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Re:Small robots may kill the tractor and make farming efficient by djrobstep on Sunday November 11, 2018 @05:24PM (#18429046)
Status quo modern farming is reliant on extremely large input of fossil fuels, there is plenty of scope for improvement in this regard.

At the moment modern agriculture is effectively making food out of oil.

Re:Small robots may kill the tractor and make farming efficient by bobsil1 on Sunday November 11, 2018 @05:45PM (#18429177)
Electric tractors/harvesters powered by solar on fallow fields?
Re:Small robots may kill the tractor and make farming efficient by ahje on Monday November 12, 2018 @07:21AM (#18432161)
The investment would be quite steep for a farmer that has already taken large loans in order to fund tractors. Many farmers simply don't have the margins. Some still drive around with 40 year-old machinery because buying modern equipment is too expensive.

I don't _like_ the proposed idea of farming as a service, but the fact is that I think it's one of the few ways we have to modernize small-scale farms in the less developed parts of the Western World.

Re:Small robots may kill the tractor and make farming efficient by ip26 on Monday November 12, 2018 @12:18AM (#18430742)
You skipped right past petroleum fertilizer.