I worked on a commercial seed farm for eight years. Seed farms are funny things. Very few plants will grow a whole lot of seeds. A very small farm can sell seeds by the pallet. This means that...
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I worked on a commercial seed farm for eight years.
Seed farms are funny things. Very few plants will grow a whole lot of seeds. A very small farm can sell seeds by the pallet. This means that they do not benefit much from the economy of scale that you see in monoculture farms. We had hundreds of different crops, most of which took up less space than the average bedroom, and that means we couldn't meaningfully use tractors or other modern equipment in these crops: they wouldn't physically fit in the smaller crops, and the risk of contamination (cross-pollination, mixed seed, etc.) was too high to use them in most of the larger crops.
The director was a very practical man who encouraged innovation, but he also avoided investing heavily in anything that was not thoroughly tested. We employed several smart technologies (automatic greenhouse vents, weather data collection, etc.), which all worked very well, but they were hardly new or uncommon technology; pretty much all commercial farms use them. We still relied very heavily on physical labor for nearly all tasks, and we even still used a number of antique, Victorian-era machines (like threshers and seeders) because they operate on a much smaller scale than modern technology does.
When the director retired, we got a new director who decided to focus more heavily on technological innovation to reduce labor costs. He invested very heavily in the types of agricultural technology you read about in articles. The two biggest ones were a drone and a solar-powered weeding robot.
The drone was over $20,000. I was in R&D, and we tried very hard to convince the director to buy a cheaper drone first as a proof-of-concept, but he did not listen.
This drone was massive and loud. An employee had to get a pilot's licenses in order to fly it legally, and he hated operating it so much (setting it up, flying it, and downloading/processing the photography took a huge chunk out of his already-busy schedule, plus he said it was very difficult and stressful to operate) that he eventually refused to fly it anymore. So then they had to pay for more employees to get pilot's licenses so they could share the burden. The drone actually required two people whenever it was flying: one to operate it and one to watch out for eagles (it was an eagle magnet; they hated it and would attack it aggressively, which required extremely expensive repairs because it was such a complicated object). And for all that expense and trouble, my R&D coworkers who worked with the drone data told me it was not very valuable data. The farm was pretty tiny (under 20 acres), so it was quicker, easier, and cheaper to inspect the crops on foot as we had been doing for years.
The robot cost the company... a whole lot more $20,000. It cost us enough to employ quite a few laborers for a year. Additionally, it needed to be supervised at all times whenever it was operating. Thankfully this was done by two engineers/researchers associated with the university that designed and built it, so we didn't have to pay their wages, but it must have been very expensive for the university; they were pretty much working on the robot on our farm full time.
The reason the robot needed them was because it was riddled with technical issues that required a great deal of babying. It stopped working when it got cloudy. It constantly got mired in the mud. It moved extremely slowly and ran through its battery in about two hours (probably because of all the extra drag from the mud) and then took several hours to charge, which meant that new weeds grew faster than it could weed them. It couldn't identify small weeds, but its weeding arm was too weak to pull large weeds; the sweet spot was medium weeds, but they were only a portion of the total weed coverage. It was designed to be as lightweight as possible, so some of its parts were very fragile and it broke a lot, which took it out of commission for hours at a time. It was about the size of a car, so it was tricky use to without damaging the crop, and it could only be used in our biggest outdoor crops (which were mostly demonstration fields for the benefit of prospective seed buyers).
In addition to weeding, the robot was originally supposed to collect data and identify whether there was a pest/disease issue in the crop, but that didn't work at all, and the engineers finally admitted that it would probably be several years before they could get around to working on those issues. They decided to focus exclusively on the weeding function because that was the thing it came closest to being able to do.
At the end of the day, the robot never saved any labor. It did pull the occasional medium-sized weed, but because it couldn't get the other weeds, humans had to hoe over the fields anyway. (Hoes remove all weeds in their path, so there is absolutely no value in removing random scattered weeds before you hoe.)
Unfortunately, the director cut back on employment funding in order to afford these toys, with the justification that they would reduce the workload. And so the farm was effectively run on a skeleton crew, and the overworked employees (many of them veterans who had worked there for 10, 20 years) quit in droves, and the company struggled to hire replacements because we live in a small town and word travels fast. The director finally decided to get employees to spray herbicides and other nasty chemicals in the demonstration fields to save on labor. However, these fields were supposed to be grown organically because a number of our buyers were organic farmers and needed to see which varieties grew best in those conditions. When I found out that he instructed everyone to lie to the organic farmers about our use of chemicals in these fields, it was the last straw for me and I started looking for other work.
Technology is zooming right along in the agricultural sector and there are some really exciting changes coming. However, if a technology is genuinely good, it will be adopted swiftly and universally, like weather stations and automated greenhouse vents were; but then it doesn't seem so thrilling and cutting edge, and it doesn't get hyped up in articles. I used to read stories about fancy robotic pollinators, and then go to work and manually pollinate flowers with a paintbrush—just like everyone in the industry does—because the venerable paintbrush actually works.
Some really awesome technology often has to go through some growing pains before it becomes worthwhile (see historical washing machines and vacuums), but when it gets hyped too hard too early, it can do real damage and actually delay the adoption of technology. Our director wasn't the only decision-maker where I worked; his bosses overseas greenlit his tech experiments and then watched how it unfolded, and I have no doubt that it has moved them in a more conservative direction with the many dozens of other farms they oversee all over the world.
I worked on a commercial seed farm for eight years.
Seed farms are funny things. Very few plants will grow a whole lot of seeds. A very small farm can sell seeds by the pallet. This means that they do not benefit much from the economy of scale that you see in monoculture farms. We had hundreds of different crops, most of which took up less space than the average bedroom, and that means we couldn't meaningfully use tractors or other modern equipment in these crops: they wouldn't physically fit in the smaller crops, and the risk of contamination (cross-pollination, mixed seed, etc.) was too high to use them in most of the larger crops.
The director was a very practical man who encouraged innovation, but he also avoided investing heavily in anything that was not thoroughly tested. We employed several smart technologies (automatic greenhouse vents, weather data collection, etc.), which all worked very well, but they were hardly new or uncommon technology; pretty much all commercial farms use them. We still relied very heavily on physical labor for nearly all tasks, and we even still used a number of antique, Victorian-era machines (like threshers and seeders) because they operate on a much smaller scale than modern technology does.
When the director retired, we got a new director who decided to focus more heavily on technological innovation to reduce labor costs. He invested very heavily in the types of agricultural technology you read about in articles. The two biggest ones were a drone and a solar-powered weeding robot.
The drone was over $20,000. I was in R&D, and we tried very hard to convince the director to buy a cheaper drone first as a proof-of-concept, but he did not listen.
This drone was massive and loud. An employee had to get a pilot's licenses in order to fly it legally, and he hated operating it so much (setting it up, flying it, and downloading/processing the photography took a huge chunk out of his already-busy schedule, plus he said it was very difficult and stressful to operate) that he eventually refused to fly it anymore. So then they had to pay for more employees to get pilot's licenses so they could share the burden. The drone actually required two people whenever it was flying: one to operate it and one to watch out for eagles (it was an eagle magnet; they hated it and would attack it aggressively, which required extremely expensive repairs because it was such a complicated object). And for all that expense and trouble, my R&D coworkers who worked with the drone data told me it was not very valuable data. The farm was pretty tiny (under 20 acres), so it was quicker, easier, and cheaper to inspect the crops on foot as we had been doing for years.
The robot cost the company... a whole lot more $20,000. It cost us enough to employ quite a few laborers for a year. Additionally, it needed to be supervised at all times whenever it was operating. Thankfully this was done by two engineers/researchers associated with the university that designed and built it, so we didn't have to pay their wages, but it must have been very expensive for the university; they were pretty much working on the robot on our farm full time.
The reason the robot needed them was because it was riddled with technical issues that required a great deal of babying. It stopped working when it got cloudy. It constantly got mired in the mud. It moved extremely slowly and ran through its battery in about two hours (probably because of all the extra drag from the mud) and then took several hours to charge, which meant that new weeds grew faster than it could weed them. It couldn't identify small weeds, but its weeding arm was too weak to pull large weeds; the sweet spot was medium weeds, but they were only a portion of the total weed coverage. It was designed to be as lightweight as possible, so some of its parts were very fragile and it broke a lot, which took it out of commission for hours at a time. It was about the size of a car, so it was tricky use to without damaging the crop, and it could only be used in our biggest outdoor crops (which were mostly demonstration fields for the benefit of prospective seed buyers).
In addition to weeding, the robot was originally supposed to collect data and identify whether there was a pest/disease issue in the crop, but that didn't work at all, and the engineers finally admitted that it would probably be several years before they could get around to working on those issues. They decided to focus exclusively on the weeding function because that was the thing it came closest to being able to do.
At the end of the day, the robot never saved any labor. It did pull the occasional medium-sized weed, but because it couldn't get the other weeds, humans had to hoe over the fields anyway. (Hoes remove all weeds in their path, so there is absolutely no value in removing random scattered weeds before you hoe.)
Unfortunately, the director cut back on employment funding in order to afford these toys, with the justification that they would reduce the workload. And so the farm was effectively run on a skeleton crew, and the overworked employees (many of them veterans who had worked there for 10, 20 years) quit in droves, and the company struggled to hire replacements because we live in a small town and word travels fast. The director finally decided to get employees to spray herbicides and other nasty chemicals in the demonstration fields to save on labor. However, these fields were supposed to be grown organically because a number of our buyers were organic farmers and needed to see which varieties grew best in those conditions. When I found out that he instructed everyone to lie to the organic farmers about our use of chemicals in these fields, it was the last straw for me and I started looking for other work.
Technology is zooming right along in the agricultural sector and there are some really exciting changes coming. However, if a technology is genuinely good, it will be adopted swiftly and universally, like weather stations and automated greenhouse vents were; but then it doesn't seem so thrilling and cutting edge, and it doesn't get hyped up in articles. I used to read stories about fancy robotic pollinators, and then go to work and manually pollinate flowers with a paintbrush—just like everyone in the industry does—because the venerable paintbrush actually works.
Some really awesome technology often has to go through some growing pains before it becomes worthwhile (see historical washing machines and vacuums), but when it gets hyped too hard too early, it can do real damage and actually delay the adoption of technology. Our director wasn't the only decision-maker where I worked; his bosses overseas greenlit his tech experiments and then watched how it unfolded, and I have no doubt that it has moved them in a more conservative direction with the many dozens of other farms they oversee all over the world.
Very interesting story, thanks for sharing