YORKTON - It still amazes me how showing interest in something on the Internet and suddenly your social media is flooded with links to similar items.
That in some ways is the brilliance of technology at work, feeding our interests automatically, but with something of Orwellian overtones in terms of ‘big brother’ watching.
Now if you are researching something such as robotics in agriculture you probably aren’t concerned if a computer algorithm knows it, and that is what I have been interested in general terms for quite some time.
Increasingly there are reports of farming being done with robots controlled by A.I., and it often reads like something from a Ray Bradbury or Isaac Asimov book from my youth, and yet here we are some 50 years later – a rather short period of time in the broader passage of time – observing the very infancy of such technological advancements.
There are all kinds of issues and questions which will become ever bigger as the tech grows.
For example while a producer might be interested in tech which reduces the need to pay a workforce, knowing a machine can operate 24/7 sans lunch breaks, sleep, days off and a range of other things, it also means lost jobs.
Now here in Canada farmers might find it challenging to find the trained help they need, in many places workers still line-up to help harvest onions or cabbages or cut flowers. It might be hard work but it is work that can help feed a family.
Of course such change will not be new. Threshing crews were once large to bring in grain. Today a combine does thousands of acres often operated by a computer with the human component more a passenger over seer at times.
Still, jobs lost are people at least temporarily out of work.
Then there is the question of the wealth required to implement all the shiny new tech coming down the line these days.
Much of the world’s agricultural base, the farmers who feed the local populace in many places remains far behind what you would find on a Canadian farm.
Add A.I.-driven robotic tech and the gap grows yet wider.
I am reminded of a visit a number of years ago by a farm delegation from Ukraine to the Yorkton area. On a farm visit they were less interested in the modern combine than a simple grain auger.
Asked why, the interpreter explained they could see how a grain auger could save them labour, but the combine was too great a leap forward to fully understand.
A similar tale had combines sent to Africa, but they sat in fields when a breakdown occurred because no one knew how to fix them.
Should farm tech grow too rapidly how wide does that knowledge gap become, and what does that mean in terms of feeding everyone? Those are questions needing answers as progress marches on.
