AP: Autonomous tech is coming to farming. What will it mean for crops and workers who harvest them?

According to The Associated Press, a growing number of companies are bringing automation to agriculture. It could ease the sector’s deepening labor shortage, help farmers manage costs, and protect workers from extreme heat. Automation could also improve yields by bringing greater accuracy to planting, harvesting, and farm management, potentially mitigating some of the challenges of growing food in an ever-warmer world.

The Article Highlights PowerPollen: Detasseling corn used to be a rite of passage for some young people in the Midwest. Teenagers would wade through seas of corn removing tassels – the bit that looks like a yellow feather duster at the top of each stalk – to prevent unwanted pollination.

Extreme heat, drought and intense rainfall have made this labor-intensive task even harder. And it’s now more often done by migrant farmworkers who sometimes put in 20-hour days to keep up. That’s why Jason Cope, co-founder of farm tech company PowerPollen, thinks it’s essential to mechanize arduous tasks like detasseling. His team created a tool a tractor can use to collect the pollen from male plants without having to remove the tassel. It can then be saved for future crops.

“We can account for climate change by timing pollen perfectly as it’s delivered,” he said. “And it takes a lot of that labor that’s hard to come by out of the equation.”