‘Less than half’ fresh produce sold globally makes any profit

Re:‘Less than half’ fresh produce sold globally makes any pr... by AnthonyMouse on Wednesday September 20, 2023 @05:37PM (#37590576)

> The benefits from modern agriculture are the low levels or required human labor and the low prices, both of which free up most people to do other things and to spend far less on food.

I feel like it should be possible to have it both ways.

Right now we have a dichotomy with on one hand industrial methods that overuse chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and the other hand organic methods that are excessively labor-intensive.

Why is it not possible to use the organic methods, but automate the labor-intensive parts? I understand that we don't currently have the technology to do this, but is there some reason it isn't possible? Wouldn't it be a productive thing to fund?

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Re:‘Less than half’ fresh produce sold globally makes any pr... by Turing_Machine on Wednesday September 20, 2023 @08:47PM (#37591947)

> I feel like it should be possible to have it both ways.

Sure, that's entirely possible. Build lots of nuclear power plants and run everything off electricity.

I do not expect the "organic" people to accept this, of course.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:‘Less than half’ fresh produce sold globally makes any pr... by AnthonyMouse on Thursday September 21, 2023 @05:47PM (#37604861)

My understanding is that the availability of electricity is not the issue, but rather e.g. that manual weeding instead of using herbicides is labor intensive, and we don't currently have machines that can do this. But this is a problem of robotics and computer vision etc., not of powering the equipment.

[ Parent | on HN ]