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Comment by jennyyang | Hacker News Reader

We need to figure out protocols as a society so that things like farms, food supply chains and other critical services are not disrupted by this epidemic. Things like test every single farm worker for the virus and keep them isolated during harvest season. Have onsite quarantine facilities, maybe even have the military come in and help with containment and quaratining.

Oh yeah, also PAY THEM A LOT BETTER. Also, where are these 15 mins tests that we have been talking about for months? We need these before we can start implementing any sort of procedures to help restart our economies.

Unfortunately food prices will have to go up, which will affect the poor, but not as badly as if the supply chains are completely disrupted and food prices skyrocket.

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Even if would pay more, as long as our population keeps increasing, it won’t work out.

The only solution is automation of most Ag operations, create many more decentralized food production/distribution hubs that is more sustainable. Food security necessarily means assured labour supply.

No one wants their kids to be farm labourers. As we educate more of the world population, why would they come to the field and do manual labour? We need Ag robots and automated platforms of all sizes for farms at different scales. Farm labour is implicitly exploitative.

The only solution is automation and reducing manual labour/labour costs for food crops.

It seems to me like this is a different problem than the one the OP was discussing.

I believe we need to make sure food production is not impacted by the current pandemic in the short term (next few months/years). The tools we have are tests, quarantines, and maybe a pay hike to insentivize people to keep at it.

In the longer term I believe that you are right. We should probably automate more, to ensure efficiency, and decentralize more to ensure sustainability and redundancy. However it would probably be incredibly difficult to do this during a pandemic. Though, i guess decentralization could be achieved in a way by people replacing their lawns with food producing gardens.

How is farm labor implicitly exploitative?

Pay them $100/hour and provide breaks and good work schedules and watch people flock to the jobs. Some people may be unable to afford the new prices of the produce, but it is what it is.

Reality has a way of not giving a crap about what parents want.

Why can’t people be laborers regarding their basic needs some times, and academics sometimes?

It’s a pretty traditional values “I am king now and forever” notion to think one life one career.

There’s nothing biological preventing a rotation between work over our lives.

And many philosophers too have warned about division of labor making for a society of ignorant humans. Following orders rather than their curiosity.

IMO first worlders who can should. You’re not a god and the billions that outnumber us are catching up fast. Pointing big guns at them and saying “lol, no” isn’t gonna work forever.

Why don’t we want manual labourers?

Because they are weaker and less efficient than machines.

If I had the choice and can afford to choose between a person picking fruit and a machine picking fruit, I will pick the machine.

A human will get sick. A machine won’t.

A human needs breaks and insurance and have to be paid. Machines don’t.

If a human is broken, a life is affected. If a machine breaks down, it can be repaired and sent to the fields to work again.

Also, I can depreciate a machine as a deduction. When a human ‘depreciates’ for someone to profit from that, it is a crime against our own species.

I am a god in my farm because I own it. I don’t know any farmer who would pick unreliable, easily breakable, under paid(if they have a conscience, it should bother them) human worker over reliable machines because the prime directive of a business is to stay viable and profitable. The farmer wants to make a profit and hopefully in an ethical and sustainable manner.

Human workers for repetitive manual unskilled jobs is not sustainable.

> PAY THEM A LOT BETTER

I think after covid19 the industry will be further cut back in the workforce to levels far below covid19.

My two cents, the biggest lesson the pandemic has taught us is that certain critical things need to be fully automated.

Farming & logistics will see large amounts of capital rushed into them after this because people will get the need to push the industry forward.

Even if there were solutions 100% more expensive than paying workers I suspect corps to buy them because of the value that they have in disaster scenarios like this.

I agree with you. What this pandemic has thrown light upon are the sectors that are weak and vulnerable.

It has shown its soft underbelly where attacks are easy. Logistics and distribution is already good. We don’t have food shortages. In fact, we are still able to cover the panic buying as well as the future needs for extended lockdowns.

Ag must be proud of what it has achieved. The problem is before the farm gate. Harvesting certain crops..citrus for example in the OP..still needs people and if people don’t turn up, produce will rot.

So Ag is ripe for automation, as it were...all kinds of Ag at diff scales must be automated. The way to do it is not to automate machinery but to automate tasks or automate platforms.

Currently there is a lot of importance for AI and vision. While robotics and automation is certain data centric and data reliant, most of what is done is not relevant for actual farm automation. It’s data used for post farm gate for logistics and traceability and commodity market speculation etc.

We need automation for food crops that is entirely different than automation for commodity crops. We also need automation for different farm scales..from 5 acres to 10k acres. Because a 10k acre farm in the mid west can grow corn and soy for feed but it’s that 20 acre farm that grows greens and tomatoes and cabbage.

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