Professor Rob Sparrow | January 20, 2020 from GlobalHQ on Vimeo.
AT A time when New Zealand is poised for the new season’s harvest but thousands of hands short, the concept of an army of robots to harvest it all could seem an appealing one.
But Professor Robert Sparrow and co-author Dr Mark Howard have attempted to look beyond the immediate economic appeal of robots. They maintain robots could risk affecting our relationship to food, nature and farming in ways not yet appreciated.
The researchers presented their findings in an article in the journal Precision Agriculture in December.
One of their main concerns is that the highly capital-intensive nature of robotic systems is likely to lead to ever more intensive, larger and monocultural production units.
“Most proposed applications of robots are clearly an extension of existing industrial food production systems,” Sparrow said.
“For people concerned about the future of food, that is the exact opposite of where we should be heading.”
Sparrow challenges the claim robotics could offer a solution to staffing issues in rural areas, maintaining that having more people in rural areas can come down to a social choice, made at a government level.
“One thing we have seen with covid-19 is how much scope governments have to incentivise social and economic changes. Perhaps rural repopulation could be the policy goal of governments, rather than letting the people simply leave the landscape as robots arrive,” he said.
Meantime the technology, with its big-ticket price, can also mean smaller owner-operator farmers are prevented from accessing it to assist with growing and harvesting.
He points to subscription and contract conditions that could disempower farmers. Such terms require them to become reliant upon an exclusive technology, and beholden to terms and conditions that may not allow for “right to repair” or customisation for their particular farm situation.
He agrees it may become a similar situation to when farmers contracting into the Roundup Ready seed crops felt they were locked into the seed technology and the company’s proprietary conditions on their use.
“There is also the issue of the data collected by the technology about soil moisture, crop coverage, or nutrient levels. That is information you as a farmer may not wish to share with the companies you are purchasing inputs from,” he said.
He likened it to a situation in which personal data collected by fitness devices is shared with an insurance company that might then refuse to insure the individual, based on what the data has shown.
“When people have access to information it changes the relationship between parties, and not always in a good way, ” he said.
Sparrow says much of the work involved a review of studies and research already completed, along with input that drew on his own background studying the role of robots in the military and in social settings.
“Killing people turns out to be relatively easy for robots, and the military are not under the same budgetary pressures food producers are,” he said.
He has also studied the social use of robots in industries like aged care.
“My expectation is that when it becomes easier to use robots, people will vacate the sector, but it is human beings that the aged want to have around, even if they are there to clean the rooms,” he said.
Similarly, there is a risk that the farm of the future will become an even more solitary place. Issues about mental health and loneliness already plaguing the sector may only multiply.
For countries like NZ or Australia, where provenance and the product story are becoming integral to marketing success, growing crops with robotic tech could threaten the human side of that story.
But Sparrow also says the technology could help with traceability and proof of source.
“And in defence of robotics, some of the jobs on farms are dangerous, and better left to machines if possible,” he said.
But the challenge is to avoid robots only contributing to larger, more remote, corporatised farming systems by making them accessible to smaller farmers too.
“Can you make them small enough, flexible enough and easy to operate, even for smaller farm owners?” he asked.
Ultimately, Sparrow believes the use of robots in agriculture will both reflect and shape the way we think about our relationship to the land.
The choices we make about robots are likely to determine how large the gap between urban and rural areas will grow, and the relationship between consumers and the food they buy.
“Robots speak to human anxieties, and the technology is often just a conversation starter,” he said.
