Can't see much precision there.
With precision you could do small fields with trees and bushes (with fruits) in between and need no pesticides ... all in all, a farm could then be also a nice place just to walk around and enjoy nature. Like some bio-farms are allready today, the problem is just, that the human labour needed to do it is huge - with robots it might be possible to go all bio - and still feed everyone!
No doubt about that. And I am not so naive to believe they will happen soon on a big scale ... but I hope to live long enough to see them come (while having my part in it)
Microfarms are unsustainable. They don't grow nearly enough food, nor the variety of foods needed (we can't live on just kale), nor do they do this economically. Basically they're cute ideas from suburbanites that have no experience beyond growing anything beyond a chia pet herb garden in a window sill. Large fields exist of a reason. And yes, GMOs and "Big Ag" is wildly successful and safe for the same reasons.
Robots don't need to solve the planting or watering problem. That's already a solved problem. The most labor intensive task is in vegetable and fruit harvesting. A two-axis vertical plotter doesn't even begin to solve that problem. It's a vision and dexterity problem. Once you solve that problem, there's no reason not to truck-mount the arms and simply scale up.
The fly-over states know a thing or two about this.
So I don't see much precision with the use of pesticides on large scale and never heard of a way to prevent them from going into the groundwater. (oh and I know a little bit about the ways how it gets decided, what chemicals get labeled as "harmless")
Oh and explain this:
> Microfarms are unsustainable. They don't grow nearly enough food
Why should lots of microfarms produce less food, than one "macrofarm" of the same size?
Doing those things on a big scale only reduces required labour -> that's why I want robots.
But it is true, that bio, if you meant that, can't produce as much per field, as a monoculture field, no matter the size - but with a monoculture, poisened field, you only get food and destroyed everything else - with a bio field, you get food and intact nature with diversity, clean water and soil ... all in all a place where you want to be. So all in all you get much more from the land if you grow Bio.
Most people in that village did the same. And they survived and the food was very good - it had flavor and taste, attributes which are not applicable to produce grown in the large scale farms of today.
The only problem is that they had to work every day all day on those farms..
Large scale industrial farming made it possible for people to move to cities and forget about the difficult task of working the land.
And it was good. For a while.. But now we are faced with different problems - over populated cities, pollution, excessive carbon in the atmosphere, water shortages, etc.
Robotic farmers allow us to dream of a world in which people can grow their food locally without having to do the manual labor or rely on large-scale farming. Many could move back to the countryside - closer to nature and type away on reddit just like before, while the robots take care of their food outside in the small field.
I do that. To a much greater extreme than most people: all of our dairy, meat, eggs, vegetables and most fruit comes from our yard.
>The only problem is that they had to work every day all day on those farms.
I spend about two hours a week doing it. Clearly you do not have to work all day every day to grow your own food.
>Robotic farmers allow us to dream of a world in which people can grow their food locally without having to do the manual labor or rely on large-scale farming.
So did permaculture. This is already a solved problem. The reason it is not done is cultural, not technical.
This will never happen in the form you describe. It would mean no bananas and coffee for most of the planet. It would mean no fresh vegetables in the winter. Most fruit would be highly seasonal.
There are only 2 ways of achieving this: global food sourcing, or complete climate control - which would need to be much more sophisticated than the "vertical farms" you see nowadays if you wanted to grow e.g. orange trees or banana palms.
