“Software is Feeding the World” is a weekly newsletter about technology trends for Food/AgTech leaders.

Greetings from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Writing a weekly newsletter has become quite challenging for me over the last 6 months. I reached out for advice to a creator who has been consistent for many years now. They suggested I should follow a cadence, which is sustainable for the long term, and keeps me and the readers excited.

Due to this, I am going to switch the newsletter to once every two weeks starting from this week. I might use other mechanisms like Twitter to talk about ideas between two newsletter editions.

I am not doing this for lack of ideas and things to write about, but I want to provide readers with a quality product in every edition. In an off week, if I feel I can write about ideas in an interesting way, I will definitely send you an extra edition.

I do welcome any feedback related to this change (or otherwise). Please reply to this email, (or fill out the form at the bottom of the email, if you want to provide me with anonymous feedback) with your thoughts.

Now onto this week’s edition.

Automation = Boredom?

In 2019, Visual Capitalist published a chart to visualize 150 years of U.S. employment history. The chart is absolutely fascinating. Asset heavy industries like mining, manufacturing, and agriculture have seen a decline in the percentage of population employed in the sector.

The most dramatic change is in agriculture with almost a 56% decline in share of jobs in the last 150 years. Most of the change has been driven by technology which allowed for larger farms, and the policies which have gone with them. The productivity of the sector has increased consistently, and so has the quality of the products produced.

The share of employment in agriculture has remained more or less the same in the last 10-15 years, based on this chart. Has the share of the population employed in agriculture bottomed out in the US? Has the US reached an asymptote, or could it go lower?

But the agriculture sector in the US still faces some serious challenges today. They include challenges on a global scale (high input prices), shortage of workers, and challenges due to climate change (shortened planting and harvest windows etc.)

For example, harvesting offers opportunities for automation. This is especially true in specialty crops like berries where between 30-60% of the production cost is labor. I have covered many of the tech advances in this sector in previous versions. (112. Agriculture Robotics is difficult AF, 122. Moravec’s Paradox for Ag Robotics, 123. Let a thousand robots actuate)

​Walt Duflock of Western Grower’s Association wrote about this in the context of specialty crops a few weeks ago and provided this chart.

Even within highly mechanized commodity row crops in the US, positioning of a combine/harvester in a field and the alignment of the spout with the grain bin which follows it is very important, and typically requires two people to do it. Automation of this process, which can work at night, and also operate in high vibration dusty environments, could further reduce labor requirements.

Building autonomous equipment from scratch can be an expensive proposition. The refresh cycles on capital intensive equipment are often long, and so providing an aftermarket kit to an existing piece of equipment to make it autonomous or semi-autonomous is a good strategy.

One example of an aftermarket solution is Sabanto.ag. (I have never had the opportunity to see their product in action) Sabanto recently announced the establishment of a dealer network for their tractor autonomy systems.

Equipment is obviously purchased through and serviced by a dealer network, and so it makes sense for Sabanto to establish a dealer network for their systems.

I found the video done by Sabanto quite interesting.

The operator does path planning for a tractor, and then hits go for the tractor on their smartphone. They do it while they are inside the shed, and a bit of a distance from the actual tractor. Around 2:05 in the video, the operator says,

This is a very profound statement as autonomy lets you free your time and spend it on other potentially high value tasks or leisure. The goal of innovation is to make our lives easier, and free up our time to pursue other activities.

Later in the video, the operator says the technology will not eliminate the operator, but a single operator can be in the field and manage multiple pieces of equipment or systems.

Based on #agtwitter, many farmers in North America like to ride their equipment. But if you observe the Sabanto video, the operator is in a shed when he starts the tractor, and can monitor details like fuel levels, speeds, etc. on the smartphone itself. The operator is farming, but the nature of their job has changed completely.

From a farming standpoint, autonomous equipment will change what it means to farm in the future.

In edition 52, I interviewed Mark Young, ex-CTO of the The Climate Corporation

If more and more farmers adopt autonomous equipment, will it lead to larger equipment and larger operations or will it lead to smaller equipment, as the equipment can now operate for longer times?

In edition 52, I interviewed Mark Young, ex-CTO of the The Climate Corporation

If we go to the other side of the world in India, one would imagine labor is not a challenge, given the large population of the country (largest in the world now!?), and the share of the population involved in farming (close to 50%).

But automation has a role to play, even in and I would say especially in India.

An increasing population to feed and a declining workforce, the Indian Agriculture sector has a big challenge cut out for itself. Farming by no means is easy. Each stage of input, growth, harvest, and post-harvest is strewn with hurdles like the volatility of input pricing, lack of reliable labor for time-bound seasonal tasks, and lack of access to technology for efficient crop yield to name a few.

Farming involves hours of intensive and repetitive labor often done manually. The main objective of automation is to improve workflow for better accuracy, reliability, and productivity.

But for the last half a century, there has been an increase in mechanization but not necessarily automation in India. In 2022, tractor sales soared in India to almost a million units sold, one of the highest numbers sold globally. Tractors sold in India are mostly metal on wheels with limited intelligence or precision. I do agree mechanization is absolutely important, but similar to the smartphone revolution in India, there is an opportunity to leapfrog to smarter and intelligent equipment.

In edition 89. Android strategy for agriculture equipment, I had tackled this topic.

Going back to the issue of boredom and automation, it can be very challenging to manage this transition, if people lose their mode of employment due to automation. What opportunities do they have if automation poses a threat to their livelihood? What additional or different skill sets will people need if their job is threatened?

The Visual Capitalist did a report on the future of employment with data from 2013 across different sectors, and had a hypothesis on the number of jobs in each sector which are likely to be automated. (Retail is the top bar with the largest employment, and the largest number of jobs which are likely to be automated)

With the advent of technologies like generative AI (ChatGPT, BARD, Dall-E, Midjourney etc.), jobs of marketing professionals, researchers, many so-called white-collar professions, and even newsletter writers are under threat!!

Automation is a huge opportunity for a step change for society, but is not without significant challenges.

Automation will be everything but boredom!

In the News

AgTech and Agronomy

New newsletter from Lee Vetsch - Agriculture’s Honest Take.

There is room for another 100 newsletters in food/agtech. If you are thinking of starting a newsletter or a podcast, just do it.

You are not late, you are still early.

Robotics and Automation

​How a government drone blacklist could impact farms​

Sustainability

​Greenwashing or ambitious targets?​

​How to feed nine billion people with cutting-edge technology​

​Perennial Crops Boost Biodiversity Both On and Off Farms​

​The Fertilizer Institute Releases 2022 Sustainability Report​

Smallholder

​High growth lessons from an Agritech startup founder​

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About me

My name is Rhishi Pethe. I lead the product management and technology delivery teams at Mineral, an Alphabet company. The views expressed in this newsletter are my personal opinions.