To the editor: Ought to we cheer the event of robots utilizing synthetic intelligence as farm laborers? (“May AI robots with lasers make herbicides — and farm employees — out of date?” July 22)
Positive, they’ll use much less herbicide, laser out weeds and choose crops quicker. However this sort of “new period of industrialized meals manufacturing” is strictly why we’re getting such bland-tasting produce from industrial-scale farms and why that produce is much less nutrient dense.
These farms are companies run like factories. What they develop is extra about veggies and fruit that may be harvested quicker and sooner, packed denser and shipped additional — not about style and even diet.
Think about what the wants and capabilities of those new machines will do to the subsequent era of tomatoes and strawberries we get in our markets. And, whereas the know-how wipes out 1000’s of low-paying jobs, it nonetheless prices a bundle, so our meals prices gained’t go down.
Not a fan.
Suvan Geer, Santa Ana
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To the editor: These sorts of advances are wanted as a result of in a sustainable future, when the worldwide inhabitants is all the way down to 2 billion folks, we gained’t have the labor to help the way in which agriculture is completed immediately.
Your sentence concerning the well being dangers linked to chemical compounds utilized in agriculture says all of it. Bayer — which purchased Monsanto, the corporate that used genetic engineering to make vegetation resistant to its weed-killing merchandise — will lose billions. Large Pharma may also lose rather a lot.
Simply these two very highly effective industries will battle tooth and nail towards these adjustments.
These industries will declare, simply because the privately owned utilities do, that using Earth-friendly applied sciences will harm “the little folks.” This argument ignores the truth that these little folks will at all times have a job as a result of, because it was written within the Nationwide Lampoon music “Deteriorata” again in 1972, “There’s at all times a giant future in pc upkeep.”
Gregg Ferry, Carlsbad
