Why is the arrival of robotics in agriculture inevitable ...?
The reality that is the robotics that produces the food we need in the future is just around the corner, so that scientists, innovators and research centers around the world are in a race to devise specific robots for agriculture
The discussion in vogue is to anticipate the impact that robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) will have on human activities in the near future. The seminars and academic meetings are multiplied to reflect on the true scope or limits that society must agree to face the imminent irruption of robotics, which together with the AI, can transform not only the economic or productive matrix of a country, but also the totality of human activities, including the social and political life of individuals and communities.
Especially the case of robotics, which is called to replace man in a variety of tasks.
The agricultural tasks do not escape to this phenomenon, although some maintain that it is the productive sector in which it will have less social impact from the labor point of view. The studies indicate that the professional tasks linked to this sector will not be threatened, on the contrary, they will be enriched with these new resources and tools.
In Chile, a decade ago the dairy industry has almost completely automated its production process, as well as several stages of the agricultural and agrofrutícola production process, such as packaging, for example.
Rural depopulation
On the other hand the analysts and students of the Social Sciences, as sociologists or anthropologists, predict that in the near future the field will be practically depopulated of human presence, for what the silvoagropecuaria activity will have to resort to the robotic automation and the AI to play the great majority of the tasks linked to their productive processes.
This depopulation is not new, it comes from industrialization. Even on more than one occasion, the countries have developed initiatives to repopulate rural areas, but what is currently observed has irreversible characteristics due to several factors, including changes in the distribution of the population, which moves from the interior to the coasts or from the countryside to the city. To this is added the labor migration of peasants to the mining-related tasks or the construction of road infrastructure and megaprojects.
On the other hand, women abandon rural life looking for more stable labor sources in their search process for economic independence. Finally there is the element of early displacement of young people to large cities, also on a path of search for opportunities, study, work, and even cultural or social.
The new helpers
This scenario has led to the abandonment of rural life by people, which causes it to be mainly inhabited by older adults, or people without competent labor skills for the modern agricultural industry, causing a significant decline in rural births, which ends closing the circle that validates the thesis of the total depopulation of the field in the near future.
In short, those in charge of producing food will be a few brave clinging to agriculture, and their new helpers ... and these helpers will not be flesh and blood.
The reality that is the robotics that produces the food we need in the future is just around the corner, so that scientists, innovators and research centers around the world are in a race to devise specific robots for agriculture .
The market of robotics in agriculture is projected to grow over the next decade by more than one 20% and its impact will transform this productive activity into one of the most profitable and demanded by human consumption, since these tools will add value to the food production, not only in the perspective of the efficiency that implies its automation, but also in the effective contribution that will mean by giving sustainability to the activity and a new relationship with the natural environment.
Source: Martín Carrillo O. - Blueberries Consulting
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