Today, it is well established that technology will have a lasting impact in every sector of the economy, and as these technologies are scaled they will become increasingly available. The food industry is no different, and in a time where forecasts on population increase and food security are troubling, it can be difficult to determine whether technology’s presence is for better or for worse. As tens of thousands of people rely on agriculture as a form of livelihood worldwide, aside from the issues of costs and increasing efficiency, perhaps another problem should be addressed in the mission to utilize technology to feed the future: in terms of the role of humans, is the advancement of technology in farming an enhancement or an intrusion?
The answer to this differs depending on the geographic lens with which the question is tackled.
In the context of much of the developed world, predominantly the United States and much of Europe, the steadily rising popularity of automation in general farming provides the solution to an impending demographic crisis. Though there are outliers to this general trend, the average age of a farmer has been steadily increasing: in the EU agricultural sector the average age of a farmer was 49.2 years in 2004, and in 2014 it was 51.4 years, in the US the average age is 58.3 years and in Japan it is 67 years. In Canada, it is predicted that 70% of farmers will retire in the next 10 years.
And in the context of the US, the issue of ageing is only being exacerbated by the coinciding factor of reduced immigration across the Mexico-US border. According to a Pew research center study, immigration from Mexico to the US, both legal and illegal, has been decreasing in recent years, and the flow of immigrants leaving the US back to Mexico has been increasing.
As The National Agricultural Workers Survey by The Department of Labor estimates that 46% of farmworkers in the US are illegal immigrants, and because studies have demonstrated that Americans are less likely to take farm jobs, particularly the ones in harvesting crops, the result is that the lack of generational replacement in American farms becomes an issue.
These statistics combined both with the knowledge that the US is one of the top agricultural exporters in the world and that the future needs increased productivity in the agricultural sector presents an extrordinary problem. In the coming years, we will see diminished productivity – if not for the advent of emerging technology and all it has to offer. Among an aging farming population, technology’s ability to streamline activities, increase efficiency and collect data at a magnitude that humans alone cannot manage offers to be the solution to increase output to the level we need. As a result, the advancement of technology in farming within the demographic context of more developed nations, namely the US, can be seen as an enhancement to the role of humans.
On the other hand, assessing the role of agriculture and technology within lower-middle to low income nations requires additional nuance. Though there are similarities in that significant portions of these nations also show evidence of ageing in the farm workforce and a general reluctance of younger generations in entering the agriculture sector, it is notable that agriculture plays a different role in developing countries.
While less than 5% of the population in more economically developed countries depend on agriculture as a form of livelihood, more than two thirds of the population in less economically developed countries work in agriculture. Importantly, growth in the agricultural sector is key to the improvement of living standards and class mobility among the poorest; it is two to four times more effective than other means in raising incomes.
As such, though modern technology may be a productive force in the developed world in general, in many less developed parts of the world agricultural technology and increasing productivity at the expense of workers wages may be less important than securing rural livelihoods, and increasing access to education and healthcare. For nations classified as lower-middle to low-income, the increasing prominence of automation technology that reduces the need for human labor is likely to have negative effects on livelihoods.
When looking at increasing agricultural productivity in less developed countries, it is important for governments and the agriculture industry to understand increased efficiency and economic gains do not seamlessly translate to higher standards of living. It brings forth the question of how to balance the need to provide more for the world in the near future, versus how to sustain and grow the livelihoods of the individual farmworker in need - and a contribution to finding this balance can be seen in examples of how the previously mentioned technologies (IoT, automation and artificial intelligence) are able to enhance rural farmers without displacing them.
One such example is PlantVillage, a research and development project from Pennsylvania State University that makes artificial intelligence technology accessible to farmers in Tanzania. Through their software, simply downloading an app on an inexpensive smartphone can increase crop health and output. The application uses the camera and software powered by artificial intelligence to diagnose a diseased plant, and then provides farmers solutions on how to combat the disease.
This illustrates how technology can be used to empower farmers that depend on agriculture while simultaneously increasing output and working towards feeding a growing population. It thus provides guidelines on how nations with a complex demographic context can tackle multiple problems at once, regardless of the category of “developed” or “developing.”
