MINI-PUBLIC III

Agriculture

REELER Road Map

Mini-public III: Robots in agriculture

The mini-public on agricultural robots took place in Hohenheim (Germany) in 2019. The audience consisted of 23 particpants, who discussed the impact of robots on sustainable development and the relation between the global north and south. The expert panel consisted of academic scholars specialized in agricultural robots and development. The audience consisted of students from various cultural backgrounds, which led to discussions about global development, investments, and the robotic impact. The event was held in English and data was collected via recordings and an online app. For more data, please see the following.

Voices

Will for sure increase, at least in the large, established farms with money to spend. However, the productivity of small-scale farms may decrease due to disability to keep up with progress in economy

Huge potential for highly mechsnized farming system. But what about rural poor farmers? Problems of access, lack of knowledge, maybe even no electricity available.

It can help increase productivity to a certain extent. But what happens when we, hypothetically, reach 100% optimization of production?

There is no definite answer – while yields for highly productive farms may increase the productivity for small farms might drop because of the high input in terms of financial investment.