Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

Re:Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers by danbruc on Monday April 26, 2021 @10:32AM (#26942895)

No, the price increase will be much smaller than the wage increase because the wage increase only goes to the fraction of the population that does the work while the price increase applies to the entire population.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers by pitaj on Monday April 26, 2021 @10:56AM (#26943161)

If you raise the base cost of production in a low margin case like agriculture, then the price of the good must increase or they would be running at a loss.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers by danbruc on Monday April 26, 2021 @12:03PM (#26944079)

Of course, but if everyone pays $1 more then the wages can increase by $10 assuming 10% of the population works in agriculture which still leaves them $9 better off. My point was just that a wage increase is not nullified by the price increase as long as not everyone is working in the fields.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers by chongli on Monday April 26, 2021 @03:04PM (#26946607)

if everyone pays $1 more

That’s a collective action problem. You can’t get everyone to pay $1 more. If your strawberries (for example) cost $1 more per pint then your sales will drop accordingly. It doesn’t matter if all strawberry farms agree to pay more to their strawberry pickers. You aren’t only competing against other strawberry farms, you’re competing against all other food. If strawberries are too expensive, people will eat candy or potato chips instead.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers by danbruc on Monday April 26, 2021 @04:26PM (#26947621)

So it turn out that people or not willing to pay what it costs to produce strawberries at a wage level at which people are willing to do the hard work. That's fine. The farmer should try to lower the costs by automation or switch to producing potatoes for those potato chips.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers by erikpukinskis on Monday April 26, 2021 @11:28AM (#26943554)

Yes, but the amounts are tiny. Would you pay an extra 10 cents a pound for your produce? That amount would be life changing for farmers.

But the market will always find the place where the work is unbearable and stop just shy of that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers by f6v on Monday April 26, 2021 @02:34PM (#26946181)

> Yes, but the amounts are tiny. Would you pay an extra 10 cents a pound for your produce? That amount would be life changing for farmers.

You underestimate the percentage of the income some people spend on food. That's why agriculture is heavily subsidised.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers by erikpukinskis on Monday April 26, 2021 @09:34PM (#26950735)

I didn’t estimate that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers by notfromhere on Monday April 26, 2021 @11:07AM (#26943289)

Agriculture is incredibly subsidized, which means cost of production and cost at point of sale do not have a tight relationship

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers by colinmhayes on Monday April 26, 2021 @12:15PM (#26944265)

People would import food.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers by annoyingnoob on Monday April 26, 2021 @01:37PM (#26945389)

Its funny, I've lived most of my life not too far from fields growing food. But when I go to the grocery store, most of the produce there is imported.

In 2019, California agriculture produced about $50B in receipts, with almost $22B in exports. Our water goes with those exports too.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers by f6v on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @11:38AM (#26957417)

> Our water goes with those exports too.

Now, that kind of nationalism is very uncalifornian.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers by annoyingnoob on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @12:55PM (#26958504)

Not following you. We've had drought in CA for years now. There are fights over where water goes, and a lot goes to farming. Then a bunch of those farm products are exported. Do we focus on serving the people in CA or the exports from CA when we talk about water regulation?

My original point is that even though we produce a crazy amount of farmed goods in CA, we still import things that we grow here and export. Always seems odd to me to see produce from Ecuador in the grocery store when I can buy better quality down the road from a local farm stand.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers by colinmhayes on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @01:23PM (#26958855)

The Ecuadorian produce is cheaper. If you want local produce buy it from the stand. The water rights stuff is pretty messed up anyway, because the us is essentially stealing water that used to go to Mexico.

[ Parent | on HN ]