Robots Are Taking Over Agriculture: The Fourth Industrial Revolution

http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/sectors/item/22428-robots-are-taking-over-agriculture The Fourth Industrial Revolution will soon allow a single factory to produce more than 30,000 heads of lettuce every day, using 98 percent less water, 30 percent less energy, and 50 percent fewer humans. The Japanese grower Spread will open its Vegetable Factory next year using robots instead of humans not only to plant the seeds but to water them, monitor them, adjust their feeding if necessary, and then trim the mature plants prior to being packaged by other robots for shipping. Using “vertical” farming, the factory will also take up much less space (about half the size of a Walmart), and will virtually eliminate runoff from pesticides and herbicides because they won’t be necessary. J.J. Price, a company spokesman, said that all this “means that we will … make it affordable for everyone … and grow staple crops and plant protein” with vastly fewer humans involved. It also will almost completely eliminate biological “invaders” like Salmonella, E.coli and Listeria while growing lettuce year round. The factory model will shortly be expanded to include other crops such as basil, mint, and kale. And by shipping to local merchants, the factories will reduce transportation costs and pollution. On the surface, it appears to be win-win-win: The farmers plant more crops more cheaply, the consumers get better produce at lower costs, and the environment is cleaner. But what about those humans the robots are replacing? A recent study by Forrester, a Boston-based technology research firm, estimates that approximately nine million American jobs will be automated in less than 10 years. But more than half that many jobs will be added in the high-tech industry, as computer programmers, software engineers, and application designers will increasingly be needed to manage the robots.