The rise of the robot farmer • Hacker News Board

Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#101

Post by PeterisP » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 8:57 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #98

PeterisP wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your arguments seem misleading - the existence of anatomically modern humans goes back roughly 200,000 years, but human history , i.e. the era with documented evidence starts with widespread writing that comes much, much later; first samples of writing is from ~5000 BC, but they're sparse enough to not be informative about social practices. The very first documented law codes (2100–2050 BCE https://en.wikipedia.org/w…

What part of those laws that didn't pertain to agriculture (failing to plant/harvest) were about the penalty for raping somebody else's slave. So many measures of grain etc.

That does bring the notion that we can make some assumptions about slavery in prehistoric times; it seems a core part of society in early agricultural societies but we have not observed it so much in hunter-gatherer communities (except sedentary hunter-gatherers with higher population density, which generally do have slavery, so it's more about the settling down rather than food source) - purely for economic reasons; it's practical/useful to keep slaves for farming or mining labor, but not so much for sparse, mobile hunting/gathering parties. Raiding neighbours for "wives" i.e. sex slaves does seem to be a thing even in those societies, though.

It could be a reasonable assumption that the prehistoric agricultural societies had slavery just as early historical agricultural societies, but that the earlier hunter-gatherers, i.e. a major part of those 200,000 years did not have widespread slavery. Well, other than the "intermarriage" with neighbours (often likely not fully voluntarily) which predates modern humans, given the genetic evidence for the partial "assimilation" of neanderthals and other parallel hominids.

Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#102

Post by jimbokun » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 9:09 PM UTC

rmason wrote: post #9

In Michigan we've already got family farms with a man, two sons and a single employee handling 10,000 acres. Robots driving tractors, trucks and combines would allow that to expand 5-6X. In turn that would lead to a reduction in farmers of up to 80%. This is a trend that has been running for close to a hundred years. Remember at one time a quarter of America's population were farmers and now it's under 2%.

It seems like you would still want those 4 people, just to keep an eye on what's happening with those 10,000 acres, whether the robots are working correctly, selling and marketing their harvest, researching new opportunities for improvement, etc. With just 4 people, you also have a worryingly high bus factor if one gets sick or takes time off for any other reason.

Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#103

Post by AnimalMuppet » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 9:39 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #58

clarkmoody wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The immense productivity gains in agriculture have driven down food costs, which improves the standard of living of everyone. It also frees up those who would have worked farm jobs to do higher-valued labor in the economy.

frees up those who would have worked farm jobs to do higher-valued labor But what if they don't want to? Yay for consumers but throwing people into economic limbo is a Bad Thing. That's like looking for the next record-breaking swimmer by randomly throwing kids into swimming pools.

Almost nobody who loses their job wants to. It's still a net win for the economy as a whole that people lose the jobs that are no longer worth doing.

Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#104

Post by gamblor956 » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 9:39 PM UTC

zackmorris wrote: post #35

Now for a bit of hubris: anyone else reading this feel that building a robot that could do pest/weed control and harvesting is almost a triviality compared to say, fixing enterprise software to maximize customer purchases and ad revenue? What are we all doing? Seriously, why can't each of us take a year of our lives and automate all the most awful jobs in the world? Asking for a friend :-P

You have it exactly backgrounds.

Building yet another database/analytics platform is trivial compared to automating even the simplest real-world tasks. Because in the real world, you don't have full control of everything, and you can't just hit the reset button or restore from backup.

Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#105

Post by deialtrous » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 9:44 PM UTC

tda wrote: post #27

rmason wrote: post #9

In Michigan we've already got family farms with a man, two sons and a single employee handling 10,000 acres. Robots driving tractors, trucks and combines would allow that to expand 5-6X. In turn that would lead to a reduction in farmers of up to 80%. This is a trend that has been running for close to a hundred years. Remember at one time a quarter of America's population were farmers and now it's under 2%.

managing giant monocultures with a few giant machines (that may or may not be human controlled) is not what this article is about; it is about the huge potential that smallish robots have for farming. More diverse crops, less pesticides, less damage to soil, less energy use, mixed instead of mono cultures. Really exciting if this takes off, such a win for the environment, the landscape, and ultimately for everyone of…

We already can do all of that, we don't need robots. Most farms have been no till for years now, the idea that fields are plowed is an anachronism. This is more tech wankery, people with a particular technology trying to shoehorn it into being the "solution" to problems that are already solved easier and cheaper.

Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#106

Post by anigbrowl » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 9:49 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #103

anigbrowl wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

frees up those who would have worked farm jobs to do higher-valued labor But what if they don't want to? Yay for consumers but throwing people into economic limbo is a Bad Thing. That's like looking for the next record-breaking swimmer by randomly throwing kids into swimming pools.

Almost nobody who loses their job wants to. It's still a net win for the economy as a whole that people lose the jobs that are no longer worth doing.

But pure capital allocation efficiency isn't a good indicator of social well being, just as infinite sugar sounds momentarily delightful until you think about diabetes.

Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#107

Post by deialtrous » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 9:50 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #38

tda wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

managing giant monocultures with a few giant machines (that may or may not be human controlled) is not what this article is about; it is about the huge potential that smallish robots have for farming. More diverse crops, less pesticides, less damage to soil, less energy use, mixed instead of mono cultures. Really exciting if this takes off, such a win for the environment, the landscape, and ultimately for everyone of…

Unlike what you would expect, small robots do more damage to the soil not less. Damage to soil is not linear with mass, A massive robot will do twice as much damage where it touches the ground (wheel tracks most likely, but there are other choices), but it will touch 10 times less ground to do the same work so the total averaged over all the land is much better. For the same reason, tracks generally end up doing more…

That's simply not true. Low axle weight and low pressure both reduce soil compaction tremendously, to the point where it no longer causes any at all when you get small enough. This is easily measured. A garden tractor is 1000 pounds, even with normal turf tires you get no measurable compaction unless you are in mud. I can drive around my garden all day long and a penetrometer confirms absolutely no difference.

Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#108

Post by ska » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 9:52 PM UTC

deialtrous wrote: post #105

tda wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

managing giant monocultures with a few giant machines (that may or may not be human controlled) is not what this article is about; it is about the huge potential that smallish robots have for farming. More diverse crops, less pesticides, less damage to soil, less energy use, mixed instead of mono cultures. Really exciting if this takes off, such a win for the environment, the landscape, and ultimately for everyone of…

We already can do all of that, we don't need robots. Most farms have been no till for years now, the idea that fields are plowed is an anachronism. This is more tech wankery, people with a particular technology trying to shoehorn it into being the "solution" to problems that are already solved easier and cheaper.

   [...More diverse crops, less pesticides, less damage to soil, less energy use, mixed instead of mono cultures.]

   We already can do all of that, we don't need..

Question: If we can do all of that already, why isn't it being done (edit: assuming it isn't) ?

Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#109

Post by albertgoeswoof » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 9:54 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #100

dexterdog wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, my local stop n shop sells a loaf of white bread for $1.29 and that's not even a sale price. Second the average income has gone up by more than inflation as well so you would expect the cost of staples to go up accordingly.

So you prove knieveltech correct, the price of bread has not gone down despite whatever productivity advances may have come about since then.

No because the average person can afford a lot more bread now than they could in 1950. But bread is not the best argument as it’s cheap to make even in the 50s. Go buy a roast chicken and compare that price and you’ll see a difference

Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#110

Post by JoeAltmaier » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 9:55 PM UTC

ska wrote: post #108

deialtrous wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already can do all of that, we don't need robots. Most farms have been no till for years now, the idea that fields are plowed is an anachronism. This is more tech wankery, people with a particular technology trying to shoehorn it into being the "solution" to problems that are already solved easier and cheaper.

[...More diverse crops, less pesticides, less damage to soil, less energy use, mixed instead of mono cultures.] We already can do all of that, we don't need.. Question: If we can do all of that already, why isn't it being done (edit: assuming it isn't) ?

Its being done all over. The biggest ecologists were always farmers, who pay the first cost of soil erosion, soil damage and energy. They fail only on the mono-culture front, though its extremely common to mix crops in hilly ground but that's for erosion control.

And now the potential to use less chemicals with robotic application is taking off even with large farm equipment. Cameras identify a plant off-row as the tractor traverses the field, and either plucks it or spritzes it with a microdose of herbicide.