Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?

One big problem in America that we haven't even begun to fully address is the Ogallala Aquifer's rapid depletion. Without it we will need truly massive infrastructure investments to maintain one of the world's biggest breadbaskets.

So maybe more farmers would be bad for the economy now, but eventually we are gonna have to pay the bill for all the quick and dirty growth we've built our society on, which means things could be much, much worse for our parents or grandchildren.

As others have pointed out, "productive" in terms of sheer foodstuff mass is not necessarily the optimal measure of a farm's effectiveness, or even a good one. More broadly, the phrasing of your question is an attempt to apply reductionist, scientific method thinking to what desperately needs to be a holistic question.

First, let's consider some of the things we might measure. We could measure resilence - how well the farm can handle changes in, say, weather in the short term and climate in the long term. We can measure diversity - how many different kinds of products are grown/raised there? We could measure quality - are the foods raised there as delicious as possible? (Another way to think of it - can they fetch maximum price at market?) We can measure profitability. We can measure chemical consumption. Soil depletion and erosion. Etc.

Now, what can we "yield"? Are we raising corn, cows, Christmas trees? Lots of farming is devoted to non-edible things. The #1 consumer of insecticide for farming isn't food at all - it's cotton. These questions spill over into macroeconomic factors that extend beyond the farm. For example, high density animal farming is the primary consumer of antibiotics, and the primary reason we are seeing a rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria globally. So the farming practice of "maximizing yield per acre" leads to human health problems that may wind up killing millions.

So basic to questions about robotics and automation. First, automation has been changing farms not just for years, but for centuries. 200 years ago, 90% of all Americans were farmers. Now, it's like 3%, while yield has grown drastically. That's automation at work. A tractor is a form of robot, if you think about it.

Now, automation can be used to improve some of the factors other than yield. For example, a weed-picking robot (or an army of them) could be far more effective than herbicides, with less environmental impact. And a lot of what's going on now in ag tech isn't active, but passive - sensors and measurements. For example, if you can analyze the soil on a per-foot basis rather than a per-acre or per-lot basis, and feed that data into chemical spreading machinery, you can both reduce chemical consumption and increase yield simultaneously.

Fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides are expensive. Reducing their consumption makes farms more profitable. And honestly, we're more interested in making farms more profitable than more "productive" in terms of yield alone.

Just some food for thought.

A 'huge' part farmers struggle with is trying to guess when to purchase & sell their products. That's everything from the end product to the seed & fertilizers. Also, tech could help farmers get a heads up on if there might be global surplus or shortage on certain crops. Sensor based tools can do a much better job on how much & where to put fertilizer. I've even seen demos of not using pesticides but friggen laser beams to shoot only certain types of insects.

My prediction is future farms will look like giant JavaScript projects with crazy long package.json files!! There are so many possible tools that could improve a farmer's life. I can even see "Tool Fatigue" being discussed at the local gas & coffee shops.