Autonomous technologies are coming to farming. What will this mean for the crop and the workers who harvest it?

HOMESTEAD, FL. – Jeremy Ford hates to waste water.

As a mist of rain drenched the fields around him in Homestead, Fla., Ford lamented how expensive fossil-fuel-powered irrigation had become on his five-acre farm—and how it was bad for the planet.

Earlier this month, Ford installed an automated underground system that uses a solar-powered pump to periodically irrigate the roots of his crops, saving “thousands of gallons of water.” While they may be more expensive up front, he considers such climate-friendly investments a necessary expense — and more affordable than expanding his two-person workforce.

It’s “much more efficient,” Ford said. “We were trying to figure out, ‘How do we do this?’ with the least amount of additional work.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is a collaboration between The Associated Press and Grist.

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More and more companies are introducing automation in agriculture. This could ease the sector’s deepening labor shortages, help farmers manage costs and protect workers from extreme heat. Automation could also increase yields by enabling greater precision in planting, harvesting and farm management, potentially alleviating some of the challenges of growing food in an increasingly warming world.

But many small farmers and producers across the country are not convinced. Barriers to adoption go beyond high prices to questions about whether the tools can do the job nearly as well as the workers they will replace. Some of those same workers are wondering what this trend could mean for them and whether the machines will lead to exploitation.

How autonomous is farm automation? Not completely – yet

On some farms, unmanned tractors are mowing down acres of corn, soybeans, lettuce, and more. Such equipment is expensive and requires mastering new tools, but row crops are quite easy to automate. Picking small, patchy fruits that are easy to damage, such as blackberries, or large citrus fruits that require a bit of strength and dexterity to pluck off the tree would be much more difficult.

That doesn’t stop scientists like Xin Zhang, a biological engineer and Mississippi State University of Agriculture. Working with a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology, she wants to apply some of the automation techniques used by surgeons, along with the power of advanced cameras and object-recognition computers, to create robotic berry-picking arms that can pick fruit without creating a sticky mess. layer purple mess

Scientists have been working with farmers for field trials, but Zhang isn’t sure when the machine might be ready for consumers. Although robotic harvesting is not widespread, a number of products have entered the market that can be seen as Orchards of Washington to Florida Production Farms.

“I feel like this is the future,” Zhang said.

But where she sees promise, others see problems.

Frank James, executive director of the grassroots agricultural group Dakota Rural Action, grew up on a cattle ranch in northeastern South Dakota. His family used to have several laborers, but they had to be laid off partly due to a lack of labor. Most of the work is now done by his brother and sister-in-law, with his 80-year-old father stepping in from time to time.

They swear by tractor autosteering, an automated system that communicates with a satellite to help keep the machine on track. But it can’t detect moisture levels in fields that could damage tools or cause a tractor to get stuck, and requires human control to work properly. Technology also makes maintenance more difficult. For these reasons, he doubts that automation will be the “absolute” future of farm work.

“You build a relationship with the land, with the animals, with the place where you grow it. And we’re moving away from that,” James said.

Some farmers say automation solves labor problems

Tim Bucher grew up on a farm in Northern California and has worked in agriculture since he was 16 years old. Dealing with weather issues like drought has always been his life’s work, but climate change has brought new challenges, with temperatures regularly reaching triple digits and blankets of smoke destroying entire vineyards.

Climate change combined with labor challenges inspired him to combine his agricultural experience with Silicon Valley engineering to found AgTonomy in 2021. It works with equipment manufacturers like Doosan Bobcat to make automated tractors and other tools.

Since launching the pilot programs in 2022, Bucher said, the company has been “inundated” with customers, mostly vineyard and orchard growers in California and Washington.

Those who follow the sector say farmers, who are often skeptical of new technology, will consider automation if it makes their business more profitable and their lives easier. Will Brigham, a dairy and maple farmer in Vermont, sees such tools as a solution to the nation’s agricultural labor shortage.

“A lot of farmers are struggling with labor,” he said, citing “high competition” for jobs where “you don’t have to deal with the weather.”

Since 2021, Brigham Family Farm has been using Farmblox, an artificial intelligence-based farm monitoring and management system that helps them anticipate problems such as leaks in pipes used to produce maple. Six months ago, he joined the company as a senior sales engineer to help other farmers adopt similar technologies.

Workers worry about losing their jobs or their rights to automation

Corn picking used to be a rite of passage for some young people in the Midwest. Teenagers waded through seas of corn, removing the tassels – the yellow feather-like bit at the top of each stalk – to prevent unwanted pollination.

Extreme heat, drought and heavy rainfall made this laborious task even more difficult. And now it is more often done by migrant farmers, who sometimes work 20 hours to keep up. That’s why Jason Cope, co-founder of agricultural technology company PowerPollen, believes it’s important to mechanize tough tasks like disassembling small parts. His team created a tool that allows a tractor to collect pollen from male plants without having to remove the panicle. It can then be saved for future harvest.

“We can explain climate change by pinpointing the timing of pollen delivery,” he said. “And that takes a lot of work, which is hard to take out of the equation.”

Eric Nicholson, a former farm labor organizer who now runs Semillero de Ideas, a non-profit focused on farm workers and technology, said he has heard from farm workers who are concerned about losing their jobs to automation. Some have also expressed concerns about the safety of working alongside autonomous machines, but are reluctant to raise the issue for fear of losing their jobs. He wants the companies that make these machines and the farm owners that use them to put people first.

Luis Jimenez, a dairy worker in New York, agrees. He described one farm that uses technology to monitor cows for disease. Such tools can sometimes identify infections faster than a dairy worker or veterinarian.

They also help the workers know how the cows live, Jimenez said, speaking in Spanish. But they could reduce the number of people needed on farms and put additional pressure on the workers who remain, he said. These pressures are exacerbated by increasingly automated technologies, such as video cameras used to monitor worker performance.

Automation can be “a tactic like a strategy for bosses, so people are afraid and won’t demand their rights,” said Jimenez, who advocates for immigrant farm workers at the grassroots organization Alianza Agrícola. Robots, after all, “are machines that don’t ask for anything,” he added. “We don’t want to be replaced by machines.”

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Associated Press reporters Amy Thaksin in Santa Ana, Calif., and Dorani Pineda in Los Angeles contributed. Walling reported from Chicago.

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Follow Melina Walling on X at @MelinaWalling.

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