{"id":1061,"date":"2016-11-13T10:31:01","date_gmt":"2016-11-13T02:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/people.utm.my\/baharinmesir\/?p=1061"},"modified":"2016-11-08T10:34:37","modified_gmt":"2016-11-08T02:34:37","slug":"the-robotic-farmers-that-could-solve-the-planets-food-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/baharinmesir\/the-robotic-farmers-that-could-solve-the-planets-food-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"The robotic farmers that could solve the planet&#8217;s food crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The SPREAD vegetable farm, currently under construction on a\u00a0science park about 25km outside Kyoto, Japan, will occupy 4,400m<sup>2<\/sup> &#8211; all enclosed in a vast, warehouse-like building.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/wi-images.condecdn.net\/image\/RvwxvqvzGR2\/crop\/405\" alt=\"Poinsettia plants growing under computer controlled conditions in Kent, England\" width=\"405\" height=\"267\" \/><br \/>\nInside, under LED lights, shelves will rise to the ceiling, each one a soil bed full of lettuces. The workforce will move seedlings, feed plants and pick 30,000 lettuce heads every day.<\/p>\n<p>The striking thing, besides the scale of the operation, is that none of those workers will be human: people will plant the seeds, but after that, robots will tend the crops, control the temperature, humidity, light and CO2, and sterilise the water supply.<\/p>\n<p>This is not a vision of agriculture in the distant future: SPREAD&#8217;s &#8220;controlled-environment farm&#8221; will begin shipping lettuce in 2017.<\/p>\n<p>To feed a world population forecast to hit 9.6 billion by 2050, global food production must increase by 70 per cent. Our planet&#8217;s finite nature of land is the most obvious barrier to that, but there&#8217;s also a serious rural labour shortage; across the world, people are moving from the countryside to towns and cities. By 2017, it&#8217;s estimated that even less-developed countries will have majority urban populations. In the UK, a 2013 government report put the average age of farmer at 59.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.co.uk\/article\/spread-technology-farming\">Read more..<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The SPREAD vegetable farm, currently under construction on a\u00a0science park about 25km outside Kyoto, Japan, will occupy 4,400m2 &#8211; all enclosed in a vast, warehouse-like building. Inside, under LED lights, shelves will rise to the ceiling, each one a soil bed full of lettuces. The workforce will move seedlings, feed plants and pick 30,000 lettuce [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7436,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[144,143,38],"class_list":["post-1061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-farm","tag-robotic","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/baharinmesir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/baharinmesir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/baharinmesir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/baharinmesir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7436"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/baharinmesir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/baharinmesir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/baharinmesir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/baharinmesir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/baharinmesir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}