UK Government has said that Robots Farmers (Farmbots) will soon replace Real Farmers (Human being) in the field and this will promotes work efficiencies and definitely put an end to back-breaking tasks on the Farms. The farmbots developed in UK are capable of performing complex tasks that has not been possible with large-scale agricultural machinery of the past. For instance, a "lettuce bot" is capable of hoeing away ground weeds from around the base of plants. A "wine bot" trundles through vineyards pruning vines. Other bots are under development to remotely check crops for their growth, moisture and signs of disease. What a technology!
During
the Oxford Farming Conference in UK, the secretary of state for the
Environment, Food and Rural affairs, Owen Paterson, said he wanted Farmers and
food producers to have access to the widest possible range of technologies,
from new applications of robotics and sensor technology to new LED lighting in
greenhouses and cancer-fighting broccoli. According to the guardian.com, the UK
Government has set out for the first time an "Agri-tech" strategy,
with £160m in public funding. Of this cash, about £70m will go to
commercializing new Agricultural technologies – including robots, and £90m will
be spent on setting up centers for Agricultural innovation that will seek to
develop Farm technology for export, with the help of a new unit within UK Trade
and Investment. There will even be a new "Agri-tech business
ambassador", Paterson boasted, charged with driving forward exports of new
technologies. It is not just on the ground that technology promises to
transform farming. Unmanned air vehicles, or drones, are also coming into play
on farms. In South America, with its vast ranches, drones are being used for
the surveillance of widely dispersed herds and crop monitoring, and in Japan
smaller models are programmed to spray pesticide on crops. In the US, there are
experiments under way to use drones for surveillance and perhaps even herding.
The
president of National Farmers Union, Peter Kendall, in UK said technology had
been key to raising Farm productivity, and this would continue with more
"futuristic" appliances such as robots. He pinpointed that automated
"robotic" milking machines are becoming increasingly common on large
dairy farms. These can milk many cows at a time, sometimes on a revolving
platform that lifts the cows to the milking station. Some research suggests
this could be better for the cows and improve yield. Arable and vegetable
farmers have also made great use of GPS for mapping their crops, he added, and
monitoring yield, weed incidence and other vital data, leading to "real
rewards".
While
the prospect of replacing seasonal workers with robots may be attractive for
farm bosses looking to consolidate into bigger units, farm workers may be less
keen. Hockridge said the Government and Farmers should concentrate on the
better use of existing technologies: He further said that, Food and Farming, is
biggest manufacturing industry and that priority should be creating more and
good quality meaningful jobs. Organic farms provide almost 50% more jobs per
hectare and over 30% more jobs than non-organic farms.
"Even
enthusiasts for such technology acknowledge that the advanced robots now being
drawn up will take years and probably decades to reach the commercial stage.
Prof
Simon Blackmore, head of engineering at Harper Adams University, told the
Oxford conference on Wednesday that his vision was for "farming with
robots in 2050", by which time he believes this should be practical.
Some
may never catch on. Perhaps the oddest robot yet under development – and most
unsettling for anyone attached to traditional farming practices – is the
development of a robot for herding livestock. The bot wheels around pastures on
remote control, drawing stragglers back to the herd, though without actually
having to nip at their heels. Presumably the dogbot dreams of electric sheep.