I wonder what ideas come to students minds when they see those video clips on automated and robotic farming. I know for years and years I've heard time and time again that agriculture is much more than being "on the farm", right? Perhaps automated and climate controlled agriculture is of more interest to more students? Perhaps that are students that are interested in robotics and also are interested in plants (or animals), and now they can see how their interests can be combined in the field of agriculture rather than seeing agriculture as cleaning barns or being on a tractor.
I definitely also see this technology as a little scary. I like the idea of conserving nature and land for people and animal use. What if this technology actually backfires on conservation efforts? What if indoor robotic farming allows the reasoning to just build and build and build on lands that were formally reserved for wildlife and human use - even if it's just recreation?
So apparently indoor robotic vertical farming is no longer just stuff of science fiction. It's real; it's here; and I'll be curious to see what you think of it. As far as cost, obviously the farm in the first clip was a big farm. When a farm is using a truck to feed it's dairy cattle, it's a pretty big outfit. So I'm assuming that farm can afford the technology, or at least it can afford experimenting with the technology. When would that type of technology be affordable enough for smaller family farms? Perhaps that's a good question...maybe a worse question is will this technology do more to drive under the traditional family farm.
We've seen megabusinesses like WalMart and Home Depot and Amazon drive away small businesses, does this technology do the same for family farms, and what consequences for society does that hold?
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