In the past 70 years, agriculture has lost most of its workforce, with each generation turning away from family farming. Despite this, agriculture has found ways to increase food production, with machines playing a key role. However, in 2020 the United Nations warned that agricultural productivity needs to increase by 60 percent to feed the predicted global population in 2050. With major producers such as the US still struggling to find agricultural labor, this demand simply cannot be met if agriculture does not change the way it functions. Automation is the only solution to bridging the workforce gap, says Walt Duflock, vice president for innovation at Western Growers. Farmers are now replacing traditional machines with AI-powered robots, which are skilled at tasks that once required human hands. Automated machines use computer vision and AI for precise control over mechanical blades as they till the soil and remove weeds, while also saving crops. However, new agricultural technologies are not without risks. As agriculture becomes increasingly data-driven, companies are interested in collecting all of this new data, raising concerns about the potential use of this data by insurers, for example.
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