If you currently work on an Australian farm then you may want to look at your future career prospects. As they may be non-existent.
Farming has been an integral part of the country since its humble beginnings as the nation we now know. Simple, honest farming, as opposed to complex, deceitful farming I guess, has provided jobs for many Australians over the years. And yet the future may differ, with more farming jobs becoming automated, and robots eventually taking over from the human labor force.
That is according to University of Queensland researchers who are set to address farmers at an industry event later this week. According to the UQ, Dr. Adam Postula and Dr. Ben Upcroft, who are part of the university’s Faculty of Engineering Architecture and Information Technology, will be spelling out their vision for the future during the one-day Mechanisation Automation Robotics Remote Sensing (MARRS) in Horticulture workshop.
The workshop is designed to show Queensland farmers the opportunities that will arise as robots and smart machines become more common and more affordable.
The MARRS technologies include remote-controlled aircraft surveying and managing the land, unmanned tractors able to complete a job without the need for human interaction, and optical detection systems. All of which will likely make the farmer investing in the technology have a much easier time of running the farm.
This will obviously impact on the number of people employed at such farms, as the cost of buying and maintaining the expensive new hardware is offset by the reduction is wages being paid out. Postula maintains that, “We expect that walking, moving, flying robots will be commonplace on Australian farms in the future.”
Far be it from me to dismiss emerging technologies but the impact these will have on the workforce should be at least considered. Thankfully we’re talking quite a long way in the future, with robots still being limited both by engineering limitations and excessive costs.
When the day that farms are run by robots does at last dawn, everything else will likely also be run by machines. So we’ll all be stuffed anyway. Unless we’re the ones hired to either build or fix the new robot workforce.
