Posted on 10/12/2015 6:40:37 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
From the army of machines that work in Amazon warehouses to automatons that milk cows, the job-taking robots of the future are among us. Now the lettuce in your salad of the future might be grown by robots too. Oh, by “future,” we mean 2017.
That’s the hope of Spread, a company in Kyoto, Japan, that plans to begin constructing the world’s first large-scale lettuce factory next spring. Once it’s fully operational, the entire process of growing a head of lettuce—from seeding to harvest—will be automated and run by robots. The efficiency of machines will enable the factory to produce 80,000 heads of lettuce per day, or 10 million per year, according to a release from to the company.
That sounds ambitious enough, but Spread plans to “expand the scale of production to 500,000 heads of lettuce per day in five years” and hopes to move its distribution to international markets.
Spread also seems to have the farming challenges presented by climate change in mind. Indoor farming can help address “water and food shortages due to extreme weather events accompanied by the increasing global population,” according to the company. Bonus: The new factory will recycle 98 percent of the water it uses.....
(Excerpt) Read more at takepart.com ...
“We should have picked our own lettuce”.
The Diamond Age - great story. Amazingly prophetic.
Ah yes. “Silent Running”...I saw that in theatre when it was released when I was maybe 12 or so. It was a hippie movie for sure. I don’t remember what the reason was for destroying the forest domes, but I am sure it was as stupid and contrived as the reason for the hometree attack in “Avatar”....ie. Largest deposit of unobtanium in...what was it ? ..like 100 miles or something”. If they would spend like $100 billion developing the avatar technology, they why could they not fly thier $300 billion in miltary hardware 100 miles to get the next largest deposit instead of blowing up hometree. It would take a democrat to be that crass.
Lettuce hope it isn’t just that dreadful iceberg.
I would think that vine plants would yield the most for the space, and arranged more creatively.
More cumin than cumin ping.
Water you can carry in a paper sack.
There’s an endless carping about infrastructure falling apart - and the reasons new bridges and dams and power plants don’t get built is environmentalists suing to prevent it and unions doing it so slowly that it takes up all the budget to finish one project when we have ten more to complete.
A lot of skilled labor jobs would be created if we built the pipelines, refineries, power plants, new bridges and so forth we need - plus actually repair a lot of roads and older buildings that need it.
One thing about Japan - they place high value on preserving their culture.
Robots free people up to do things robots can’t do.
“Go away! Baitin’!”
I was thinking that too. Also root veggies. Carrots, onions, beets and such.
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