Re:Farmworkers key to keeping US fed are wary of virus spread
by jelliclesfarm on Monday March 30, 2020 @11:42AM
(#22728876)
I agree with you. What this pandemic has thrown light upon are the sectors that are weak and vulnerable.
It has shown its soft underbelly where attacks are easy. Logistics and distribution is already good. We don’t have food shortages. In fact, we are still able to cover the panic buying as well as the future needs for extended lockdowns.
Ag must be proud of what it has achieved. The problem is before the farm gate. Harvesting certain crops..citrus for example in the OP..still needs people and if people don’t turn up, produce will rot.
So Ag is ripe for automation, as it were...all kinds of Ag at diff scales must be automated. The way to do it is not to automate machinery but to automate tasks or automate platforms.
Currently there is a lot of importance for AI and vision. While robotics and automation is certain data centric and data reliant, most of what is done is not relevant for actual farm automation. It’s data used for post farm gate for logistics and traceability and commodity market speculation etc.
We need automation for food crops that is entirely different than automation for commodity crops. We also need automation for different farm scales..from 5 acres to 10k acres. Because a 10k acre farm in the mid west can grow corn and soy for feed but it’s that 20 acre farm that grows greens and tomatoes and cabbage.
It has shown its soft underbelly where attacks are easy. Logistics and distribution is already good. We don’t have food shortages. In fact, we are still able to cover the panic buying as well as the future needs for extended lockdowns.
Ag must be proud of what it has achieved. The problem is before the farm gate. Harvesting certain crops..citrus for example in the OP..still needs people and if people don’t turn up, produce will rot.
So Ag is ripe for automation, as it were...all kinds of Ag at diff scales must be automated. The way to do it is not to automate machinery but to automate tasks or automate platforms.
Currently there is a lot of importance for AI and vision. While robotics and automation is certain data centric and data reliant, most of what is done is not relevant for actual farm automation. It’s data used for post farm gate for logistics and traceability and commodity market speculation etc.
We need automation for food crops that is entirely different than automation for commodity crops. We also need automation for different farm scales..from 5 acres to 10k acres. Because a 10k acre farm in the mid west can grow corn and soy for feed but it’s that 20 acre farm that grows greens and tomatoes and cabbage.