The Business of Agriculture – Welcome to the Future of Robotic Farming

Eli Whitney built the first cotton gin, and that revolutionized cotton farming, it changed everything, forever in that sector. Today the business of agriculture is going very high-tech, very fast. More mechanized equipment, robotic systems, and high-tech tools.

The massive productivity increases and crop yields is completely astounding, unfortunately, this also causes a problem for people, workers who make their money on farms and picking crops – they just will not be needed in the future.

This means they may not be able to feed their own families. Indeed, I can look back at my family tree and before the 1940s my ancestral charts show ten kids in nearly every family. Why? Simple they were farmers and needed the labor, may as well “keep it in the family” so to speak.

Today Dairy Farms have 25 to 35 head of cattle per employee, the cows rest on water bed mattresses, and robotic stainless steel equipment hooked up to a computer milks the cows. Higher milk yield, happier cows, less infection, sounds like a good life to me, and that my friends is the future of the agriculture business in a nutshell.

The modern day combine is over half-a-million dollars, runs on GPS coordinates, and looks more like the space shuttle inside than anything close to a 1940s tractor. In fact, once you put the combine in position, just hit go, like you would in a 747 cleared for take-off and it will fly the whole trip and land in zero-zero visibility at the designated airport.

So too, will a modern day combine, it can do the entire job in dense fog and tell you when it’s done, while you are merely along for the ride “just in case” as you sit in complete comfort with surround a sound music, air-conditioning and you can even watch the game. Yah, farming is hard work? Not anymore, never again will it be.

And just as the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) works on telerobotics, they have high-tech farm equipment that can do the same. Instead of a flying UAV, it’s an unmanned agricultural vehicle (UAV), the military version would be an unmanned ground vehicle or UGV, but rest assured this technology is coming to a field near you soon.

Interestingly enough, these high-tech pieces of equipment are also getting harder and harder to maintain, meaning Farmer Joe in the future might have a computer degree from MIT. Please consider all this.