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by sinnet11 2903 days ago
A biggest problem with farming these days is labor. Period. Growers (farmers) cannot manage 6000 acres of land. They rely on their crop consultants to tell them where to spray and what they need to spray. Once you start automate these tasks, e.g. crop scouting, then the grower and the consultant can use data to spray less and produce a higher quality crop.
2 comments
thinkcontext 2902 days ago
Labor is one of the biggest advantages of these vertical farms. They are year round instead of seasonal and located near cities instead of remote areas. Temperature can be controlled and there's not the need to be constantly bent over.

With these improved conditions one would expect to rely less on immigrant labor that is subject to such harsh conditions.

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XalvinX 2903 days ago
If Trump gets his way, expect this 'problem' to reach critical levels, since the vast majority of it is done by undocumented people from Mexico, Central and South America.

If every illegal immigrant was thrown out tomorrow, the price of lettuce would go to $15 a head, and nearly every other type of produce not automated would also skyrocket.

Most fruit and many vegetables require a lot manual labor to grow, harvest and pack... And, Mr. Trump, white people won't do this work willingly, not at $3 an hour and not with having to live in pesticide-drenched shanty towns and having to shit in buckets or ditches and so forth..

What supports that $1.29 head of lettuce is, basically, human suffering that is only endured because things suck even worse in El Salvadore and similar places.

Earlier presidents knew this and intelligently left the borders very, very porous. And it isn't just agriculture, but many other industries too.

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arethuza 2902 days ago
Similar problem in the UK with Brexit - farmers had got used to a supply of inexpensive seasonal workers mostly from eastern Europe:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/09/lack-of-...

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oblio 2903 days ago
No, you're wrong! Robots will automate everything. It doesn't matter that we can't even fully automate detecting traffic signs, with the whole might of Google behind it, but surely robots will be able to perform the super finicky manual labor tasks required by agriculture before the poorest people in a country run out of money to buy food that is now 10x more expensive.

I'm being sarcastic, I agree with you. Automation is nowhere near to what it needs to be and probably won't be for more than 10 years from now.

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