The Age of Robot Farmers
I&#x27;m solely in the consumer camp: I don&#x27;t produce food, I buy and eat it (I don&#x27;t buy and sell it either).<p>I think we&#x27;ve been trained to assume cheap food is a goal. I think the goal should have been clearer: <i>cheap enough but not too cheap</i><p>The economics here are complicated. It benefits me to have cheap food, but if the cost is ag workers with systematic health problems, low income, farmers going bust, prison labor being used, its actually not really an overall benefit.<p>The price of strawberries needs to reflect the real costs here which include paying pickers a living wage.<p>Replacing pickers by robots only masks the problem, the problem of low paid workers remains: if they aren&#x27;t picking, what are these people doing, and whats the wider cost?<p>Here in Australia we have this problem. We exploit backpacker labour (visiting kids on restricted visa) to do picking, we exploit migrant labour from island communities (we actually used to predate them for virtual slaves. Wierd history. Read up on &quot;blackbirding&quot;) to do picking. And, we have a duopoloy in the supermarket supply chain which abuses market power to avoid paying farmers a living income stream, sometimes arguing over 10c or 20c price differences.<p>its really not helping to drive the cost of food down all the time. It has to be a realistic price, or you can&#x27;t have safe, strategically suitable, sustainable, locally grown food.<p>I don&#x27;t want soylent.