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Great. More unemployment creating tech. Oh, no, wait, all those farm hands can become highly sophisticated coders of course.

maerF0x0 8y ago
But the price of producing that food will decline too. Market economics claims that will lead to a lower price.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  Strictly from a nutritional perspective, fruits and green vegetables are better than grains, beans, and tubers. But the cost of farming them is [currently] higher. It is likely that automated farms capable of growing anything would produce the highest-value produce first, and the nutritional value of cheaper foods would increase. Your fast food burger would replace iceberg with leaf lettuce, then the pale flavorless commodity tomatoes with deep red juicy ones. Then maybe the bun will be made with some cauliflower meal in it. The price you pay for the burger will mainly be for the labor, facilities, and transportation, and the mean quality of ingredients will rise, rather than the price going down. If you make meals at home, you will likely have more options for pre-cut foods, and more distributor-packaged, fixed-weight bags with recognizable brand names on them. Rather than one whole head of cauliflower at a time from who-knows-where, you will get a 2# bag of pre-cut fork-sized cauliflower florets in a microwave-ready steamer bag from Edible Head Farms, with full nutrition panel, a recipe, and a heartwarming story about their plucky farming robots on the back. The market already knows you are willing to spend $X on cauliflower, and captures that same amount with lower production costs and a heap of value-adds like pre-processing, brand, convenience, and maybe flavor, if there's still room. The grocery store is already operating on 1% margins, and can't afford to take a hit on giving the same amount of shelf space to cheaper cauliflower. Your lettuce will come in stacked, equal-sized leaves for sandwiches, and in bagged, fork-sized bites for salads.
cjbenedikt 8y ago
Until of course Coders Automating Their Own Job - https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/agents-of-automation/568795/?single_page=true https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/agent...
mwill 8y ago
Theoretically those jobs would be pushed into distribution, which the article seems to hint at, large amount of small automated farms spread out, rather than small amount of large farms concentrated, could mean more jobs on the middle and tail end of the supply chain. Tbh, I have my doubts it would play out like that, but it does seem they're conscious of it, at the very least.
- cylentwolf 8y ago
  When I thought about this, the next part of the chain to be automated will be automated trucks. So then we need automated distribution from the trucks to the stores. The stores already have self check out. So the whole food chain for plants will not need a human involved.
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  Nobody automates so they can spend the same amount on labor.
wpietri 8y ago
At one point, most of human labor was agricultural, your ancestors surely included. Today in the US, it's now less than 2% of the population. Some of those farm hands probably will become coders. And there are plenty of other good things for them to do.
dang 8y ago
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

maerF0x0 8y ago

But the price of producing that food will decline too. Market economics claims that will lead to a lower price.

logfromblammo 8y ago
Strictly from a nutritional perspective, fruits and green vegetables are better than grains, beans, and tubers. But the cost of farming them is [currently] higher. It is likely that automated farms capable of growing anything would produce the highest-value produce first, and the nutritional value of cheaper foods would increase. Your fast food burger would replace iceberg with leaf lettuce, then the pale flavorless commodity tomatoes with deep red juicy ones. Then maybe the bun will be made with some cauliflower meal in it. The price you pay for the burger will mainly be for the labor, facilities, and transportation, and the mean quality of ingredients will rise, rather than the price going down. If you make meals at home, you will likely have more options for pre-cut foods, and more distributor-packaged, fixed-weight bags with recognizable brand names on them. Rather than one whole head of cauliflower at a time from who-knows-where, you will get a 2# bag of pre-cut fork-sized cauliflower florets in a microwave-ready steamer bag from Edible Head Farms, with full nutrition panel, a recipe, and a heartwarming story about their plucky farming robots on the back. The market already knows you are willing to spend $X on cauliflower, and captures that same amount with lower production costs and a heap of value-adds like pre-processing, brand, convenience, and maybe flavor, if there's still room. The grocery store is already operating on 1% margins, and can't afford to take a hit on giving the same amount of shelf space to cheaper cauliflower. Your lettuce will come in stacked, equal-sized leaves for sandwiches, and in bagged, fork-sized bites for salads.

cjbenedikt 8y ago

Until of course Coders Automating Their Own Job - https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/agents-of-automation/568795/?single_page=true https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/agent...

mwill 8y ago

Theoretically those jobs would be pushed into distribution, which the article seems to hint at, large amount of small automated farms spread out, rather than small amount of large farms concentrated, could mean more jobs on the middle and tail end of the supply chain. Tbh, I have my doubts it would play out like that, but it does seem they're conscious of it, at the very least.

cylentwolf 8y ago
When I thought about this, the next part of the chain to be automated will be automated trucks. So then we need automated distribution from the trucks to the stores. The stores already have self check out. So the whole food chain for plants will not need a human involved.
throwaway2048 8y ago
Nobody automates so they can spend the same amount on labor.

wpietri 8y ago

At one point, most of human labor was agricultural, your ancestors surely included. Today in the US, it's now less than 2% of the population. Some of those farm hands probably will become coders. And there are plenty of other good things for them to do.

dang 8y ago

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?