[randomdata]

The environment perhaps, but would it really be better for the bottom line? Mechanical weed control already lost out to chemicals because the chemicals were cheaper.

On top of that, chemical applicators are relatively simple and proven technology with few moving parts. Farm equipment isn't like your car that can go 100,000 miles without problem. Moving parts on farm equipment will break – constantly. On top of that, computer technology does not come cheap when it is low volume specialized systems, built to withstand the harsh environments of agriculture.

I have no doubt the technology is possible, but I do wonder if it is possible in a price range that would actually improve the bottom line.

[uuilly]

Yup. A few days ago we (60 people) got bought by John Deere for $305M b/c our machine reduced herbicides by 90% using CV/ML. Our only moving part was a solenoid. Would not have survived if it had been more complicated. You clearly get it.

[wikibob]

Sounds really cool. What company? Do you have any stories you can share here or on a blog?

[uuilly]

https://agfundernews.com/blue-river-clear-leader-john-deeres...

Many stories. Will blog soon :)

[maxerickson]

It only has to be cheap enough to make banning various pesticides reasonable.

[randomdata]

You bring up a good point that I forgot about. Some of these chemicals, like Roundup, are not just for pest control, but serve other purposes such as desiccation. Since you are going to need a chemical applicator anyway, a second machine to duplicate functionality further increases the cost ineffectiveness.

Not only that, but what I am sure most would consider the most devastating type of chemical in recent times, neonicotinoids, are applied as a seed treatment, planted with the planter. Even if you could devise an advanced machine that continually keeps pests from eating the seed while it is buried beneath the ground, that requires trips over the field that are currently not required at all. It is tough to compete with no additional trips over the field. Energy and wear is expensive and potentially devastating to the environment, including issues like carbon emissions and topsoil depletion.

(Neonics are already banned where I farm, but it is a good illustration of how chemicals can sometimes eliminate the need for machinery altogether and how the robo-pest terminator has to be able to compete with that)

[kuschku]

The robots don’t have to necessarily compete with traditional farming.

They just have to make Naturland/Bioland/Demeter style organic farming (which except for very rare cases not even allow any chemical pesticides or herbicides) cheap enough that it becomes competitive.

[zaroth]

I think it's a myth that Roundup is used as a desiccant.

However the robots are not trying to replace chemicals. As you point out, that's a losing proposition. But they can definitely reduce overall man-hours, and so provide constant value as long as they operate.

[randomdata]

> 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. That is a costly endeavour, including needing multiples more greenhouse gas emitting fuel, which has its own fair share of environmental impacts.

> But they can definitely reduce overall man-hours, and so provide constant value as long as they operate.

Even a simple autosteer system, which does not even replace the operator, can cost more than many farmers would spend on labour in their lifetime. Low-volume specialized farming technology is insanely expensive.

What I believe is primarily pushing the technology is difficulty in finding labour, especially skilled labour. Farmers are seeking more automation to simplify the tasks enough that you can throw any random person on the machine and get a quality result out of their work.

Operator-less equipment is inevitable, but there is no way the manufactures are going to let the farmer capture any potential gains. It is going to be priced to meet the costs of labour. The farmers will still choose it because they are having trouble finding labour in the first place.

[ndh2]

> 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 thing.

Anyways, thank you for your comments in this thread. Very insightful.

[randomdata]

> 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.

[usefulcat]

"Operator-less equipment is inevitable, but there is no way the manufactures are going to let the farmer capture any potential gains."

In a properly functioning market, seems like competition between manufacturers would be the mechanism by which the gains would be passed along to the farmer. Are you saying that there is or will be insufficient competition in that market?

[randomdata]

> Are you saying that there is or will be insufficient competition in that market?

It think is the case. I would suggest that there are only three main players in the industry right now. And what smaller ones are out there seem to have little involvement in the kind of computer/electronics tech that would bring the automation being discussed here, but rather build simpler mechanical-focused machines.

When many of these machines can already be priced at amounts nearing $1M to buy as a farmer, I imagine the capital costs to develop that new equipment to be in the hundreds of millions, if not billions. The opportunity for a new business to build a new machine end-to-end, with that level of technology, is pretty small. It doesn't help that the market of farmers out there willing to buy these machines is also comparatively small to other markets that might appeal to someone with that skillset.

It becomes more complicated than that as not all manufactures have a strong dealership/service presence in all operating areas, so even if another manufacturer can technically offer you the same machine for less, you may not be able to consider it due to lack of reasonable service. Farm equipment breaks all the time, so service availability is an absolute necessity. That is even more important than the original purchase price.

[grogenaut]

And what price point is that. Pesticides are pretty cheap

[maxerickson]

The impact on the final price of the produce matters more than the comparison to pesticides.

Like if pesticides represent 0.1 percent of the retail price of some vegetable, I personally would consider it reasonable to spend 10x avoiding some pesticides. Because it would only have a modest impact at retail.

[mikekchar]

The price of wheat in the US is currently ~$170 per tonne. Retail price of flour in the US is currently a bit over $1100 per tonne. Fertiliser and pesticide cost seems to be about 23% percent of revenue, which would work out to about $40. So fertiliser and pesticide cost is currently about 3.6% of the final retail price. Figures come from random google searches, but I think they are about right.

There are a few things you have to understand about these figures. The first is that only 15% of the retail price is the price of wheat. The rest is shipping, processing, packaging, waste, advertising, and profit. You can actually work out how much each bit actually adds to the price by looking at the price at each step. For example, if you look at wholesale wheat flour prices, you are looking at about $3-400 per tonne.

The reality is that distribution is the vast majority of the cost and each entity that touches the product along the way wants a big markup. Money costs and each party wants a return on investment, not a fixed return.

So, if we replaced fertiliser and pesticide with something that costs $400 instead of $40 per tonne of wheat, then the price of the wheat will go to $530. Ideally that will result in a retail price of ~$1500 (about a 25% increase), but in reality it's likely to be at least double.

Personally, I think this is worthwhile -- especially if the extra $360 per tonne would allow smaller farms and provide more jobs in the farming industry. I don't think it is realistic for 2 main reasons. First I have no idea if even $360 would be enough. Second, large corporations and rich people have a very vested interest in continuing the current trend of moving all of the price into distribution. These distribution channels can be controlled relatively easily and provide rent for them. It also keeps the world food price below the level that traditional farming can support. This means that rich countries can dismantle the agriculture industry of poor countries and then control them. I encourage anybody interested in this kind of thing to look at the conditions attached to government loans/subsidies to poor countries that are used to buy food. When you start looking at this stuff, you are playing with big players who have lots to gain/lose and who aren't going to give up anything easily.

[randomdata]

> especially if the extra $360 per tonne would allow smaller farms

I would expect the opposite. Wheat was worth a record-high ~$380/tonne back in 2008 and what happened was that the biggest farmers went spend-crazy on land, preventing the existing small farms from growing, and completely pushing thoughts of any new farm operations right out the window. We're still suffering the effects of that as price of land has yet to come down with the price of the crop.

> and provide more jobs in the farming industry.

I'm not sure that lack of jobs are really an issue in the farming industry, to be honest. There is already said to be a farm labour shortage as-is. I farm in Canada, so those are the numbers I'm most familiar with, but the news reports that there are 60,000 vacant farm jobs available. 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).

A big reason why agriculture has been pushing the boundaries of automation is a result of how hard it is to find labour. Especially skilled labour.

[mikekchar]

I have to admit that even though I posted what I did, I don't really understand the dynamics of the situation. I know the result I would prefer, but I have no idea how to get there. I'm originally from Canada and my family benefited greatly from the boom cycles of farm land prices. Now I'm living in Japan where it is illegal to sell farm land. I find the different dynamics extremely interesting, but as I am not a farmer, I really don't understand. I honestly believe we're going to be in some difficulty unless we can reboot the small farm, but it seems to be extremely complicated. Even here with high prices, high subsidies, and small farms, there are very few young farmers. Of my neighbours, I think there is one guy who is about 40 and everybody else is well over 60. I have no idea what's going to happen in 10-20 years and it worries me a lot.

Anyway, as you seem to be a farmer, please let me convey my utmost respect. Seriously, thank you for being a farmer. We need more people like you.

[dmurray]

> 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.

[_0w8t]

There was a study in Denmark that showed 25% of the income from sales in supermarkets went into advertising.

It is interesting that the distribution, not production, dominated the prices since ancient times. 2500 yeas ago in Mediterranean transporting wheat 100 km over land doubled its price compared with price at a sea port which was already quite higher than production. In a bad year when local crop failed rich citizens prevented widespread hunger by buying enough extra bread overseas.