Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley • Hacker News Board

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#131

Post by Animats » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 5:45 PM UTC

joncp wrote: post #15

thomas_howland wrote: post #4

The amount of labor involved in grain crops like barley per dollar of output is minimal already - the guy running the tractor/combine/etc is mostly making sure nothing breaks and keeping an eye on things (which is important when you're operating $N00,000 worth of heavy equipment on open ground). You do need guys, however, for when things do go wrong, and for all the other farm tasks (equipment maintenance, fencing, m…

Imagine, though, a time when the automation reaches a stage where all weeding and most insect killing can be done mechanically with a robot instead of chemically with pesticides. That will be a huge boon for the environment and for farmers' bottom lines.

It's here now. Blue River makes LettuceBot, which is a machine-vision system for killing weeds in lettuce fields. The machine is towed behind a tractor, looks down at the lettuce and weeds, and zaps weeds and too-close-together lettuce plants with targeted sprays of concentrated fertilizer.[1] It's a full neural net vision system, with many cameras and software borrowed from face recognition. They train the system with pictures of weeds and pictures of good plants, and as it rolls over the field, it targets the bad stuff and sprays it.

This isn't experimental. It's now owned by John Deere and is currently doing 10% of the US lettuce crop. Next, cotton. There's no problem with plants becoming resistant to weed-killers. Unless pigweed learns to look like lettuce, it's going to get zapped.

It's sold as a service. For $220 an acre, Blue River comes and zaps your weeds. Now available in the Salinas Valley and Yuma, AZ.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YCa8RntsRE

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#132

Post by PeterisP » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 6:12 PM UTC

dejv wrote: post #74

joncp wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine, though, a time when the automation reaches a stage where all weeding and most insect killing can be done mechanically with a robot instead of chemically with pesticides. That will be a huge boon for the environment and for farmers' bottom lines.

Insects are never gonna be killed mechanically, those are too small and too many in count. Modern trend is to use biological controll: you "plant" organism that eat them or eat their eggs.

Certain pests (mainly large beetles or their larvae) used to be controlled by removing them manually - it's more expensive than pesticides, but it was feasible (and worth it!) to do it simply by bunch of people going over the crops. This means that they could be controlled mechanically in the future.

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#133

Post by randomdata » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 6:17 PM UTC

ndh2 wrote: post #129

randomdata wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's a myth that Roundup is used as a desiccant. I can say from personal experience (I am a farmer) that it is not. My white beans get the roundup treatment. They would never dry down in time for a successful harvest otherwise. In the olden days before roundup they used to pull them and leave them to dry before harvest, but that brought its own issues, including requiring many more trips over the field. Tha…

> The farmers will still choose it because they are having trouble finding labour in the first place. If a farmer has trouble finding labor, they don't pay enough. The question is whether or not automation is cheaper than the actual rate that you have to pay in order to get somebody to do the manual labor. Not the rate you would like to pay. Maybe it's just semantics, but I don't think "trouble finding labor" is a th…

> Maybe it's just semantics, but I don't think "trouble finding labor" is a thing.

In a perfect market it isn't. In the real world, I know a big struggle in my area is simply getting enough people to come here in the first place. Not just farmers, but all businesses. It is a small population and there has been an recent economic turnaround, so all of a sudden there is a lot of work, but nobody nearby to do it. It will eventually correct as people start to move here, but that takes time. Possibly a lot of time. People tend to not uproot their entire lives to move to a new location on a whim, no matter how much money is on offer.

A shortage (the technical definition, not the one the newspapers like to use) is also possible under the right conditions. In my legal jurisdiction, the government has defined a price ceiling on doctor services. If there aren't enough doctors, we legally cannot offer them more money to attract them, or push other patients out of the market. Trouble finding doctors is very real, especially in rural communities where doctors are less apt to want to practice and no amount of money the patient is willing to offer is going to fix that.

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#134

Post by shkkmo » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 7:59 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #110

dmurray wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Other reports indicate that farm jobs have one of the fastest growing wages in the country (which I realize technically invalidates there being a shortage, but labour shortage has come to mean something other than shortage). Isn't that the exact definition of shortage? Prices rise because demand excess supply at the previous price.

A shortage is technically defined as a situation where price cannot rise, such as the government imposing a price ceiling, preventing the price from reaching equilibrium. As long as price is able to rise, demand will wane with the rising price, and thus the supply will ultimately meet the needs of the demand. That price is rising should invalidate the idea of a shortage, but labour shortage seems to have come to mean…

Isn't a shortage technically defined as when supply can't meet demand? Capped prices is one potential cause, but demand also isn't always very elastic and this can cause shortages on it's own.

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#135

Post by randomdata » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 8:49 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #134

randomdata wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shortage is technically defined as a situation where price cannot rise, such as the government imposing a price ceiling, preventing the price from reaching equilibrium. As long as price is able to rise, demand will wane with the rising price, and thus the supply will ultimately meet the needs of the demand. That price is rising should invalidate the idea of a shortage, but labour shortage seems to have come to mean…

Isn't a shortage technically defined as when supply can't meet demand? Capped prices is one potential cause, but demand also isn't always very elastic and this can cause shortages on it's own.

> Isn't a shortage technically defined as when supply can't meet demand?

It is, yes, and ultimately says the same thing. I prefer the alternative phrasing as I think it more clearly explains the mechanisms, especially when people sometimes confuse demand to mean 'I want something'.

> Capped prices is one potential cause, but demand also isn't always very elastic and this can cause shortages on it's own.

I don't see it being contradictory. In an ideal model of inelastic demand, the demand never wanes no matter how high the price goes. However, price cannot continue to rise infinitely, so you have technically created a situation where price cannot rise again. It is still the price not being able to rise that characterizes the shortage in this case.

I did not mean to suggest that the government is the only thing that can cause prices to stop increasing. It was just one example.

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#136

Post by Dylanfm » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 9:05 PM UTC

shanev wrote: post #108

Dylanfm wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Development of arable land is a problem, but our agricultural practices are a major one. I think shanev is speaking about the effects of modern agriculture on top soil. We should prioritise the _creation_ of soil. Instead, top soil is being degraded and then lost though erosion. There are other issues, such as the planting of monocultures, overuse of nitrogen fertilizers and so on. As climate change brings us longer…

Yes this is exactly what I was getting at. Thanks for putting it more eloquently than I did. I’m just used to getting downvoted anytime I talk about monoculture farming, soil, and climate change so I don’t put effort into it anymore. I think the pro-GMO crowd thinks talking about sustainable farming is anti-science when it actually involves more science at a macro level to understand the effects of synthetic monocult…

There's science and technology all the way along the sustainability spectrum... but it isn't evenly distributed.

I'm new to growing and enjoying the steep but rewarding learning curve. Soil is an amazing thing and I think humans are only just getting a better idea of what's going on down there. This recent conference talk helps shed some light: "Building Soil Health for Healthy Plants by soil scientist Dr. Elaine Ingham" https://youtu.be/xzthQyMaQaQ

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#137

Post by awjr » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 11:00 PM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #118

awjr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chickens are the answer my friend ;) Seriously they are brilliant and the eggs are just this great bonus. The more insects they eat the tastier the eggs! You do need to visit them at least once per day, however auto-feeders and automatic coop openers do mean you are only going to collect eggs and maybe refill water. They also have amazing characters. If you have a good relationship with other allotment holders then t…

Unfortunately animals are not permitted on my allotment (except bees). Also the visiting-every-day requirement might be more of a commitment than I can muster. But I'm curious, how would the chickens get to the slugs? Don't they have to be kept in a fenced off enclosure, away from the plants - otherwise they would damage young seedlings etc? We do have a population of toads which I think eat the slugs, but they just…

I used to keep young seedlings covered, but anything big they ignored but happily hunted all day. On an allotment I would suspect you would need to pen your allotment using a flexible electric fence IF people objected to chickens invading their allotment.

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#138

Post by prawn » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 11:50 PM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #123

prawn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone wants to eat thistles, I'll give those away... Oxalis too.

> If anyone wants to eat thistles, I'll give those away. How do they actually taste? I know they're in the artichoke family, but I've never actually dug one up or whatever.

Never tried them, but they are a painful weed here, grow quickly and seed very easily. We used to give the seed heads to our canary once upon a time, but currently have hundreds of thistles to zero canaries.

Perhaps if they could be blended and used as a base for bread or cakes, but I have no idea if they're safe in large quantities.

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#139

Post by cwkoss » Fri, Sep 15, 2017, 12:03 AM UTC

Dylanfm wrote: post #136

shanev wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is exactly what I was getting at. Thanks for putting it more eloquently than I did. I’m just used to getting downvoted anytime I talk about monoculture farming, soil, and climate change so I don’t put effort into it anymore. I think the pro-GMO crowd thinks talking about sustainable farming is anti-science when it actually involves more science at a macro level to understand the effects of synthetic monocult…

There's science and technology all the way along the sustainability spectrum... but it isn't evenly distributed. I'm new to growing and enjoying the steep but rewarding learning curve. Soil is an amazing thing and I think humans are only just getting a better idea of what's going on down there. This recent conference talk helps shed some light: "Building Soil Health for Healthy Plants by soil scientist Dr. Elaine Ing…

>Soil is an amazing thing and I think humans are only just getting a better idea of what's going on down there.

So true. A protein which makes up ~10% of soil by weight was only discovered in the 90s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomalin

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#140

Post by shanev » Fri, Sep 15, 2017, 12:33 AM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #139

Dylanfm wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's science and technology all the way along the sustainability spectrum... but it isn't evenly distributed. I'm new to growing and enjoying the steep but rewarding learning curve. Soil is an amazing thing and I think humans are only just getting a better idea of what's going on down there. This recent conference talk helps shed some light: "Building Soil Health for Healthy Plants by soil scientist Dr. Elaine Ing…

>Soil is an amazing thing and I think humans are only just getting a better idea of what's going on down there. So true. A protein which makes up ~10% of soil by weight was only discovered in the 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomalin

And only last year we discovered soil has a micro-biome too [1], and it has a profound impact on plant growth.

The most fascinating aspect of soil to me is that it's a natural carbon store, which for obvious reasons will become increasingly important in the coming years.

[1]: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/soil-has-microb...