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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 ho

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.)
samstave 11y ago
Who has that reaction?? I'm amazed that the drive to Japan's robotic future is human population centric driven: The average age of their farmers is 65.9, young people don't want to be farmers, their population is in decline for many reasons... Robot farming is critical to their bio and economic survival. That fact alone is mind blowing to me. And awesome.
- jqm 11y ago
  I keep hearing young people don't want to farm but I think there are plenty that do. The problem is, they don't have the experience, nor the millions of dollars in credit required to buy a farm.
- mc32 11y ago
  Some young people do want to become farmers, just not enough to replace the ones aging out. Some of the things they have brought about is the acceptance of "ugly" fruit and vegetables. It's not a big market but it's one that exists because young farmers ate pushing the market in this direction despite a fetish for perfect looking fruit and vegetables. There is even a small movement to get young women into farming: http://modernfarmer.com/2014/03/yamagata-girls-farm/ http://modernfarmer.com/2014/03/yamagata-girls-farm/
- waterhouse 11y ago
  I wouldn't call it "critical" like that. If robot farming became impossible for some reason, and old farmers started dying of old age in large numbers, and if there really were a shortage of farmers or farm laborers, then those who really needed their services would offer a higher wage, raising the price until some young people took it. Assuming Japan has a functioning market economy. I wonder where this claim came from? (not sure how serious the concern you're talking about is, but let's run with it) Who benefits from persuading concerned authorities to push more young people towards farming? How about farm owners, who would have to offer higher wages to a less-competitive job pool? I wonder if they found it cheaper to just tell interviewers that the sky was falling? Whenever you hear someone claiming an urgent economic "crisis", be suspicious. Very suspicious. With a moderately healthy market, often this just means someone will have to pay higher prices--which, as far as they're concerned, is an outrage, a scandal, and an emergency. Edit: Googled around to figure out what stories you might have read. And, let's see: "... Japan Agriculture (JA). With its tight links to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the agriculture ministry, and employing an astonishing 240,000 staff in Tokyo and around the country, the JA is probably Japan’s most powerful lobby. It campaigns to keep high import tariffs on farm goods: the tariff on rice is 777.7%, that on butter is 360%, while sugar attracts a 328% levy." http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21576154-fewer-bigger-plots-and-fewer-part-time-farmers-agriculture-could-compete-field-work http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21576154-fewer-bigger-plo... "Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, has promised to protect “sacred cows” — including rice, beef and dairy — from the deal. Rice carries an almost spiritual significance here, not to mention a 778 percent tariff." https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/japans-farmers-face-an-existential-crisis-reform-or-die/2014/10/18/1df66958-5242-11e4-b86d-184ac281388d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/japans-farmers-face-an-... Hahahaha, welp. Right, then, maybe you don't have a functioning market economy. That sounds to me like the real problem. I know my recommended solution. Hmm, I find it cool that I "called" that one. It's also kind of interesting to see what these Western publications are doing, and how far it leans towards uncritically swallowing the crisis story. The Economist one is focusing on the TPP, and it is mostly critical of the JA. The Washington Post one--I give them credit for mentioning the important facts, but they exhibit no sense of their proper weight or their meaning. The article is titled "Japan’s farmers face an existential crisis", the first time they mention the agricultural lobby is in the 7th paragraph, and generally it seems like "Oh, gee, things just are that way" amid a sea of distracting details: portraits of individual farmers, their history and aging concerns, oh and by the way it takes a combined effort from the local and federal governments to "experiment" with "reform" of a few farms because they're so heavily intertwined that the government insulates them from market competition with a 4x-8x trade barrier and who knows what else, and also here's what this proud farmer has to say about his profession. Eeh. Just strikes me as bizarre.
Retric 11y ago
Robots/Automation has already made food cheap. Modern farmers are literally 1,000x as effective as their medieval equivalents. At this point the human factor is generally fairly negligible compared to other inputs (seed, land, machinery, etc.).
- stephengillie 11y ago
  Remember when more than half of Americans worked on farms? It's why farm labor laws are special. Automation has allowed many of us to live a relatively labor-free life compared to our grandparents.
ramy_d 11y ago
I can relate to the sentiment - what's going to happen to countries in the short term when entire industries like transport and farming are automated at nearly the same time?
- gozur88 11y ago
  In the US, farming represents something like 2% of the workforce. If we lost every farming job (and we won't - robotic operations will have to be managed and maintained), it would still have less impact than the loss of manufacturing jobs in the '80s and '90s. Transport, I think, would hurt more, but I don't know enough about it to say for sure.
  - ramy_d 11y ago
    Yes the transport issue is a big one for the US, however I'm talking globally. It's myopic to simply look at the US when talking about things that affect the US. The US doesn't grow its own food, and we should keep that in mind when reading stuff like this. Rather, I'm trying to take a look at these percentages of farming workforces by country: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS and trying to see what is this new monster of globalization + automation going to do to countries like Egypt, Pakistan, and basically any country that registers anything over 20% on that website. It's my opinion that the next 20 to 40 years are going to be formative when it comes to introducing technology that could radically change a country's class system - Automated transportation in the US being that technology case study. Others will look to the US to see how and if a technology that is developed in large parts in the US is allowed to take over US jobs. At what rate does the it take place? Will there be limitations? Will it be mandated by your Congress? What will happen to your economy? There was a really good AMA on reddit recently about the economics and ethics of automation and when it came to transportation, the writing was one the wall: it's going to get worse before it gets better. https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/45k2pv/science_ama_series_we_study_how_intelligent https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/45k2pv/science_ama...
    - gozur88 11y ago
rorykoehler 11y ago
I'm also excited that we are reducing jobs. Jobs for jobs sake is a fools errand.

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.)

samstave 11y ago

Who has that reaction?? I'm amazed that the drive to Japan's robotic future is human population centric driven: The average age of their farmers is 65.9, young people don't want to be farmers, their population is in decline for many reasons... Robot farming is critical to their bio and economic survival. That fact alone is mind blowing to me. And awesome.

jqm 11y ago
I keep hearing young people don't want to farm but I think there are plenty that do. The problem is, they don't have the experience, nor the millions of dollars in credit required to buy a farm.
mc32 11y ago
Some young people do want to become farmers, just not enough to replace the ones aging out. Some of the things they have brought about is the acceptance of "ugly" fruit and vegetables. It's not a big market but it's one that exists because young farmers ate pushing the market in this direction despite a fetish for perfect looking fruit and vegetables. There is even a small movement to get young women into farming: http://modernfarmer.com/2014/03/yamagata-girls-farm/ http://modernfarmer.com/2014/03/yamagata-girls-farm/
waterhouse 11y ago
I wouldn't call it "critical" like that. If robot farming became impossible for some reason, and old farmers started dying of old age in large numbers, and if there really were a shortage of farmers or farm laborers, then those who really needed their services would offer a higher wage, raising the price until some young people took it. Assuming Japan has a functioning market economy. I wonder where this claim came from? (not sure how serious the concern you're talking about is, but let's run with it) Who benefits from persuading concerned authorities to push more young people towards farming? How about farm owners, who would have to offer higher wages to a less-competitive job pool? I wonder if they found it cheaper to just tell interviewers that the sky was falling? Whenever you hear someone claiming an urgent economic "crisis", be suspicious. Very suspicious. With a moderately healthy market, often this just means someone will have to pay higher prices--which, as far as they're concerned, is an outrage, a scandal, and an emergency. Edit: Googled around to figure out what stories you might have read. And, let's see: "... Japan Agriculture (JA). With its tight links to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the agriculture ministry, and employing an astonishing 240,000 staff in Tokyo and around the country, the JA is probably Japan’s most powerful lobby. It campaigns to keep high import tariffs on farm goods: the tariff on rice is 777.7%, that on butter is 360%, while sugar attracts a 328% levy." http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21576154-fewer-bigger-plots-and-fewer-part-time-farmers-agriculture-could-compete-field-work http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21576154-fewer-bigger-plo... "Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, has promised to protect “sacred cows” — including rice, beef and dairy — from the deal. Rice carries an almost spiritual significance here, not to mention a 778 percent tariff." https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/japans-farmers-face-an-existential-crisis-reform-or-die/2014/10/18/1df66958-5242-11e4-b86d-184ac281388d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/japans-farmers-face-an-... Hahahaha, welp. Right, then, maybe you don't have a functioning market economy. That sounds to me like the real problem. I know my recommended solution. Hmm, I find it cool that I "called" that one. It's also kind of interesting to see what these Western publications are doing, and how far it leans towards uncritically swallowing the crisis story. The Economist one is focusing on the TPP, and it is mostly critical of the JA. The Washington Post one--I give them credit for mentioning the important facts, but they exhibit no sense of their proper weight or their meaning. The article is titled "Japan’s farmers face an existential crisis", the first time they mention the agricultural lobby is in the 7th paragraph, and generally it seems like "Oh, gee, things just are that way" amid a sea of distracting details: portraits of individual farmers, their history and aging concerns, oh and by the way it takes a combined effort from the local and federal governments to "experiment" with "reform" of a few farms because they're so heavily intertwined that the government insulates them from market competition with a 4x-8x trade barrier and who knows what else, and also here's what this proud farmer has to say about his profession. Eeh. Just strikes me as bizarre.

Retric 11y ago

Robots/Automation has already made food cheap. Modern farmers are literally 1,000x as effective as their medieval equivalents. At this point the human factor is generally fairly negligible compared to other inputs (seed, land, machinery, etc.).

stephengillie 11y ago
Remember when more than half of Americans worked on farms? It's why farm labor laws are special. Automation has allowed many of us to live a relatively labor-free life compared to our grandparents.

ramy_d 11y ago

I can relate to the sentiment - what's going to happen to countries in the short term when entire industries like transport and farming are automated at nearly the same time?

gozur88 11y ago
In the US, farming represents something like 2% of the workforce. If we lost every farming job (and we won't - robotic operations will have to be managed and maintained), it would still have less impact than the loss of manufacturing jobs in the '80s and '90s. Transport, I think, would hurt more, but I don't know enough about it to say for sure.
- ramy_d 11y ago
  Yes the transport issue is a big one for the US, however I'm talking globally. It's myopic to simply look at the US when talking about things that affect the US. The US doesn't grow its own food, and we should keep that in mind when reading stuff like this. Rather, I'm trying to take a look at these percentages of farming workforces by country: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS and trying to see what is this new monster of globalization + automation going to do to countries like Egypt, Pakistan, and basically any country that registers anything over 20% on that website. It's my opinion that the next 20 to 40 years are going to be formative when it comes to introducing technology that could radically change a country's class system - Automated transportation in the US being that technology case study. Others will look to the US to see how and if a technology that is developed in large parts in the US is allowed to take over US jobs. At what rate does the it take place? Will there be limitations? Will it be mandated by your Congress? What will happen to your economy? There was a really good AMA on reddit recently about the economics and ethics of automation and when it came to transportation, the writing was one the wall: it's going to get worse before it gets better. https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/45k2pv/science_ama_series_we_study_how_intelligent https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/45k2pv/science_ama...
  - gozur88 11y ago

rorykoehler 11y ago

I'm also excited that we are reducing jobs. Jobs for jobs sake is a fools errand.