Japanese firm to open world’s first robot-run farm

[nostromo]

> The robots will do everything from re-planting young seedlings to watering, trimming and harvesting crops.

Has the author been to a farm in the past 20 years? Most crops today are not planted by hand, or watered by hand, or harvested by hand. (Harvesting is still the most labor intensive part of farming for a few fruits, but automation isn't far off.)

I think the most interesting part of this farm is not the automation, but the water saving, the reduction in pesticides, and the decision to use grow lights indoors instead of sunlight.

[ValleyOfTheMtns]

>and the decision to use grow lights indoors instead of sunlight

This is the part of indoor automated farming I don't get. You have this free, abundant source of energy needed to grow plants, and you don't use it... why? Seems like a massive inefficiency. Indoors is fine to protect the crops and control the environment, but why not above ground with a clear roof to let sunlight in?

[bpodgursky]

Japanese farming is notoriously manual, inefficient, and protected by heavy tariffs.

[narrator]

I'm a bit puzzled that the reaction on the Guardian to this development is primarily one of fear that robots are taking our jobs. Isn't anyone excited about how all this production and efficiency is going to make food extremely cheap?

[imtringued]

Food is already extremly cheap to the point where producers throw it away to artificially raise prises.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-01/milk-spill...

[Retric]

Robots/Automation has already made food cheap. Modern farmers are literally 1,000x as effective as their medieval equivalents. At this point the human factor is generally fairly negligible compared to other inputs (seed, land, machinery, etc.).

[samstave]

Who has that reaction??

I'm amazed that the drive to Japan's robotic future is human population centric driven:

The average age of their farmers is 65.9, young people don't want to be farmers, their population is in decline for many reasons...

Robot farming is critical to their bio and economic survival.

That fact alone is mind blowing to me. And awesome.

[ramy_d]

I can relate to the sentiment - what's going to happen to countries in the short term when entire industries like transport and farming are automated at nearly the same time?

[rorykoehler]

I'm also excited that we are reducing jobs. Jobs for jobs sake is a fools errand.

[IkmoIkmo]

What is always left unsaid in the article: they're farming lettuce, a food that has 59 calories per head and is 95% water.

One can hardly call that farming in the sense of the word people expect when hearing about robot-run farms. This thing doesn't really produce meaningful food, it produces fluff in a salad, i.e. when you eat half a lettuce on any given day, you'd get about 1% of your calories that day from lettuce.

Further, the robotisation isn't really meaningfully new, either. Controlling lighting conditions for food? Old news. Moving around plants with machinery? Old news. It doesn't get much fancier than that. For example this factory-farm still requires you to plant the seeds yourself, no giant innovations here.

Is it cool? Absolutely, and it's fun to explore. But I'm not seeing the thesis on a new way of farming that I'm hoping to see. The economics and sustainability of traditional farming, when done well, seems overwhelmingly better, and the practicalities of producing real food in meaningful quantities, economically and sustainably, in an automised facility, is far away and quite different from this project.

Lastly, as most Guardian articles on tech, completely devoid of technical/economic details. What's the lettuce going to cost? Who knows.

[toomuchtodo]

> What is always left unsaid in the article: they're farming lettuce, a food that has 59 calories per head and is 95% water.

Which crop would you be more interested in seeing farmed robotically? Pick one and I'll go get you a link to the machinery that does so.

[mmanfrin]

Having a tiny rasp pi controlled greenhouse in my backyard is something that really interests me. Can put little chain-driven slides above grow areas to shuffle around 'arms' that can plant/pick/prune/water; garden through code.

[dwiel]

Have you seen farmbot? It is almost exactly as you describe.

[droro]

Artificially-lit indoor farming is neato and will be a great technology to bring into space, but makes almost no sense on earth. Basically, it requires expensive infrastructure and way too much electricity (https://gigaom.com/2015/12/29/indoor-farming-good-for-cannab...). Maybe robotically-farmed greenhouses won't have this problem.

[thescriptkiddie]

If the electricity for the grow lights is produced locally via solar power, it is actually more efficient than using sunlight directly (provided LED grow lights are used). This is because the grow lights provide only the narrow bands of wavelengths that plants absorb most efficiently. Only about 45% of visible sunlight is usable by plants, compared to around 95% for photovoltaics, which more than makes up for conversion losses. You also get the ability to stack the plants vertically, and the lack of windows makes for lower heat loss in the winter.

[_puk]

There was a halfway decent (if simplified) segment on Countryfile [0] about the use of PhytoLux LEDs in the UK.

They've been working with Bristol Uni to investigate the effect of various colours and wavelengths on plant growth (Something Gigaom, linked, is only just experimenting with); they claim energy efficiency [1] as just one advantage when using vertical farming methods.

0: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06z9ph6/countryfile-no...

1: http://resources.phytolux.com/images/phytolux/newsletters/Pr...

[gozur88]

But you can't grow multiple levels of crops using sunlight. it might make sense if land is at a premium. A few months back there was an article proposing large farms in downtown Tokyo because you could produce fresh food right where the people are.

Also, I'm wondering if they intend to produce crops more quickly by shortening the day to 23 hours or something like that.

[guimarin]

I'm just going to file this one away for 20 years from now when electricity is 10-100x cheaper than today and indoor/underground farming is the most economical due to pest, density, and environmental concerns. Could you also say this technology will never make sense? That would be very helpful.

[work-on-828]

I would expect this to be economically viable in Iceland, with their short growing season and cheap geothermal power.

[pierre]

The company behind this farm have a nice website with a lot of specification / technical detail for their farm [1].

They claim that this farm will produce 10M lettuces per year on 3500m2. They are also looking for partmers to franchise their technology, inside and outside of japan.

[1] http://spread.co.jp/en/technology/

[belltyler]

I read this "robot-fun farm" and was very intrigued, haha.

[make3]

I'm probably talking out of my hat here, but it feels like Japan opening up to immigration more would probably be a more efficient help to this particular problem

[aksquestions]

They prefer to build robots and retain their homogenous culture than import and nurture a slave class.

[samstave]

This is awesome!

We were just talking about this on HN the other day. I want to build a fully robotic (automated) talapia fish farm on alameda island if anyone wants to join me?

[ph0rque]

Have you heard of aquaponics? You can raise both fish and grow plants in an ecosystem.

[dkarapetyan]

Now this is innovation.

[searine]

Neat, particularly for urban applications, but it'll never be as cost effective as actual field planted crops.

The future of robotic farms is in the fields, not in the factory.