/sci/ - Science & Math

What I find annoying is when people suggest that automation is going to replace workers in fields they know nothing about.

For instance, the technology that would be necessary to completely automate an entire farm would easily require millions of dollars. From tomatoes to watermelon to chickens to cows, there is a huge amount of variation and tons of variables to account for. Some things need to be strung up onto stakes and some need to be deflowered. Hell, designing something that could do something as small a piece of the puzzle as harvesting a single plant effectively (considering the high amount of variation in each plant to high amounts of variation of rain and sunlight) is so far out of reach not to mention planting, irrigating, cultivating and tilling which all vary according to plants and most farms do a huge variety of plants from Aliums to Brassicas to Solanecae.

There's just so much shit to account for, and the whole automation thing is basically a bunch of Engineering undergrads attempting to justify their choice of major but not understanding that you can't just turn everything into a spherical cow and call it a day. Shit has no basis in reality.

Who the fuck has millions of dollars to drop down at the beginning of a season? It's a huge risk that's not even close to being economical.