Will Automation Save American Farms? Or Destroy Them?

The Daily Beast writer Max Ufberg recently explored the impact of automation on farming, and spent time with advanced.farm’s Co-Founder and President, Kyle Cobb. See excerpts below and the full article here.

“We’re not replacing jobs,” he said. “We’re actually supplementing that workforce for jobs that can’t be filled right now.” He raised an interesting analog: Before he created Advanced Farm, he started a company, Greenbotics, that performed robotic solar panel cleaning for utility-scale power plants. As Cobb tells it, Greenbotics helped create an entire new class of worker: the robotic solar panel cleaning technician.

“There are hundreds of these people around the world now that didn’t exist before, who have more earning potential than they had in previous roles, and who have unique skills that they were able to develop as a result of the technology,” Cobb said. “I think we’re going to see similar things to ag tech, where people work alongside the equipment and become experts in utilizing the equipment.”