As the global population has continued to skyrocket, there have been numerous attempts to innovate in farming in order to feed this growing population.
What began with GM crops quickly moved into areas such as vertical farming, wearable devices for livestock, and even food grown in a petri dish. There has also been the spread of automation in the food production process.
I wrote earlier this year about the rising use of drones on our farms, with devices capable of checking soil quality, crop growth and all manner of other aspects of farm work.
A Japanese firm are arguably taking things a step further however by replacing all farm workers entirely. The vertical farm is hoping to grow 10 million heads of lettuce a year without a single human being involved.
Automated farming
The whole process of growing the lettuce will be automated, from germination through to harvesting and delivery. Spread, the company behind the farm, believe it will boost production by 25%.
The company is no stranger to ‘artificial’ farming. It’s vast vertical farm in Kameoka already produces nearly 8 million heads of lettuce a year. The new factory will ramp things up considerably however, and construction is due to begin next spring.
It should be said that whilst much of the work in the facility will be automated, there is still a requirement for humans to be present. For instance, seeding is still required to be done by human hands due to the fragile nature of the seedlings.
The benefits of vertical farms
Vertical farming can offer numerous benefits, as they are obviously not susceptible to many of the environmental challenges presented to regular, outdoor farms.
The indoor environment also means that the crops are protected from various diseases and therefore pesticides that can destroy regular crops.
With some 8 million heads of lettuce produced each year in facilities like this by the company, with those products then sold in over 2,000 stores around Japan, the concept is clearly one that is OK with the Japanese public.
The commercial aspects of the process are evident. Even before the automation makes things cheaper, the company is able to monitor the whole photosynthesis process incredibly closely. They claim therefore that they can grow lettuce roughly 2.5 times as fast as on an outdoor farm, largely because the produce can continue growing at night as well as during the day.
That the concept hasn’t really gained widespread popularity probably goes to the particularities of how we view food. With such a rapidly expanding population however, it seems inevitable that such approaches will grow in popularity.
Amazing stuff. Surely a shape of things to come?
Which will prove more cost-effective I wonder, an automated greenhouse or automation in the field?
Vertical farming makes an awful lot of sense, especially in places where space is extremely limited.
When they have automated everyone out of work, how will they sell their products?
I've often wondered why this doesn't happen more in Britain. It must be better than importing food from all around the world?
Ignore the labor cost debate for a bit – this is why all the hysteria about overpopulation was silly. In a progressing world we will find ways to exponentially increase the food supply.
Like the "Buy Organic" movement you'll see a new "Made by Human" movement to protest the use of robots replacing humans. Can't wait to see the price on "Made by Humans Organic Lettuce". I'm guessing it'll be $20/head.
But the human organic lettuce wont be as clean, the fad will be the robotic lettuce.
It's exciting to see indoor automated farming picking up traction. If we can automate the entire process and make farming a matter of just equipment, electricity, and water then the whole world would be better off. The output and efficiencies are staggering compared to traditional farming.
Distribution is the next issue. This is where automated trucking and shipping could come into play. If crops could be grown, harvested, packaged, and shipped to your home in an automated fashion then we may be able to drive the cost of food down so much that it is a trivial expense.
I do sometimes wonder if the government is against such plans, especially here in the US where agriculture is a major export. If you look at the percentage of our income spent on basic needs such as food and shelter, for some reason every other expense has plummeted but these two have been stagnant for many decades and in some cases have gotten worse. You would think automation and innovation over the past 45 years should have driven the cost of basic necessities down at this point. From a government perspective I could see fears of an economic downturn if people only had to work a couple days a month to afford a comfortable life.
You do not seem to understand that a large percentage of the price of a processed food product is from the mark-up by the distributors and retailers. Even if you drove the production cost down to 10% of current levels, you would not drive the price down nearly that far.
We don't have a problem with producing enough food for humanity. Our problem, which we refuse to confront, is resource distribution.
Why don't we just cut back on meat a bit? at least 25%, and use that land to produce veggies for humans instead? How much of our agricultural output goes to feeding livestock right now, 60-70%? We could also spend some cash on producing cheap and good "veggiemeat".
Also, maybe create a global initiative to industrialize the 3rd worlds agriculture. You know, where the most bountiful land exists?
This idea of that we will run out of space for farming is only because we are stupidly farming like it was still the 1800. We can GMO the proper nutrients in our plants now.
Your thinking presumes one can change human nature, human choice even if i want to be a little hoity toity; Liberty.
If you look at history you'll see successful forms of government/economic control have never been the ones which require liberty to adapt against natural forces.
When you say "lets cut back on meat" – the only way that will realisitically happen is if you make the 'veggiemeats' better and cheaper than real meat.
Anything that can put Monsanto, Syngenta, Nestle and Bayer out of business sounds great to me.
People wonder how we could possibly have a future where we can support and sustain ourselves without the need for everyone to be in permanent full-time jobs – I think things like this will be part of that world.
When you consider robotics (especially with the help of 3D printing) will be on the same trend of doubling in power and halving in price computing has been on for so long & that renewable energy is heading towards free, then food production too will eventually keep falling and falling in costs. We already live in a world in developed countries where we make too much food – there only so many calories you can eat in a day.
I've huge doubts our polarized political forces will ever agree to the likes of Basic Income for years; the more change speeds up the more entrenched in old positions I can see them getting instead.
Meanwhile, inexorably, year after year technology is delivering us a zero marginal cost economy – that we can build, decentralized from the ground up, without the need for any politicians or governments.
IMHO, I'm guessing this is what it will look like- Open Source AI, 3D printed Robots & almost free renewable energy – all springing up decentralized at the local level; and taking care of our basic needs.
The day that robotics and the like are able to provide the vast majority of services is likely also the day the government realizes that it doesn't necessarily require the rest of society…
The future of agriculture right here. You could even automate it as far as to set up autonomous deliveries of fresh produce daily. If a government were to take this under much in the same way some countries have universal health care, it would do wonders for public health as a whole.
Bonus points if a store like Walmart/Aldi (or a federal food distribution program?) fully automated and the self-checkout station was the only customer-facing aspect of the store.
You'd just walk in, dial up your order, authorize the payment, and robots would assemble it from the inventory and deliver it to the self-checkout already packaged.
If it ran out of inventory, it'd automatically order more for its next shipment, a distribution center would load up and balance a self-driving truck which could then dock with the automated warehouse to be unloaded by more robotics.
Random thoughts:
Easier for consumers because they don't have to locate the inventory inside the store
Because people don't need to be able to shop inside them, the warehouse could be smaller, better climate-controlled, and unlit, capture and use the heat from the warehouse climate control to heat the storefront in the winter, or return the heat to the energy grid somehow.
Store inventory in climate-controlled pods, calibrate each for the specific perishable items inside it; no more wasted energy to open freezers, no spoiled goods that customers picked up and left elsewhere
Since the inventory is removed from the customer view and contained inside some sort of pod, there's way less risk of shrink or theft and you don't have to pay people to stock or clean up.
Automated vehicles delivering to stores means automated dispatch can move inventory faster than any human could. Because you know exactly what the inventory in any store is at any given moment (and across an entire region), the system can also identify buying trends and order more/less to accommodate for demand spikes.
Is there a membership card? When the customer comes to the kiosk to order items you could target ads and sales based on their buying behavior
Some intelligence could optimize the packing of your order into the smallest possible box, offer a small credit for returning the packing boxes, recycle the boxes back into the pipeline (valid only with your membership card, of course)
You can offer entire meals worth of ingredients as 'quick purchases', including upsales like dessert or alcohol
If there's ever an outbreak of food-borne illness or some other product recall, automated inventory can immediately recall every affected item and contact anyone who purchased an item from that affected batch.
Walmart saves huge through optimization, shrink prevention, cutting jobs, not having to insure those employees, cutting energy costs, and increased conversions based on buying behavioral analysis
I mean, to be fair, though, the Japanese believe the future of everything is robots. This kind of story comes out a couple of times a year about robots being the future of 'x'.
This gets a big thumbs up from me! But I'm the type of person that loves robots
Along with allowing more freedom for fulfilling jobs and work, if automation is used right, and the people who benefit from this aren't only the wealthy, but everyone.
This is great for food production in general. Every technological advancement that has increased the production of food. We already have more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet. So I'm sure this will make an even bigger surplus of food.
Now we just need to get our surplus of food to all the world's people.
While large farms and government subsidies are what allow heads of lettuce to remain so cheap in the US, larger farms create a great deal of waste. Would the same be true for Spread? We'll find out.
This gets a big thumbs up from me! But I'm the type of person that loves robots
I forsee lots of farmers that will say "back in my days people worked with nature to produce food" 🙂 Automatization is a blessing of modern life 🙂