Developments in agricultural automation can create new entrepreneurial opportunities, for example, related to organic farming and botanicals with valuable aromatic, medicinal and nutritional properties. It may also contribute to the revival of nutrient-dense heirloom crops that were difficult to mechanize. This is already beginning in some high-income countries. In France in 2018, there were 150 robots used for weeding organic vegetables and sugar beet.46 Where one of the main constraints to organic or biodynamic farming is the high cost of labour, using autonomous weeding machines to control weeds and AI to identify plant diseases allows rapid expansion of organic production, which can bring down the prices of organic products substantially. This is good news for consumers who prefer to buy organic products but are unable to afford the current high prices.47
Another example is maize. With the mechanization of maize production, hybrids were developed with ears at about the same height in order to facilitate mechanical harvesting. However, the plant breeding process led to the loss of some nutritional and culinary values. Nevertheless, it is now possible to restore these values, as autonomous machines with AI are able to harvest traditional, tastier and more nutritious, maize varieties with ears at different heights. Likewise, the mechanization of tomato harvesting required varieties that ripen evenly, but this process resulted in loss of nutritional value and flavour. Selective harvesting with autonomous machines could allow commercial production of flavourful heirloom varieties.47
In addition to the entrepreneurial opportunities mentioned above, automation can bring more good news to consumers, as it offers the potential to produce lower-cost food. The main risk from a consumer perspective is that automation spurs concentration in the food industry, leading to a small number of large corporations holding a dominant position; these then set monopolistic prices, harming consumers and reducing production to socially suboptimal levels. On the other hand, corporations enjoy economies of scale and thus can produce goods at a lower cost than smaller competitors. If excessive concentration can be avoided, consumers may still be better off than in a perfectly competitive market made up of many small producers. In the Greater Los Angeles area in the United States of America, unlike small food retailers, supermarkets do not raise food prices as a function of market concentration or increased market shares. The competition between supermarkets prevents them from setting monopolistic prices, and consumers thus reap the benefits of reduced costs associated with gains in efficiency from economies of scale.48 Policies that favour market competition are essential to limit business consolidation and to protect consumer welfare.3
There is a risk that if automation technologies are not scale-neutral, small-scale producers and processors may be pushed out of business because they lack the economies of scale to remain competitive. However, this does not have to be an outcome of introducing digital automation in agriculture; to avoid such inevitability, low-cost (i.e. scale-neutral), highly effective digital automation needs to become as ubiquitous as mobile phones. With the right enabling digital infrastructure, and legal, regulatory and cultural environment, there is great potential for sustainable rural economic development based on intensive, but sustainable agriculture. Whether countries – and in particular low- and middle-income countries – gain or lose from agricultural automation depends on how they manage this transition. Those that build the necessary physical, economic, legal and social digital automation infrastructure stand to benefit. Countries that ignore the challenge may lose the low-wage manual agricultural employment they now have, without developing higher-wage agricultural opportunities based on automation. History suggests that international cooperation is essential to prepare for the transition; nevertheless, the political will to recognize these opportunities and take action accordingly is no less essential.3, 47, 49
