<story><title>The rise of the robot farmer</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/20/space-robots-lasers-rise-robot-farmer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>clarkmoody</author><text>The immense productivity gains in agriculture have driven down food costs, which improves the standard of living of everyone. It also frees up those who would have worked farm jobs to do higher-valued labor in the economy.</text></item><item><author>rmason</author><text>In Michigan we&amp;#x27;ve already got family farms with a man, two sons and a single employee handling 10,000 acres.  Robots driving tractors, trucks and combines would allow that to expand 5-6X.  In turn that would lead to a reduction in farmers of up to 80%.  This is a trend that has been running for close to a hundred years.  Remember at one time a quarter of America&amp;#x27;s population were farmers and now it&amp;#x27;s under 2%.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>radiorental</author><text>&amp;gt; frees up those who would have worked farm jobs to do higher-valued labor in the economy&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s the ideal, in reality too many of these people live in areas where there are no other opportunities.  They are also often fed the line that the job can be brought back.&lt;p&gt;Put simply, we&amp;#x27;ve observed generational shifts to higher-valued jobs in urban areas.  A farmer, coal miner , etc who loses their job today is unlikely to re-skill &amp;amp; move to other industries</text></comment>
<story><title>The rise of the robot farmer</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/20/space-robots-lasers-rise-robot-farmer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>clarkmoody</author><text>The immense productivity gains in agriculture have driven down food costs, which improves the standard of living of everyone. It also frees up those who would have worked farm jobs to do higher-valued labor in the economy.</text></item><item><author>rmason</author><text>In Michigan we&amp;#x27;ve already got family farms with a man, two sons and a single employee handling 10,000 acres.  Robots driving tractors, trucks and combines would allow that to expand 5-6X.  In turn that would lead to a reduction in farmers of up to 80%.  This is a trend that has been running for close to a hundred years.  Remember at one time a quarter of America&amp;#x27;s population were farmers and now it&amp;#x27;s under 2%.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>knieveltech</author><text>In theory. In practice, this has lead to collapse of rural economies, rampant poverty, and epidemic drug usage amongst rural populations. As to driving food costs down, that&amp;#x27;s trivially disprovable. Loaf of bread in 1950: 12 cents. Adjusted for inflation that&amp;#x27;s $1.26 currently. A cheap loaf of white bread costs substantially more than $1.26.&lt;p&gt;Edit: of &lt;i&gt;course&lt;/i&gt; this gets downvoted, because econ gibberish is certainly more valid than observed reality.</text></comment>