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I wonder if more advanced robotics is going to make farming "complicated" land profitable again. The need for flatness etc. might become irrelevant with smart e

by jorleif 14y ago

I wonder if more advanced robotics is going to make farming "complicated" land profitable again. The need for flatness etc. might become irrelevant with smart enough automation, and some variability in land form could be an excellent risk mitigation strategy against disease and harsh weather conditions or variability in fertilizer prices and so on.

noahc 14y ago
It depends on what you mean by complicated. First of all you need good black dirt to farm. If you don't have that no matter how flat it is it isn't going to work. They already have levelers[1] available which get us most of the way there. Again, no good black dirt, it's not worth farming (at scale anyway). A combine or chopper can easily push you over a quarter million dollars, so the guy running the thing for a couple of tens of dollars an hour for a few months a year isn't that much of a cost compared to your input costs, etc. Variability in land form doesn't contribute to risk mitigation much if at all unless you're talking about large geographic distances, which of course it's the fact that diseases and weather systems don't travel far and fast enough not that the land form is different. More specifically, GMO provide the best opportunity to address disease and weather issues. That said, maybe that isn't what we should be optimizing for. [1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uaYbXtPs_o&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uaYbXtPs_o&feature=relat...
- jorleif 14y ago
  Variability in land form may lead to different crops being suited for different parts of the land, which would affect both disease and weather risks.
anamax 14y ago
> The need for flatness etc. might become irrelevant with smart enough automation Automation doesn't address the sorts of problems that "not flatness" causes. Consider irrigation vs pruning, weeding, or harvesting. Heck, even "hand watering" (which doesn't make much sense)isn't made appreciably harder by reasonable "not flatness". > variability in land form could be an excellent risk mitigation strategy against disease and harsh weather conditions or variability in fertilizer prices and so on. What have you grown?
- jorleif 14y ago
  I haven't ever seriously grown anything, so I admit not knowing much about commercial agriculture operations, but what I was thinking about was the following kind of tradeoff: You can do one thing (e.g. one crop) very efficiently, if that is the only thing you do, by standardising the operation and using efficient machinery and industrial processes. The downside is that you have all your eggs in the same basket, and compared to growing several crops, the risks are much higher. When it comes to pruning, weeding and harvesting, a sufficiently smart autonomous robot could do those just as well without everything perfectly flat and in evenly spaced rows. However, it is currently much easier and cheaper to do a "stupid" machine that works only in the controlled environment.

by jorleif 14y ago

noahc 14y ago

It depends on what you mean by complicated. First of all you need good black dirt to farm. If you don't have that no matter how flat it is it isn't going to work. They already have levelers[1] available which get us most of the way there. Again, no good black dirt, it's not worth farming (at scale anyway). A combine or chopper can easily push you over a quarter million dollars, so the guy running the thing for a couple of tens of dollars an hour for a few months a year isn't that much of a cost compared to your input costs, etc. Variability in land form doesn't contribute to risk mitigation much if at all unless you're talking about large geographic distances, which of course it's the fact that diseases and weather systems don't travel far and fast enough not that the land form is different. More specifically, GMO provide the best opportunity to address disease and weather issues. That said, maybe that isn't what we should be optimizing for. [1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uaYbXtPs_o&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uaYbXtPs_o&feature=relat...

jorleif 14y ago
Variability in land form may lead to different crops being suited for different parts of the land, which would affect both disease and weather risks.

anamax 14y ago

> The need for flatness etc. might become irrelevant with smart enough automation Automation doesn't address the sorts of problems that "not flatness" causes. Consider irrigation vs pruning, weeding, or harvesting. Heck, even "hand watering" (which doesn't make much sense)isn't made appreciably harder by reasonable "not flatness". > variability in land form could be an excellent risk mitigation strategy against disease and harsh weather conditions or variability in fertilizer prices and so on. What have you grown?

jorleif 14y ago
I haven't ever seriously grown anything, so I admit not knowing much about commercial agriculture operations, but what I was thinking about was the following kind of tradeoff: You can do one thing (e.g. one crop) very efficiently, if that is the only thing you do, by standardising the operation and using efficient machinery and industrial processes. The downside is that you have all your eggs in the same basket, and compared to growing several crops, the risks are much higher. When it comes to pruning, weeding and harvesting, a sufficiently smart autonomous robot could do those just as well without everything perfectly flat and in evenly spaced rows. However, it is currently much easier and cheaper to do a "stupid" machine that works only in the controlled environment.