In California, the breadbasket of America, more than half of farmers there told a survey that they were unable to hire enough workers. Nine of out ten workers cross the border from Mexico and central America for seasonal work, a flow that can be choked off or let loose, depending on the political wind. And the wind in recent years has been blowing hard and southerly.
Silicon Valley has an answer. In fact it has many, from fertiliser drones and driverless tractors to weed-bots and automated strawberry pickers.
The goal: to create, if not quite a “farmerless farm”, at least a highly-mechanised one that uses a fraction of the resources traditional operations do, and rely on far fewer humans to do the work.
John Deere, America’s biggest farm equipment-maker, grabbed headlines this month with the announcement that, later this year, it will start selling an autonomous tractor that can till a field while a farmer sleeps. The vehicle, which is studded with 12 cameras and has a powerful computer on board, will be much more expensive than a traditional tractor, but the company said it is working on how best to price it, with options including a “farming as a service” subscription model.
