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Leveraging automation to transform agrifood systems : flagship report By the Food and Agriculture Organisation
FAO
Automation can make agricultural production more resilient and productive , improve product quality , increase resource-use efficiency , promote decent employment , and enhance environmental sustainability , according to the report .
Agricultural automation , which includes anything from tractors to artificial intelligence , can play an important role in making food production more efficient and more environmentally friendly .
However , its uneven adoption can also deepen inequalities , especially if it remains inaccessible to small-scale producers and other marginalised groups , such as youth and women .
The 2022 edition of The State of Food and Agriculture ( SOFA ), one of the flagship reports produced each year by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations ( FAO ), looks at how automation in our agrifood systems can contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and offers recommendations to policy makers for maximising the benefits and minimising the risks .
From hire-a-tractor services in Ghana to shrimp boxes that use machine learning and robotics in Mexico , the report looks at 27 case studies from all over the world , representing technologies at different stages of readiness and appropriate to agricultural producers of different scales and levels of income .
It investigates the drivers of these technologies and identifies several barriers preventing their adoption , particularly by small-scale producers . Based on this analysis , the publication suggests policies to ensure that agricultural automation is inclusive and contributes to sustainable and resilient agrifood systems .
Finally , the report also looks at one of the most common concerns about automation – that it creates unemployment – and concludes that such fears are not borne out by historical realities .
Overall , automation alleviates labour shortages and can make agricultural production more resilient and productive , improve product quality , increase resource-use efficiency , promote decent employment and enhance environmental sustainability , the report says .
" FAO truly believes that without technological progress and increased productivity , there is no possibility of lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty , hunger , food insecurity and malnutrition ," FAO Director-General QU Dongyu wrote in the report ' s foreword . " What matters is how the process of automation is carried out in practice , not whether or not it happens . We must ensure that automation takes place in a way that is inclusive and promotes sustainability ."
ADVANCEMENTS IN AUTOMATION
Throughout history , humankind has constantly strived to reduce the toil of farming by developing ingenious tools and harnessing the power of fire , wind , water and animals . By 4 000 BCE , Mesopotamian farmers were using ox-drawn ploughs , while water-powered mills emerged in China around 1 000 BCE .
The pace of technological change has accelerated dramatically during the past two centuries , triggered by the discovery of steam power , and later reinforced by the rise of fossil-energy-powered tractors .
Today , a new revolution is underway involving digital technologies . These include artificial intelligence , drones , robotics , sensors and global navigation satellite systems , along with the vast proliferation of hand-held devices such as mobile phones and a flurry of new devices connected to the internet – the so-called internet of things .
Another important development involves the sharing economy . Shared asset services in Africa and Asia , for example , adopt a model similar to the Uber taxi application by allowing small and medium-scale farmers to access costly equipment , such as a tractor , without having to buy it .
Crucially , there are wide disparities in the spread of automation between and within countries , with adoption being particularly limited in sub-Saharan Africa . For instance , already in 2005 it was estimated that Japan had more than 400
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