This may be exactly the opposite way to look at it, but have a peek at [1] the One Straw Revolution. TL;DR: Masanobu Fukuoka was a scientist with an idea of us

This may be exactly the opposite way to look at it, but have a peek at [1] the One Straw Revolution. TL;DR: Masanobu Fukuoka was a scientist with an idea of using existing biological systems to reduce the amount of labour involved in farming. He created a very nearly zero-input farming system with the hope of enabling people to grow enough food to sustain themselves in their spare time. Unfortunately, lots and lots of hype surrounded the project and reliable numbers of yield, etc, etc are probably not to be found. Still there have been lots and lots of similar initiatives with interesting results. I think you would need quite a lot of land for 100 people, but land is cheaper than robots (and is self repairing, and adds to your quality of life). I have a friend who grows all his rice and vegetables for the year in his spare time using Fukuoka's methods (he studied with him for a while). I helped him harvest once and I was quite surprised how well he was doing (easily as much yield as his neighbour's commercial farm). Farm land is trivial to get in Japan and you can often borrow enough to live off of in exchange for a bottle of whiskey or so per year. [1] http://www.onestrawrevolution.net/One_Straw_Revolution/One-Straw_Revolution.html http://www.onestrawrevolution.net/One_Straw_Revolution/One-S...