By MELINA WALLING, Associated Press and AYURELLA HORN-MULLER, Grist
HOMESTEAD, Fla. (AP) — Jeremy Ford hates wasting water.
As a mist of rain sprayed the fields around him in Homestead, Florida, Ford lamented how expensive it had been to run a fossil fuel-powered irrigation system on his five-acre farm – and the way It was bad for the planet.
Earlier this month, Ford installed an automatic underground system that uses a solar-powered pump to frequently saturate the roots of its plants, saving “thousands of gallons of water.” Although they could be costlier up front, he sees such climate-friendly investments as a needed expense – and cheaper than adding two employees to his workforce.
It was “much more efficient,” Ford said. “We were trying to figure out, how do we do this? with the least amount of additional work.”
More and more firms are automating agriculture. It could ease the industry's worsening labor shortage, help farmers control costs and protect staff from extreme heat. Automation could also improve yields by enabling greater accuracy in planting, harvesting and farm management, potentially alleviating a few of the challenges of growing food in an ever-warming world.
But many small farmers and producers across the country usually are not convinced. Barriers to adoption transcend high prices as to whether the tools can do their jobs nearly in addition to the employees they might replace. Some of those staff are wondering what this trend could mean for them and whether machines will result in exploitation.
How autonomous is agricultural automation? Not quite yet
On some farms, driverless tractors dig through acres of corn, soybeans, lettuce and more. Such equipment is pricey and requires mastery of recent tools, but row crops are relatively easy to automate. Harvesting small, uneven and simply damaged fruits resembling blackberries or large citrus fruits that require a little bit of strength and skill to pry from the tree could be way more difficult.
That doesn't deter scientists like Xin Zhang, a biological and agricultural engineer at Mississippi State University. Working with a team on the Georgia Institute of Technology, she desires to apply a few of the automation techniques that surgeons use and the item recognition power of advanced cameras and computers to develop berry-picking robotic arms that may pick the fruit without leaving a sticky, sticky surface . purple chaos.
The scientists have been working with farmers on field trials, but Zhang isn't sure when the machine is likely to be ready for consumers. Although robotic harvesting will not be widespread, just a few products have come to market and are seen to be working Washington's Orchards To Florida's Fruit and Vegetable Growing Operations.
“I feel like this is the future,” Zhang said.
But where she sees promise, others see problems.
Frank James, executive director of the grassroots farming group Dakota Rural Action, grew up on a cattle and crop farm in northeastern South Dakota. His family once employed a handful of farm staff, but needed to in the reduction of partly because of a scarcity of obtainable labor. Much of the work is now done by his brother and sister-in-law, while his 80-year-old father occasionally helps out.
They swear by tractor autosteering, an automatic system that communicates with a satellite to maintain the machine heading in the right direction. However, it cannot detect the moisture level within the fields, which may cause tools to deteriorate or tractor to get stuck, and requires human supervision to operate properly. The technology also makes maintenance tougher. For these reasons, he doubts that automation will likely be the “absolute” way forward for agricultural work.
“You build a relationship with the land, with the animals, with the place where you produce it. And we’re moving away from that,” James said.
Some farmers say automation solves labor problems
Tim Bucher grew up on a farm in Northern California and has worked in agriculture since he was 16. Dealing with weather problems resembling drought has at all times been a fact of life for him, but climate change has brought recent challenges, with temperatures frequently reaching triple digits and plumes of smoke ruining entire vineyards.
The toll of climate change and the work challenges it brings inspired him to mix his farming experience along with his Silicon Valley engineering and startup background and located AgTonomy in 2021. The company works with equipment manufacturers resembling Doosan Bobcat to supply automated tractors and other tools.
Since pilot programs began in 2022, Bucher said the corporate has been “inundated” with customers, mostly wine and fruit growers in California and Washington.
Those who follow the sector say farmers, who are sometimes skeptical of recent technologies, will consider automation if it makes their business more profitable and their lives easier. Will Brigham, a dairy and maple farmer in Vermont, sees such tools as an answer to the country's agricultural labor shortage.
“Many farmers are struggling with labor,” he said, citing “heavy competition” from jobs “where you don’t have to deal with the weather.”
Since 2021, Brigham's family farm has been using Farmblox, an AI-powered farm monitoring and management system that helps them avoid problems like leaks in maple production pipes. He joined the corporate six months ago as a senior sales engineer to assist other farmers use this technology.
Workers fear losing their jobs or their rights consequently of automation
For some young people within the Midwest, picking out corn was a ritual. Teenagers waded through seas of corn, removing the tassels — the piece that appears like a yellow feather duster on the tip of every stalk — to stop unwanted pollination.
Extreme heat, drought and heavy rains have made this labor-intensive task even tougher. And that is now more often done by rural migrant staff, sometimes working 20 hour days to maintain up. That's why Jason Cope, co-founder of agricultural technology company PowerPollen, believes it's essential to mechanize tedious tasks like removing the threads. His team developed a tool that permits a tractor to gather pollen from male plants without having to remove the tassel. It can then be saved for future harvests.
“We can address climate change by pinpointing the timing of pollen release,” he said. “And it requires a lot of work that’s hard to take out of the equation.”
Erik Nicholson, who previously worked as a farmworker organizer and now runs Semillero de Ideas, a nonprofit focused on farmworkers and technology, said he has heard from farmworkers who’re fearful about losing jobs to automation. Some have also raised concerns in regards to the safety of working alongside autonomous machines, but are hesitant to boost issues for fear of losing their jobs. He wants the businesses that construct these machines and the farm owners who use them to place people first.
Luis Jimenez, a New York dairy employee, agrees. He described a farm that used technology to observe cows for disease. Such tools can sometimes detect infections sooner than a dairy employee or a veterinarian.
They also help staff learn the way the cows are doing, Jimenez said in Spanish. But they might reduce the number of individuals needed on farms and put additional pressure on remaining staff, he said. These pressures are compounded by increasingly automated technologies, resembling video cameras, used to observe employee productivity.
Automation could be “a tactic, like a strategy, for bosses to make people afraid and not demand their rights,” said Jimenez, who advocates for immigrant farmworkers on the grassroots organization Alianza Agrícola. Ultimately, robots are “machines that ask for nothing,” he added. “We don’t want to be replaced by machines.”
Originally published:
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