ROBOTS HELP GROW OUR FOOD
A robot about the size of a small dog is slowly moving in a field through rows of young plants. The robot is examining each plant with a steady "eye", gathering information about the plant’s development and looking for signs of disease. Meet Tom, a robotic farm assistant. Tom is equipped with cameras and sensors to help farmers with their work. Robots like Tom give us an idea of what farming may look like in the future.(lines 1–5)
Tom is one of three robots being developed by a British start-up called Small Robot Company (SRC). While Tom checks how well the crops are growing, a second robot, the size of a small car, called Dick, will move through the field to remove all the weeds. A third robot, Harry, will be responsible for planting the seeds in the field.(lines 6–9)
Sam Watson Jones, who owns a family farm in Shropshire, England, is one of the founders of SRC. He noticed that there had been no increase in what his farm had produced over the last 25 years. Moreover, the cost of machinery had been going up every year whereas profits from the farm were going down constantly. When Watson Jones began discussing this situation with other farmers, he discovered that everyone had the same problem. Watson Jones realized that if they wanted to stay in business, they would have to change their methods. That’s why they started SRC. Their goal is to create a new era of hi-tech farming solutions where each plant is cared for individually, yet costs and profits are reasonable. Watson Jones says that this isn’t possible today when humans are doing the work by hand or using huge farming machines.(lines 10–18)
Farmers like Watson Jones are working on hi-tech solutions which will not only increase the profits of individual family farms but will also be environmentally friendly. Pollution of air, water and land, together with the climate crisis, is reducing the amount of land and water available around the world for agriculture. In addition to this worsening environmental situation, the world’s population is growing and will reach 10 billion people by 2050. As a result, there is increasing pressure on the agricultural industry to efficiently produce greater quantities of food, using fewer resources and causing less harm to the environment.(lines 19–25)
Using robots and other hi-tech solutions will undoubtedly have an additional dramatic effect on agriculture by eliminating a lot of the hard, repetitive work in farming which today is performed by people. However, these innovations may also affect our society in other ways. For example, some experts fear that the increasing use of robots in agriculture could greatly reduce the workforce in an industry that many people rely on for jobs.(lines 26–30)