by Nicholas Stehle
July 13, 2015

You’ve probably heard a lot lately about automation in the fast food industry. If proponents for a higher minimum wage get their way, that’s a virtual certainty.

But you may not have heard of this. Daily Mercury has a story up about robot farmers; that is to say, robots picking your fruit and driving tractors. Labor shortages may even be a thing of the past.

“It’s a causal workforce problem. (For farmers) their really high risk is getting a workforce to pick the fruit,” Mr Lehnert said.

“There’s not a worry about job losses. We’re just shifting the paradigm. Instead of being in the field, they will control robots.”

He hoped to be well on the way towards a commercial fruit-picking design by the end of next year.

Robots may also prevent soil damage, allowing better crop yields.

“The large machines they use on farms do a lot of damage to the soil. They compact the soils and destroy them.

“But robots would be smaller, they wouldn’t cause this issue.”

Robots also have the potential to reduce costs associated with herbicide use, lowering the overall cost of food production and certainly the health risks.

They could, however, put a serious dampener on the flood of illegal alien farm workers. Watch for La Raza to demonize this technology.