I enjoyed this video about farming technology and hope you also find it interesting. The amount of technological sophistication involved in agriculture never ceases to amaze me.
I enjoyed this video about farming technology and hope you also find it interesting. The amount of technological sophistication involved in agriculture never ceases to amaze me.
Thanks for sharing, there's an amazing amount of sophistication out there. I saw a laser weeder the other day, but even the low-tech stuff like bikes repurposed to plant seeds and thresh is...
Thanks for sharing, there's an amazing amount of sophistication out there. I saw a laser weeder the other day, but even the low-tech stuff like bikes repurposed to plant seeds and thresh is impressive.
It might be a pipedream, but years ago I saw MIT's CSAIL working on robotic gardeners and since then I've always hoped we'd get something like a Roomba for crops, either on a residential or community level. Around that time I was helping with a rehab garden-->a student worker at a traditional Zuni garden. In the bits of reading I did I saw how successful things like Victory Gardens were, producing 1/3rd of the produce in WWII in the U.S. Having something that repurposed parts of suburban lawns to produce without transportation costs would be great.
I think one of the most underappreciated things out there is just how much modern agriculture has increased yields, and how important that has been. Per Purdue there's been a steady 1.9 bu/ac annual increase in corn since the 50's. That's insane.
There's mitigating factors, but the food crisis in Sri Lanka was a bleak look at what can happen if chemical fertilisers or pesticides stop being available (or effective / desired).
Also got me to look up farm labor stats in the U.S., so I'll add that despite the image of the American farmer, only 27% of farmers are U.S. born (circa 2014), and 48% are unauthorized. I was also a little surprised that migrant farm work was a decreasing trend, with 80% of workers working within 75 miles of their home.
I enjoyed this video about farming technology and hope you also find it interesting. The amount of technological sophistication involved in agriculture never ceases to amaze me.
Thanks for sharing, there's an amazing amount of sophistication out there. I saw a laser weeder the other day, but even the low-tech stuff like bikes repurposed to plant seeds and thresh is impressive.
It might be a pipedream, but years ago I saw MIT's CSAIL working on robotic gardeners and since then I've always hoped we'd get something like a Roomba for crops, either on a residential or community level. Around that time I was helping with a rehab garden-->a student worker at a traditional Zuni garden. In the bits of reading I did I saw how successful things like Victory Gardens were, producing 1/3rd of the produce in WWII in the U.S. Having something that repurposed parts of suburban lawns to produce without transportation costs would be great.
I think one of the most underappreciated things out there is just how much modern agriculture has increased yields, and how important that has been. Per Purdue there's been a steady 1.9 bu/ac annual increase in corn since the 50's. That's insane.
There's mitigating factors, but the food crisis in Sri Lanka was a bleak look at what can happen if chemical fertilisers or pesticides stop being available (or effective / desired).
Also got me to look up farm labor stats in the U.S., so I'll add that despite the image of the American farmer, only 27% of farmers are U.S. born (circa 2014), and 48% are unauthorized. I was also a little surprised that migrant farm work was a decreasing trend, with 80% of workers working within 75 miles of their home.