Found this article quite interesting. Of course we are all aware of automation in the factory, and on the road, but I wasn't aware of the push to automate picking fruits. This would also quite certainly have a huge impact on immigration issues given that most farm work is done by immigrants, and often those illegally in the country. http://business.financialpost.com/entrepreneur/small-business/0501-biz-wire-apples
Here is a list of five reasons Karl Marx gave to support his prediction that capitalism will fail from within!! 1. Inevitability of monopolies, which eliminate competition and gouge consumers and works. 2. Lack of centralized planning, which results in overproduction of some good and underproduction of others, encouraging economic crises such as inflation, slumps, depressions. 3. Demands for labor-saving machinery, which force unemployment and a more hostile proletariat. 4. Employers will tend to maximize profits by reducing labor expenses, thus creating a situation where workers will not have enough income to buy the goods produced, creating the contradiction of causing profits to fall. 5. Control of the state by the wealthy, the effect of which is passage of laws favoring themselves.
There have been fruit-picking machines for quite a while now, so this isn't new. They will be getting more and more sophisticated though.
Wow... very cool. Its simply amazing how within only 5 to 10 years, I'm sure that many jobs will become obsolete, and then the big problems really start.
Very cool, thinking it can be adapted to do large greenhouses, and for smaller farms, it would save great deal of time and money. I have found there is now devices you can implant into cows and see stats on PC how your cow is doing, when best time for bull or insemination to happen, when cow is ill and ready to give birth, advances in farm tech for smaller farmer very needed as most can't even breakeven. Often times it is due to poor management of farm and horrible locations. Since I am studying farming/ranching last year and half, found companies are using GPS in bot tractors for planting as they getting 2 more rows per acre. As far as over and under planting, this will always happen and why we have futures to help farmers to hedge, when Corn was bigger crop past handful of years due to much higher prices, some switched to make bigger profits, then got over planted and not being sold much as gasoline additive, prices come down. Can't control the weather yet, if that was so, Boulder Dam and Lake Mead be having rain everyday in Nevada, horrible drought there. I understand Las Vegas has to buy electric from California now as Dam not generating enough power.