First, an article in American Intelligence addresses artificial intelligence in the agricultural sector. (American Intelligence provides very few details about itself or those behind it. I did a search using Supergrok, which provided these details, if you're interested.)
America cannot lead the AI farming revolution while federal policy keeps imported labor cheaper than machines
Every agricultural economy has a legacy. The question is which part is being preserved. The fertile soil is a legacy. The family farms are a legacy. The harvest is a legacy. So is the labor model that brings it in. And across American agriculture, that model has for forty years depended heavily on foreign labor, illegal hiring, and a political class determined not to disturb either.
When a city brochure pairs “legacy” with AI robotics in the same breath, it is not just describing the future. It is making a quiet promise: the technology will advance, but the labor model will not.
America is preparing for the AI age everywhere except the place that feeds the country.
. . .
Autonomous tractors already plant, till, and spray without a driver. Computer-vision systems can scout crops plant by plant. Machine-learning models can optimize water, fertilizer, pest control, and yield down to the meter. Robotic harvesters can pick faster, cleaner, and longer than hand crews. Precision irrigation can be guided by satellite analytics. AI-assisted breeding can compress decades of plant selection into months.
The question is no longer whether American agriculture can automate. It is whether Washington will stop subsidizing the cheap labor model that makes automation a losing bet.
America should be leading this revolution. It builds the software, funds the research, trains the engineers, and talks constantly about technological dominance. Yet federal policy still props up an agricultural labor model built on cheap imported labor, illegal hiring, and guestworker expansion. That bargain has kept human labor cheaper than machines, delayed mechanization, and now risks leaving the United States on the sidelines of a revolution it should own.
There's more at the link.
To a technologist, that sounds wonderful. Machine intelligence and labor will take over the agricultural sector, modernizing everything and guaranteeing much greater yields and more efficient utilization of resources. So far, so good . . . but what happens to the many millions of people who earn their living working on farms and in the food industry? When they're replaced in the fields and the food processors, where will they find employment? Almost every other sector of the economy is also paring back on human resources and switching to ever greater automation. How is our economy, our nation, going to cope with the burden of all those thrown out of work by this sea-change?
Furthermore, what will it do to nations that cannot afford to grow their own food even today, but also cannot afford to automate their agriculture? Will there be seeds they can grow, or will even that be absorbed into techno-agriculture? What about the illegal aliens who used to flood across our borders to work on American farms? Now they'll be stuck in their own countries, without work, and possibly without local food either.
I'm not a Luddite. I think automation and technology can serve us well, if properly managed, and hold out great hope for the future. However, we can't embrace them blindly unless we also account for those who will be displaced by them. How are we going to cope with them in our increasingly digital society? How are they going to adapt, particularly if there's no work available for them to earn a living while they and their families adapt?
That dilemma was discussed last year at the Nexus Conference 2025, 'Apocalypse Now: The Revelation of our Time'. It was held under the auspices of the Nexus Institute, which describes its mission like this:
As an independent non-profit foundation, the Nexus Institute brings together the world’s foremost intellectuals, artists, scientists and politicians, and encourages them to discuss the questions that really matter. How are we to live? How can we shape our future? Can we learn from our past? Which values and ideas are important, and why?
From reading its Web site, the Institute seems fairly typically left-wing and progressive, but it does appear to try to provide those with different philosophies with an opportunity to participate in wide-ranging discussions. Here's an excerpt from a panel from last year's conference titled "The Wild West of digital technology in a capitalist system". I don't agree with many of the points raised (unsurprising, from my right-of-center perspective), but I think they present aspects of the problem that are important, and worth examining.
The future of our technological society is far from settled, and is in many cases unsettling to think about. I try to keep informed about all sides of the debate, and the article and video clip above have helped me to do that. I hope you enjoyed them, too.
Peter
17 comments:
I see importing "farm labor" to help the dems with 2 issues: the Census and the Electoral College.
How about reducing the work week from 40 hours to 30 or even 20. I know I'm dating myself, but my textbooks as a kid promoted technology as a means of providing more leisure time.
Gov't regulations surrounding full-time employees, health benefits, etc make a gordian knot. Add in the cost of hiring and training people, and it is much more profitable to have 1 employee doing the job of 2.
I have a 3D printer. I'm printing pipe caps for 1/8 the cost of buying them. AI is not the only revolution.
The kids these days see all this. They know they don't need to work 40 hours a week (I know lots of good, hard working kids, but I'm rural) but we are in a system that would rather see 1 person work 60 hours a week in 1 or 2 jobs rather than 3 people work 20 hours each.
I find the first article pretty humorous as it was written by an AI.
on the second, the video, I totally agree with what the young man that was speaking at the beginning of the video said. The young lady that spoke at the end not so much. Not that she didn't have a few good points but she was speaking from a philosophy of the far left that is even more flawed than what is currently there in the long run. It sounds nice and caring but ultimately can only be acted on in a dictatorial manner that is very toxic.
If they can pick crops here, they can pick crops in their home country. What will people do when their job is automated? Something else. No one has to solve this "problem" because it solves itself every time some new technology makes old jobs obsolete. New industries appear. New skills develop. These doomers have been spouting this nonsense since Thag figured out how to throw a spear.
What will Happen with AI is the same thing that has happened with virtually all technology created over the centuries. It will be used by the rich, powerful and politically connected to make themselves richer and more powerful. Some people will adjust and change to adapt to the new tech. Many other will not be able to and will suffer. This is and has always been the way of society. We are a clever species...but not an intelligent one. And we are a greedy, selfish cruel species uninterested in how others fare. There are some exceptions but as a species the is who and what we are.
The question is not if your country can grow enough food. It's whether your country can grow enough food cheaply enough to export profitably.
Substance agriculture needs very little tech. Small community or family-based agriculture is not tech driven by the standard of agribusiness industry. They are the ones who will check the bottom line of cheap labor versus high tech solutions.
Labor here in KY is cheap and available, in PA it was neither.
The woman in the video mentions the Club of Rome's report, The Limits to Growth. The "report" was published in 1972, and used computer modelling that was primitive in its day, e.g. pollution was represented by a single variable.
It's pure Thomas Malthus, ignoring the fact that humans are constantly innovating and doing more with less.
Growing up my grandparents occasional handyman would follow the harvests and pick whatever crop was growing. He was always back in PA during deer season to get his deer but he would head south to pick crops rather than winter over and work in PA.
A lot of growers have mechanized and automated but a lot of other growers are content with the system they inherited. The only real way to 'change' them is to force it on them. I'm not really about using force on things of this nature.
Technology and automation do not progress when the cost of labor is low. Automation and its associated technology progresses when the total cost of labor (pay, benefits, regulations, and taxes) increases beyond the cost of the automation. The perfect example are the McD's kiosks that replaced the ordering lines and the human cashiers. California and the other 'living wage' states increased the cost of entry level workers so high that it was cheaper just to replace them with machines.
I'm with Xoph. Government regulations have made it more profitable to work full timers to exhaustion instead of hiring more workers. I found this out working for the phone company. HR admitted that they made more money working us 60 hours a week or more rather than hiring enough linesmen to drop that back down to 40. Make it a 6 hour work day, and change time and a half to double time. And yes, the laws on salaried versus hourly should be rigidly enforced.
George Jetson worked 3 days a week, 3 hours a day, and complained bitterly about all the overtime he was putting in. We don't have to go to that level, but a 6 hour workday should be quite doable.
The only continent having children at above replacement rate is Africa. Africa can’t grow enough food for the people it already has.
I'm kind of sad I never did the wheat harvest (South TX to Northern ND or even Alberta over 5-6 months) when I was younger. I absolutely do not mind 80-100 hours a week but I'm certain I'm in the minority.
Humans can constantly innovate and do more with less until a necessary feed-stock is throttled.
Then comes the death-spiral of famine, war and rapid depopulation of those who are not able to adapt to a world with no excess to be bought at any price.
Hothouse roses look a lot different than wild roses.
You've just "proven" that all the Amish starved to death long ago, because their "jobs" were eliminated by technology.
Every labor-saving device in your kitchen eliminated jobs. No longer do you have to haul water in from the well in buckets, or tend a wood fire in the stove. Which of these kitchen innovations do you feel made most people worse off?
How did a 'nation that cannot afford to grow their own food' come to exist? Could they also not afford it 1,000 years ago when they were "stuck" in their own countries?
Believing that other people have a claim on the wealth I produce is Communism, which is not a right-of-center perspective.
One thing not mention is the 'cost' of equipment. $350,000 for a tractor, another $100,000 for the software, and who knows how much for the implements to 'automate' the system is well beyond most farmer's budgets/loan ability, much less the possibility of crop loss, which doesn't go away with AI. And yes, the young lady is hard left and shows it.
The month after wide adoption of agri-tech drives out the farm hands, the agri-tech businesses will triple the monthly subscription fees. You don't think farmers will get to own what they buy, do you?
When food prices suddenly doubled a few years ago, it wasn't the farmers reaping the profits.
Exactly! Most countries should have had 4 day work weeks by the 1970s with all those 'productivity gains' touted by economists. The same ones who won't acknowledge that most in the West are tax slaves.
Post a Comment