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The Age of Robot Farmers

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Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#81

Post by salawat »

linuxftw wrote: post #74
swelz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a larger issue is that food/resource prices may be too low. Obviously, the farmers need to charge for the food/resource, but if they aren't able to turn a profit when properly hiring and paying staff/contractors to work for them, that's an issue. We don't know if the $100MM would cover the new cost or not. I believe there is an issue where we've (the US) relied on such low-cost labor for farms far too long an…

Yes, the food market is heavily distorted. If giant ag businesses that employ immigrants can't make a profit, it means there's too many farms in operation. Farms will close, food prices will rise, and the market will stabilize. A huge positive to this, smaller family-run farms that don't hire immigrant labor would actually be able to compete with the larger industrial farms. We might even be able to reduce total mile…

I'm not sure even that would overcome the hyperoptimization capital trap advantage big industrial farms enjoy.

I'm still pretty shallow in my understanding of the Ag industry, but the last research I'd done showed that process optimization gaps driven by capital access disparity, and an increasing encroachment of vertically integrating distribution businesses were the major drivers of small farms out of the market.

The wage hits through access to capital to pay workers will also hit smaller operations harder in the sense the smaller you are the fewer people feel safe investing in you.

It'd be nice if it would sort itself in favor of the little guy, but I'm just not seeing it.

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#82

Post by linuxftw »

salawat wrote: post #81
linuxftw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the food market is heavily distorted. If giant ag businesses that employ immigrants can't make a profit, it means there's too many farms in operation. Farms will close, food prices will rise, and the market will stabilize. A huge positive to this, smaller family-run farms that don't hire immigrant labor would actually be able to compete with the larger industrial farms. We might even be able to reduce total mile…

I'm not sure even that would overcome the hyperoptimization capital trap advantage big industrial farms enjoy. I'm still pretty shallow in my understanding of the Ag industry, but the last research I'd done showed that process optimization gaps driven by capital access disparity, and an increasing encroachment of vertically integrating distribution businesses were the major drivers of small farms out of the market. T…

> It'd be nice if it would sort itself in favor of the little guy, but I'm just not seeing it.

Smaller farms already exist, despite the unfavorable business conditions. If we're talking something like corn or soy beans, we're talking about massive direct subsidies as well. But if we're talking about thing such as berries or apples, there are lots of successful smaller, local producers.

Imagine how much more successful those smaller farms would be. And, it might re-invigorate complementary local businesses, such as small tractor dealerships, fertilizer, what have you.

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#83

Post by bluGill »

yazan94 wrote: post #79
bluGill wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was prices offered to locals, not immigrants. By the time you deal with all the paperwork immigrants are worth less. However they work hard, and are happy to get those wages. Again, by our standards working conditions are bad, but to them they are getting rich...

> By the time you deal with all the paperwork immigrants are worth less. I don't see how immigrants are worth less after the paperwork. More expensive maybe, but it seems their worth is related to the work they can output and that isn't directly impacted by the paperwork. And maybe they are happy to receive those wages, but let's not pretend that they aren't being taken advantage of if they really are being paid less…

They are being paid more than minimum wage. Even after the worth less than natives (less paperwork) they are still paid more than the McDonald's in town would pay. It is hard work with long days.

Of course I can only report on the farmers I know. They only employ legal workers (or at least that is all they will admit to...), illegal workers probably make much less.

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#84

Post by reality_inspctr »

pugworthy wrote: post #17
reality_inspctr wrote: post #15

I used to run an ag tech automation startup, and we were working on how fulfillment center robots could be repurposed for indoor agriculture. This allows a complete change in economics. Strawberries are an important crop, but on-demand nutrition for animal feed and other segments where robotics allows complex alignment of supply chain and resources may be more lucrative in the mid term. Like Walmart just in time deli…

> ...a complete change in economics For whom?

I would say the full stack of financing from individual farms to investment funds of every type. Project finance funds in particular.

Here is an article about it. Disclosure I wrote it. Only posting as relevant.

Https://agfundernews.com/inside-insect-farming.html

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#85

Post by mikro2nd »

jmathai wrote: post #76
mikro2nd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farmbot is a toy. A nice toy, to be sure, but a toy for rich urbanites who want a little veggie garden and it'll never be anything more than that. It goes nowhere near addressing the scale of real-world farming and I see no way it ever can. The concept won't even scale to small-scale market gardening -- the 1- to 10-hectare scale. I'm not saying that farm-robotics in general can't work or scale -- it's a something I'…

What makes you think that? These first few iterations are expensive (in the thousands of dollars) and require assembly but those are not difficult problems to address over time. Are you saying people wouldn't want to have an automated home garden in their back yard if they could afford it?

No, I precisely said that it's a nice thing to have an automated home-garden for people that can afford it. I like the Farmbot. But it is Never. Going. To. Automate. Real. Large-scale. Farming.

Never.

Real farming -- the modern, factory kind of thing -- the stuff that provides the overwhelming bulk of food (maize, soya, wheat) -- happens on a massive scale over hundreds to thousands of hectares, and the Farmbot concept -- essentially a 2-D plotter with various head attachments -- is just never going to begin to automate that sort of scale. (Downvote me all you want.) Very large mobile robots might work, though I wonder about how the power requirements are going to be met. To my mind swarms of smaller robots seem to be the best bet, but I haven't seen a lot of work going on in that space.

Lettuces and Beetroots are nice. I grow a hell of a lot of those myself. But they don't feed the planet.

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#86

Post by dragonwriter »

mikro2nd wrote: post #85
jmathai wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that? These first few iterations are expensive (in the thousands of dollars) and require assembly but those are not difficult problems to address over time. Are you saying people wouldn't want to have an automated home garden in their back yard if they could afford it?

No, I precisely said that it's a nice thing to have an automated home-garden for people that can afford it. I like the Farmbot. But it is Never. Going. To. Automate. Real. Large-scale. Farming. Never. Real farming -- the modern, factory kind of thing -- the stuff that provides the overwhelming bulk of food (maize, soya, wheat) -- happens on a massive scale over hundreds to thousands of hectares, and the Farmbot conce…

> Very large mobile robots might work

My (distant and loose, to be sure) understanding of modern farm machinery is that they largely have, compared to just a few decades ago, though the robots still have operator seats and look very much the non-automated versions that preceded them.

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#87

Post by joe_the_user »

pnutjam wrote: post #66
joe_the_user wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the felons never stop being prisoners in the time they work. This tends to result in an unmotivated workforce no matter what the activity. No only this project but most prison labor projects fail.

I'm unable to locate a resource indicating the pay, only a blurb that says prisoners must pay for their transportation (I'm sure that isn't marked up or anything...) and the pay rate must be at least minimum wage. I'm guessing pay rate is a big part of the prisoners lack of enthusiasm.

Well, prisoners are unskilled and keeping them supervised while working is a significant expense, so the net value they yield is going to be very low.

Clearly, being a farm worker isn't a career path for the prisoner so the prisoner has no motivation to learn the intricacies of the job. And farm work turns out to have many intricacies. So yeah, this project seems impossible.

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#88

Post by roel_v »

l_camacho84 wrote: post #70
roel_v wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those costs are tiny, compared to all other costs. 'Local' is not a goal in itself (except for geopolitical reasons, but that's another topic). For fun, try to do the back-of-a-napkin math on how many bananas you can fit in a container, how many containers fit on a ship, and what percentage of the retail price that makes. Or how much it costs to ship a truck of lettuce heads from Spain to Northern Europe. Yes there a…

The costs are tiny because right now they not internalize pollution and social injustice. Yes, “local” is not an end on itself but the same is true for “global”. Right now the cost of sending a banana to the other side of the world in a container is small because we are jeopardizing the future of the planet by not putting a price on CO2 emissions. Local food need to spend effort on Marketing because they are more exp…

Well that's exactly what I preempted and refuted in my second paragraph, and my third paragraph was about how, no, just making mass produced food internalize all their costs won't fix all the marketing and sales issues of 'locally produced food', for a broad definition of everything that encompasses...

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#89

Post by mikro2nd »

dragonwriter wrote: post #86
mikro2nd wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I precisely said that it's a nice thing to have an automated home-garden for people that can afford it. I like the Farmbot. But it is Never. Going. To. Automate. Real. Large-scale. Farming. Never. Real farming -- the modern, factory kind of thing -- the stuff that provides the overwhelming bulk of food (maize, soya, wheat) -- happens on a massive scale over hundreds to thousands of hectares, and the Farmbot conce…

> Very large mobile robots might work My (distant and loose, to be sure) understanding of modern farm machinery is that they largely have, compared to just a few decades ago, though the robots still have operator seats and look very much the non-automated versions that preceded them.

Yes, that is pretty-much the current state of play - already existing mechanical platforms that have had some more-or-less clever automation (mainly guidance) added.

My thinking is that a smaller-machine, swarm approach might allow us to eliminate the fossil-fuel subsidy. Big machinery is much harder to do without diesel. With small machines, many of them cooperating, renewable energy fueling is much more (I think) approachable. (I may be wrong.)

If we're going to win this climate thing, one of the elephants in the room is decarbonising agriculture.

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