To the editor: Should we cheer the development of robots using artificial intelligence as farm laborers? (“Could AI robots with lasers make herbicides — and farm workers — obsolete?” July 22)
Sure, they will use less herbicide, laser out weeds and pick crops faster. But this kind of “new era of industrialized food production” is exactly why we are getting such bland-tasting produce from industrial-scale farms and why that produce is less nutrient dense.
These farms are businesses run like factories. What they grow is more about veggies and fruit that can be harvested faster and sooner, packed denser and shipped further — not about taste or even nutrition.
Imagine what the needs and capabilities of these new machines will do to the next generation of tomatoes and strawberries we get in our markets. And, while the technology wipes out thousands of low-paying jobs, it still costs a bundle, so our food costs won’t go down.
Not a fan.
Suvan Geer, Santa Ana
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To the editor: These kinds of advances are needed because in a sustainable future, when the global population is down to 2 billion people, we won’t have the labor to support the way agriculture is done today.
Your sentence about the health risks linked to chemicals used in agriculture says it all. Bayer — which bought Monsanto, the company that used genetic engineering to make plants immune to its weed-killing products — will lose billions. Big Pharma will also lose a lot.
Just these two very powerful industries will fight tooth and nail against these changes.
These industries will claim, just as the privately owned utilities do, that employing Earth-friendly technologies will hurt “the little people.” This argument ignores the reality that those little people will always have a job because, as it was written in the National Lampoon song “Deteriorata” back in 1972, “There is always a big future in computer maintenance.”
Gregg Ferry, Carlsbad
