ROBO-CROP
In the last 70 years, agriculture has lost the majority of its workforce as generation after generation has turned away from family farming businesses. Despite this, agriculture has found ways to increase food production, with machines playing a key role. But in 2020, the United Nations warned that agricultural productivity would need to increase by 60 per cent in order to feed the predicted global population in 2050. With big producers like the US still struggling to find agricultural labour, that demand simply can't be met if farming doesn't change how it operates.
“There’s still a massive gap between the labour that agriculture needs and the labour that agriculture has,” says Walt Duflock, vice president of innovation at Western Growers, a crop growers’ association covering the western US. “So labour is a huge problem and automation’s the only solution to close the gap.”
This is why farmers are now swapping more traditional machinery for modern, AI-powered farming robots adept at some of the tasks that once required human hands. The Naïo Oz Farming Assistant pictured here, for instance, is designed for hoeing, weeding, making furrows, seeding and transporting. There are nearly 150 of these robotic farmhands in circulation across 48 countries.
TECHNO TRACTOR
この記事は BBC Science Focus の April 2023 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は BBC Science Focus の April 2023 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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HOW CAN I TELL IF I'VE GOT HIGH CORTISOL LEVELS?
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THE LUNGFISH
In 1836, European scientists discovered a peculiar animal from the River Amazon that they struggled to identify. Its eel-like body was a few feet long and its air-filled lungs persuaded anatomists it must be a reptile.
ARE WE THE ONLY SPECIES TO HAVE BEEN THROUGH A STONE AGE?
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Should we scrap daylight saving time?
Most of us look forward to the extra hour we get in bed every October, but researchers argue that changing the clocks twice a year harms our health
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