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There's a huge variety of automated machinery used in agriculture already. Tilling, sowing, and harvesting grains can be done by robots. Cows can be fed and mil

There's a huge variety of automated machinery used in agriculture already. Tilling, sowing, and harvesting grains can be done by robots. Cows can be fed and milked by robots. A "roomba for weeds" sweeps the fields scanning every plant and spraying herbicides only on the weeds, leaving the veggies untouched. Self-driving tractors have been driving themselves up and down fields for over a decade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_tractor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_tractor http://smartmachines.bluerivert.com/ http://smartmachines.bluerivert.com/ http://www.precisionplanting.com/#products/ http://www.precisionplanting.com/#products/ https://shop.deepfield-robotics.com/en/deepfield-connect.html https://shop.deepfield-robotics.com/en/deepfield-connect.htm... http://www.sweeper-robot.eu/ http://www.sweeper-robot.eu/ https://www.lely.com/the-barn/milking/ https://www.lely.com/the-barn/milking/ https://www.lely.com/the-barn/feeding/vector/ https://www.lely.com/the-barn/feeding/vector/ I don't believe it's true that everyone's working on self-driving cars to the exclusion of applications of robotics to farming... I also don't believe buying a $120,000 robot is similar to buying a tomato at a farmer's market.

jelliclesfarm 10y ago
It's not that common. I don't know even one farmer who uses autonomous tractors. Like literally.. Except..Right now, blue river tech's thinning machine in salinas but that's kinda hitched to a tractor, iirc. And here is why..1. They are hundreds of thousands of dollars and it is not accessible to smaller farmers. 2. Current tech is more useful for commodity farmers and not the kind of farmers who bring your tomatoes or kale to the kitchen. 3. Corporate farms that cultivate a couple of thousand acres will have more use for it. Small farmers like me won't do it. 4. Even large farmers will be suspicious ..because as a farmer ..if something malfunctions(large machinery and threat of malfunction is a package deal)and it is a few tonnes heavy and your entire harvest over a thousand acres is dependent on machinery you didn't tool or fashion with your own hands, you tend not to sink in a lot of money in it. 5. It beggars belief that they won't come up with smaller robots for the field that is affordable. Because it dilutes risk. Most importanly, we need it. One can harvest a couple of hundred acres of sugar beets with a small crew and machines within a short period of time but when it's time to pick tomatoes, it has to be done by hand only..only with back breaking labour..perishables must be picked right ON that day. This is important to us. Labour issues are not going to get any better. It was never in a good spot in the first place anyways.
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- curuinor 10y ago
  You can see why technology advances less fast in these matters from this attitude. It's borne of experience, true, but real machines are less profitable in every way, so people do the capitalist thing and follow the profit margin. Google has a margin, after paying obscene salaries to its engineers, of over 40%. Sales cycles are 10-1000x faster, except for larger companies who negotiate - but the larger companies have lots more money. Agriculture is the oldest and most essential part of civilization. However, that means we know the most about it, and therefore it is among the most unprofitable parts of it.
  - jelliclesfarm 10y ago
    When you take a snapshot of 'agricultural knowledge' in 100 BC and 100 AD..1800s and 1900s and post 2000s...it's easy to see that it's pretty dynamic. Everything from soil to weather pattern to water to labour availability to market changes. I have a kubota tractor that is about 15 years old. Since then, so many things have changed. Why am I still using tech from 15 years ago? Obviously agriculture techniques and methods ought to change too. It needs to be dynamic because agriculture in my grandfather's time is not the agriculture of today. Even though everyone needs food..it's very necesscity has created an expectation that it is a human right to be fed. No one expects starvation deaths these days and if one hears about it, it is shocking. But it used to happen all the time. A weird supply/demand equation has emerged. Instead of value going up for a universal necessity, it's value has gone down because it is seemingly more productive. But it is not. What we don't see is the invisible costs extracted to get to the point of making food so cheap that it has lost value. It still blows my mind when people ask why food isn't free and abundant. I want to ask if they realize that it is tech intensive, labour intensive, environmentally expensive and cash enterprise. If food is cheap, someone is certainly being exploited and something is most certainly being abused. And somewhere someone is subsidizing it. But with technology and robotics we have an opportunity to right the many wrongs and to maybe erase some of the damages..and yet, there seems to be little capitalistic will to do so...if capitalism doesn't accommodate the tech necessities, what else will? One solution is to make food expensive again. I would wager that it might even contain the population explosion we might see..Italy and Japan are experiencing negative birth rates. Mostly because of economic depression, shrinking age and restricted resources. Maybe that will be the antidote to child like capitalism.
jelliclesfarm 10y ago
a small market farmer's weeding robot in France is about 25k..not 120k. And they rent it out to farmers. We have no such system here. And even there it's not so prevalent but at least they are trying in Europe. I sent an email to a univ that created a research farm robot that is being developed in Australia. They admit that it's not for production. Or a pricing issue. I spent a lot every year on unreliable labour. Even for a small farm. Even if I write it off in five years, a farm bot is immensely useful to me. Regardless, why would I say if I have a 25k or 120k or 500k budget when I am trying to scope a project? I lose all bargaining power if I reveal how much $$ I am willing to spend? I am not trolling. I sincerely want to know how it's done in tech business circles. I am even willing to pay a retainer to assess their abilities. For all I know, they have no skills and are figuring things out at my expense. Thoughts?

jelliclesfarm 10y ago

It's not that common. I don't know even one farmer who uses autonomous tractors. Like literally.. Except..Right now, blue river tech's thinning machine in salinas but that's kinda hitched to a tractor, iirc. And here is why..1. They are hundreds of thousands of dollars and it is not accessible to smaller farmers. 2. Current tech is more useful for commodity farmers and not the kind of farmers who bring your tomatoes or kale to the kitchen. 3. Corporate farms that cultivate a couple of thousand acres will have more use for it. Small farmers like me won't do it. 4. Even large farmers will be suspicious ..because as a farmer ..if something malfunctions(large machinery and threat of malfunction is a package deal)and it is a few tonnes heavy and your entire harvest over a thousand acres is dependent on machinery you didn't tool or fashion with your own hands, you tend not to sink in a lot of money in it. 5. It beggars belief that they won't come up with smaller robots for the field that is affordable. Because it dilutes risk. Most importanly, we need it. One can harvest a couple of hundred acres of sugar beets with a small crew and machines within a short period of time but when it's time to pick tomatoes, it has to be done by hand only..only with back breaking labour..perishables must be picked right ON that day. This is important to us. Labour issues are not going to get any better. It was never in a good spot in the first place anyways.

deleted 10y ago
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deleted 10y ago
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curuinor 10y ago
You can see why technology advances less fast in these matters from this attitude. It's borne of experience, true, but real machines are less profitable in every way, so people do the capitalist thing and follow the profit margin. Google has a margin, after paying obscene salaries to its engineers, of over 40%. Sales cycles are 10-1000x faster, except for larger companies who negotiate - but the larger companies have lots more money. Agriculture is the oldest and most essential part of civilization. However, that means we know the most about it, and therefore it is among the most unprofitable parts of it.
- jelliclesfarm 10y ago
  When you take a snapshot of 'agricultural knowledge' in 100 BC and 100 AD..1800s and 1900s and post 2000s...it's easy to see that it's pretty dynamic. Everything from soil to weather pattern to water to labour availability to market changes. I have a kubota tractor that is about 15 years old. Since then, so many things have changed. Why am I still using tech from 15 years ago? Obviously agriculture techniques and methods ought to change too. It needs to be dynamic because agriculture in my grandfather's time is not the agriculture of today. Even though everyone needs food..it's very necesscity has created an expectation that it is a human right to be fed. No one expects starvation deaths these days and if one hears about it, it is shocking. But it used to happen all the time. A weird supply/demand equation has emerged. Instead of value going up for a universal necessity, it's value has gone down because it is seemingly more productive. But it is not. What we don't see is the invisible costs extracted to get to the point of making food so cheap that it has lost value. It still blows my mind when people ask why food isn't free and abundant. I want to ask if they realize that it is tech intensive, labour intensive, environmentally expensive and cash enterprise. If food is cheap, someone is certainly being exploited and something is most certainly being abused. And somewhere someone is subsidizing it. But with technology and robotics we have an opportunity to right the many wrongs and to maybe erase some of the damages..and yet, there seems to be little capitalistic will to do so...if capitalism doesn't accommodate the tech necessities, what else will? One solution is to make food expensive again. I would wager that it might even contain the population explosion we might see..Italy and Japan are experiencing negative birth rates. Mostly because of economic depression, shrinking age and restricted resources. Maybe that will be the antidote to child like capitalism.

jelliclesfarm 10y ago

a small market farmer's weeding robot in France is about 25k..not 120k. And they rent it out to farmers. We have no such system here. And even there it's not so prevalent but at least they are trying in Europe. I sent an email to a univ that created a research farm robot that is being developed in Australia. They admit that it's not for production. Or a pricing issue. I spent a lot every year on unreliable labour. Even for a small farm. Even if I write it off in five years, a farm bot is immensely useful to me. Regardless, why would I say if I have a 25k or 120k or 500k budget when I am trying to scope a project? I lose all bargaining power if I reveal how much $$ I am willing to spend? I am not trolling. I sincerely want to know how it's done in tech business circles. I am even willing to pay a retainer to assess their abilities. For all I know, they have no skills and are figuring things out at my expense. Thoughts?