that the reaction on the Guardian to this development is primarily one of fear that robots are taking our jobs. Isn't anyone excited about how all this production and efficiency is going to make food extremely cheap?

imtringued 11y ago
Food is already extremly cheap to the point where producers throw it away to artificially raise prises. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-01/milk-spilled-into-manure-pits-as-supplies-overwhelm-u-s-dairies http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-01/milk-spill...
- asdfologist 11y ago
  I don't see anything in that article that supports your position. The article says that farmers are dumping milk because the supply has been outstripping demand and inventory costs aren't cheap. That's completely different from "throwing it away to artificially raise prices."
- thangalin 11y ago
  Everyone thinks about food in terms of economic costs. Few people consider the time that's involved. Yes, yes, yes, food is already cheap, but it isn't free because of the time humans spend involved in its production. Imagine removing humans from the food equation. Production (vertical farms), harvesting (automation), distribution (electric vehicles), clean energy inputs (geothermal, solar, fusion), and maintenance (growing crops that can be used to manufacture replacement parts [e.g., organic polymers and carbon-based electronics] combined with modular robotics) needs to be addressed. Difficult, but not insurmountable. Once food is actually free (not merely inexpensive), how will it affect the economy? A large part of our economy is based on trading work (indentured servitude!) for food. Such trades probably predate agriculture. Hunger, humanity’s everlasting, unrelenting stressor is timeless and impelling. Hunger calls us all to consume, to feed corporate machines. Machines that were forged in the flames of the Industrial Revolution, when rich men hammered out schemes for our future. Their plans, perhaps unwittingly, followed the template of slave-driven civilisations wrought throughout the ages. Caste societies wherewithin the wealthy commanded the masses through control of food and knowledge. The printing press and, on a larger scale, the Internet liberated our minds. Wholly automated, indoor farming has the potential to liberate how we spend our time. In 1974, Henry Kissinger (a national security operative of the U.S. government) once proposed rationing food in developing nations to restrict population growth. Starve people today to prevent people from starving tomorrow. How brilliant. Decades later, researchers learned that empowering women to make educated decisions about their own wombs reduces birth rates. Imagine that. Kissinger was shown to be wrong, but it took time to discover the flaws in his logic, the errors in his proposal. With the pressures of work, family life, and other societal impacts, time is the most precious of commodities. What if the majority of the world didn't have to work for food, but, instead, could invest their time dedicated to something they love? (Yes, there are people who have the opportunity to love their work, but I assure you, when compared with the global population, they are an insignificant minority.)

dkarapetyan 11y ago

Now this is innovation.

ooo000ooo 11y ago

And they don't even need immigrants.

searine 11y ago

Neat, particularly for urban applications, but it'll never be as cost effective as actual field planted crops. The future of robotic farms is in the fields, not in the factory.

nostromo 11y ago

> The robots will do everything from re-planting young seedlings to watering, trimming and harvesting crops. Has the author been to a farm in the past 20 years? Most crops today are not planted by hand, or watered by hand, or harvested by hand. (Harvesting is still the most labor intensive part of farming for a few fruits, but automation isn't far off.) I think the most interesting part of this farm is not the automation, but the water saving, the reduction in pesticides, and the decision to use grow lights indoors instead of sunlight.

bpodgursky 11y ago
Japanese farming is notoriously manual, inefficient, and protected by heavy tariffs.
- sithadmin 11y ago
  It shows - in a good way - in the quality of the produce, though.
  - bpodgursky 11y ago
    Pretty skeptical about that. Rice is rice.
    - sithadmin 11y ago
      >Rice is rice. Coming from a long line of rice farmers...I can assure you that this is really not the case. Rice has HUGE variations between various rice cultivars, and HUGE variations in the end result depending on how the grains are polished. Environmental factors and cultivation/growing methods also influence the taste and nutritional profile of the grain. A lot of people, particularly in the West, just simply aren't aware of these differences because they've historically never had access to much other than regular milled white rice. You're also overlooking the fact that Japan's farmers grow nearly every sort of vegetable and fruit produce imaginable.
    - veidr 11y ago

droro 11y ago

Artificially-lit indoor farming is neato and will be a great technology to bring into space, but makes almost no sense on earth. Basically, it requires expensive infrastructure and way too much electricity (https://gigaom.com/2015/12/29/indoor-farming-good-for-cannabis-not-so-good-for-food/ https://gigaom.com/2015/12/29/indoor-farming-good-for-cannab...). Maybe robotically-farmed greenhouses won't have this problem.

guimarin 11y ago
I'm just going to file this one away for 20 years from now when electricity is 10-100x cheaper than today and indoor/underground farming is the most economical due to pest, density, and environmental concerns. Could you also say this technology will never make sense? That would be very helpful.
- petra 11y ago
  Currently ~50% of the cost of residential electricity is due to the grid, not generation - and it probably affects commercial electricity.
thescriptkiddie 11y ago
If the electricity for the grow lights is produced locally via solar power, it is actually more efficient than using sunlight directly (provided LED grow lights are used). This is because the grow lights provide only the narrow bands of wavelengths that plants absorb most efficiently. Only about 45% of visible sunlight is usable by plants, compared to around 95% for photovoltaics, which more than makes up for conversion losses. You also get the ability to stack the plants vertically, and the lack of windows makes for lower heat loss in the winter.
- lololomg 11y ago
  Solar panels are only about 20% efficient though, you're still losing out.
- vectorjohn 11y ago

mmanfrin 11y ago

Having a tiny rasp pi controlled greenhouse in my backyard is something that really interests me. Can put little chain-driven slides above grow areas to shuffle around 'arms' that can plant/pick/prune/water; garden through code.

dwiel 11y ago
Have you seen farmbot? It is almost exactly as you describe.

belltyler 11y ago

I read this "robot-fun farm" and was very intrigued, haha.

pierre 11y ago

The company behind this farm have a nice website with a lot of specification / technical detail for their farm [1]. They claim that this farm will produce 10M lettuces per year on 3500m2. They are also looking for partmers to franchise their technology, inside and outside of japan. [1] http://spread.co.jp/en/technology/ http://spread.co.jp/en/technology/

pierre 11y ago

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

What is always left unsaid in the article: they're farming lettuce, a food that has 59 calories per head and is 95% water. One can hardly call that farming in the sense of the word people expect when hearing about robot-run farms. This thing doesn't really produce meaningful food, it produces fluff in a salad, i.e. when you eat half a lettuce on any given day, you'd get about 1% of your calories that day from lettuce. Further, the robotisation isn't really meaningfully new, either. Controlling lighting conditions for food? Old news. Moving around plants with machinery? Old news. It doesn't get much fancier than that. For example this factory-farm still requires you to plant the seeds yourself, no giant innovations here. Is it cool? Absolutely, and it's fun to explore. But I'm not seeing the thesis on a new way of farming that I'm hoping to see. The economics and sustainability of traditional farming, when done well, seems overwhelmingly better, and the practicalities of producing real food in meaningful quantities, economically and sustainably, in an automised facility, is far away and quite different from this project. Lastly, as most Guardian articles on tech, completely devoid of technical/economic details. What's the lettuce going to cost? Who knows.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
> What is always left unsaid in the article: they're farming lettuce, a food that has 59 calories per head and is 95% water. Which crop would you be more interested in seeing farmed robotically? Pick one and I'll go get you a link to the machinery that does so.
- iamcurious 11y ago
  Don't feel any obligation, but as long as you are offering, I would be interested in rice farmed with artificial light.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Bookmarked to come back to when I'm done working for the day.