🖖 These ARE the droids we're looking for

This was a fun one to research- quite the rabbit hole.

I thought I was gonna write a quick list for ya, but there are more robots in our food system than I realised.

Gonna have to make this one a multi-parter.

But…

Before I dig in to the robots, I want to tackle the biggest concern most people are going to have- the loss of jobs as a result of implementing machines.

Being part of the commercial food system, no matter your title or geography, is an honourable profession. It’s not just about feeding people, but keeping traditions alive and telling stories.

And as a hobby, getting your hands in that wet dirt and taking care of other life-forms is quite therapeutic.

Few things are better than growing and harvesting our own food.

However it’s one thing to go out to the garden on a crisp morning with your thermos of tea to tend to your tomatoes.

It’s another to be bent over or performing repetitive motions for hours during the hottest part of the day to meet a quota before you can stop.

If we can remove humans from the most back-breaking farming tasks, isn’t that worth something?

They’d be free to pursue higher purposes. They could be trained as technicians and supervisors of the new equipment in the field.

Higher positions means better wages and salaries to provide for their families. Better morale. Higher productivity.

There was a time when farmers were certain they’d be out of the job when the tractor was invented.

They were certain.

But that turned out not to be the case.

Change and growth are as they always were…scary.

Here’s one of the changes we get to witness.

Planting

Let’s talk about the FD20. “The world’s first sustainable robot that can plant, weed and hoe…”

They’re made by Danish manufacturer FarmDroid and currently in operation at the sugar beet farms of Eberhard Weisskopf- an organic farmer in Germany.

Each droid can weed and hoe 20 hectares per season by tending the fields almost around the clock for 8 weeks.

The droids rely on a crazy precise GPS system that allows them to remember exactly where they planted the seeds. That same system allows them to identify the seedlings aren’t the ones it planted and remove them.

Oh. Did I mention that they’re solar-powered? 

Yep.

An organic farmer is using droids to increase his yield per season, reduce labour and wastage costs, reduce pesticide usage and eliminate tractor fumes from the process.

Not too shabby.

Other types of planting robots:

• Drone planters- for those hard to reach places and reforestation

• Robotic arm planters- for delicate tasks like transplanting seedlings from nurseries

• Swarm robot planters- synchronised robots that can plant larger fields in a shorter amount of time

Pretty darn cool

These exist.

They’re out in the fields now. If we can get more assistance like this to farmers around the world imagine what it could do for our food supply.

I’ll stop here for now because there are plenty more robots to talk about.

Robots even designed for specific crops- grains, apples, carrots, you name it.

We’ll soon see farms and food businesses in a whole new light.