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But is the juice worth the squeeze? A single employee for 10,000 acres is nothing. (I'm assuming that the three owners would stay on with or without robots.)

But is the juice worth the squeeze? A single employee for 10,000 acres is nothing. (I'm assuming that the three owners would stay on with or without robots.) That person's salary is a rounding error compared to land, seeds, fertilizer, water, equipment, etc. I think the benefit of automation for commodity crops (rice, wheat, etc.) is almost nil. Labor isn't driving the cost for these crops. However, automation for labor intensive crops (like berries or certain fruits) is a huge opportunity.

dougmwne 8y ago
To get to those labor efficiency numbers we've made a lot of food quality and environmental sacrifices. TFA specifically mentions automated laser weeding instead of herbicide/GMO. Fertilizer microdosing is also mentioned which would greatly help fertilizer runoff pollution. I'm sure you've heard of other problems with factory farming, many of which are labor saving practices. The cross section of farming, public health and environmental impact can't be reduced to a commodity spot price, at least not in our current economic system.