HOMESTEAD, Florida. – Jeremy Ford hates wasting water.

As a mist of rain doused the fields around him in Homestead, Florida, Ford lamented how expensive it had been to operate a fossil fuel-powered irrigation system on his five-acre farm – and how bad it was for the planet.

Earlier this month, Ford installed an automated underground system that uses a solar-powered pump to periodically saturate the roots of its crops, saving “thousands of gallons of water.” Although they may be more expensive up front, he sees these climate-friendly investments as a necessary expense – and more affordable than increasing his staff by two people.

It’s “much more efficient,” Ford said. “We were trying to figure out, ‘How can we do this?’ » with the least additional work.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is a collaboration between The Associated Press and Grist.

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A growing number of companies are introducing automation into agriculture. This could ease the sector’s growing labor shortage, help farmers manage costs and protect workers from extreme heat. Automation could also improve yields by bringing greater precision to planting, harvesting and farm management, potentially alleviating some of the challenges of growing food in an increasingly hotter world.

But many small farmers and producers across the country are not convinced. Barriers to adoption go beyond high prices to whether the tools can do the job as well as the workers they would replace. Some of these same workers wonder what this trend could mean for them and whether the machines will lead to exploitation.

How autonomous is agricultural automation? Not completely – yet

On some farms, driverless tractors roam acres of corn, soybeans, lettuce and more. Such equipment is expensive and requires mastery of new tools, but row crops are quite easy to automate. Harvesting small, non-uniform and easily damaged fruits like blackberries, or large citrus fruits that require some strength and dexterity to pull from a tree, would be much more difficult.

That doesn’t deter scientists like Xin Zhang, a biological and agricultural engineer at Mississippi State University. Working with a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology, she wants to apply some of the automation techniques used by surgeons, along with the object recognition power of advanced cameras and computers, to create berry-picking robotic arms that can to pick the fruit without creating a sticky film. purple mess.

Scientists have been collaborating with farmers for field trials, but Zhang doesn’t know when the machine will be ready for consumer sale. Although robotic harvesting is not widespread, a handful of products have come to market and can be seen in operation ever since Washington’s orchards has Florida Farms.

“I feel like this is the future,” Zhang said.

But where she sees promise, others see problems.

Frank James, executive director of the grassroots agricultural group Dakota Rural Action, grew up on a cattle and crop farm in northeast South Dakota. His family once employed a handful of farm workers, but has had to downsize, in part because of a lack of available labor. Much of the work is now done by his brother and sister-in-law, while his 80-year-old father occasionally steps in.

They swear by tractor autopilot, an automated system that communicates with a satellite to help keep the machine on track. But it can’t identify moisture levels in fields, which can cripple tools or stall the tractor, and requires human supervision to function as it should. Technology also complicates maintenance. For these reasons, he doubts that automation will become the “absolute” future of agricultural work.

“You build a relationship with the land, with the animals, with the place where you produce it. And we’re moving away from it,” James said.

Some farmers say automation solves labor problems

Tim Bucher grew up on a farm in Northern California and has worked in agriculture since he was 16 years old. Dealing with weather problems like drought has always been a reality for him, but climate change has brought new challenges as temperatures regularly reach triple digits and blankets of smoke destroy entire vineyards.

The consequences of climate change, compounded by labor issues, inspired him to combine his agricultural background with his engineering and startup experience in Silicon Valley to found AgTonomy in 2021. The company works with equipment manufacturers like Doosan Bobcat to make automated tractors and other implements.

Since launching the pilot programs in 2022, Bucher says the company has been “flooded” with customers, primarily vineyard and orchard growers in California and Washington.

Those who follow the industry say farmers, often skeptical of new technology, will consider automation if it makes their business more profitable and their lives easier. Vermont dairy and maple farmer Will Brigham sees these tools as solutions to the nation’s agricultural labor shortage.

“A lot of farmers are struggling with labor,” he said, citing “heavy competition” with jobs where “you don’t have to deal with weather.”

Since 2021, Brigham’s family farm has used Farmblox, an AI-powered farm monitoring and management system that helps them anticipate problems like leaks in tubes used in maple syrup production. Six months ago, he joined the company as a senior sales engineer to help other farmers adopt similar technology.

Workers fear losing their jobs or rights due to automation

Corn shucking was once a rite of passage for some young people in the Midwest. Teenagers waded through seas of corn, removing tassels – the yellow feather duster-like bit at the top of each stalk – to prevent unwanted pollination.

Extreme heat, drought and intense rains have made this labor-intensive task even more difficult. And this is now more often the case for migrant farm workers who sometimes work 20 hours a day to keep up. That’s why Jason Cope, co-founder of agricultural technology company PowerPollen, thinks it’s essential to mechanize arduous tasks like spice harvesting. His team created a tool that a tractor can use to collect pollen from male plants without having to remove the panicle. It can then be preserved for future crops.

“We can account for climate change by perfectly timing the delivery of pollen,” he said. “And it takes a lot of that hard work to take out of the equation.”

Erik Nicholson, who previously worked as a farm labor organizer and now runs Semillero de Ideas, a nonprofit focused on farmworkers and technology, said he has heard from farmworkers worried about losing their jobs because of automation. Some have also expressed concern about the safety of working alongside autonomous machines, but are reluctant to raise these issues because they fear losing their jobs. He would like the companies that build these machines and the farm owners who use them to put people first.

Luis Jimenez, a New York dairy worker, agrees. He described a farm using technology to monitor cows for illness. These types of tools can sometimes identify infections earlier than a dairy worker or veterinarian.

They also help workers know how the cows are doing, Jimenez said, speaking in Spanish. But they can reduce the number of people needed on farms and put additional pressure on the workers who remain, he said. This pressure is heightened by increasingly automated technology, such as video cameras used to monitor worker productivity.

Automation can be “a tactic, like a strategy, for the bosses, to make people afraid and not demand their rights,” said Jimenez, who defends immigrant agricultural workers with the popular organization Alianza Agrícola. After all, robots “are machines that don’t ask for anything,” he added. “We don’t want to be replaced by machines. »

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Associated Press journalists Amy Taxin in Santa Ana, Calif., and Dorany Pineda in Los Angeles contributed. Walling reported from Chicago.

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Follow Melina Walling on X at @MelinaWalling.

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