Free Food to Become a Human Right

ON IT'S FACE, this article is about automating fruit picking.  But in reality, it's about the future.

Here's an interesting story: The government of Switzerland is considering passing a bill to pay every one of its citizens just for being alive.  This has some very interesting implications.
Submitted are three data points, and two predictions:

Data Point 1.  At the University of Sydney, a team is working hard to create a fully automated farm.  There have been many, many efforts at using robots to perform routine tasks on the farm, but none as sophisticated as this project. 

The first phase is the development of robots that can patrol orchards and gather data for a “comprehensive in-ground and out-of-ground model. Traditionally it has been necessary for someone to actually walk through the orchard, taking and analyzing soil and other samples and making decisions on the health and yield quality of the plants," said Sukkarieh. "The devices we've developed can collect, analyze and present this  information autonomously, so a major part of the farmer's job can be done automatically."

This year (2013), the team will start the second phase, which will see the technology applied to standard tractors to allow them to automatically carry out tasks like applying fertilizers and pesticides, watering, sweeping and mowing.

The third phase is to develop harvesting robots. "The devices we've developed already can identify each individual fruit on the tree and its degree of ripeness, which is about 80 percent of the job done. But being able to harvest them is our ultimate goal," he said.  Unwilling to make precise predictions, Sukkarieh says that phase 3 will be realized "in a few years".

Data Point 2.  Grape pruning, orange harvesting and apple picking through the use of multi-arm robots are being pioneered by Vision Robotics in San Diego. These guys are pretty advanced too, and are capitalized by a number of sources, including grants and investors.  They are keeping things pretty close to their vest and encourage folks to "check back frequently" and read their news page.

Data Point 3.  In the August 2012 issue of Fruit Grower, Geraldine Warner blogged that automated fruit pickers might be two years away.  Dr. Sanjiv Singh of Carnegie Mellon said that for the technology to become field acceptable (i.e. to farmers) it would need to be "affordable, robust, and technically feasible". The affordability factor has come down by a factor of ten.  The technical parts are coming together.  And the engineering will ensure that it's robust. Vision Robotics is also mentioned in this post.

There are many, many projects of this type underway around the world.  And we're not even covering the automated restaurant yet, and the impact that'll have on jobs.  It's going to happen. 

Prediction 1: in five years (some time in 2018) fully automated harvesting will begin to become mainstream.  Major commercial farmers will be using robots, eliminating millions of jobs.  In China, according to government statistics, there are 120 million migrant farmers.  There are probably three million in the United States.  Just as during the industrial revolution, the workforce will be shifting from relatively unskilled labor to highly specialized, technical labor.  Someone will have to maintain and support the robots!

Prediction 2: in ten years (2023) or sooner, governments will pass legislation which makes free, nutritious food a human right.  The production of crops will become so efficient and inexpensive as to make this economically possible. The only question is, will the first government to pass such a law be the United States, the United Nations, or a country in the European Union?  And check out an article in the WSJ from Suynday, February 24, 2013:  "Our jobless future may be more sustainable than we imagine."

What do you think?