@art_of_shred said in Open Source Farming Machine:

@travisdh1 said in Open Source Farming Machine:

@art_of_shred said in Open Source Farming Machine:

@travisdh1 said in Open Source Farming Machine:

@art_of_shred said in Open Source Farming Machine:

@travisdh1 said in Open Source Farming Machine:

@art_of_shred said in Open Source Farming Machine:

@travisdh1 said in Open Source Farming Machine:

@IRJ said in Open Source Farming Machine:

@scottalanmiller said in Open Source Farming Machine:

@art_of_shred said in Open Source Farming Machine:

Especially on a small scale, that's pretty cool.

Yes, for a "farm" it is totally useless. But for a home garden this is so perfect. It's the right size for a home garden and it handles mixed plants as easily as doing all the same one so perfect for the variety that single families need. An amazing opportunity around growing your own food. It would work really well for people who want fresh veggies for their own consumption. It's an automated system that matches how they farm in Romania, everyone with a tiny plot of their own.

$3k is such a steep hurdle to care for such a small garden. You would almost never recoup your food cost. I'd like to see something like this for about a third of the price. I understand that probably isn't feasible right now in terms of cost and technology, but it would be hard to see any monetary gain at $3k.

Yeah. Like I said before, we'll see this sort of system put on a truck or tractor arrangement of some sort. Add on the auto driving things they have on the newest tractors, and you've got an automated system that can tend to hundreds/thousands of acres without the current need for keeping entire fields being the same crop. Don't even need a driver, just a manager/mechanic.

You would need a separate mechanism for harvesting large quantities, though.

Not all that difficult to do. Most types of crops have some sort of automated harvesting mechanism available (weather it's currently in use over super cheap human labor or not.)

We're talking about mixed stuff, not a field of one plant type.

I realize that 😉 A harvesting bot isn't that difficult to do compared to a planting/watering bot.

True, but I highly doubt it could be nearly efficient enough for large-scale farming. A bot that can adapt to harvesting multiple crops and still keep up with a combine taking down a single crop? I don't see that as feasible.

For the insane scale farms generally operating today, sure. For the small (400-800 acres of crops) farms it'd be ideal.

I still don't think the numbers would come even close, but it's all hypothetical anyway. 🙂 We'll have to find out the long way.

I agree. It would take a long time to recoup the initial investment. Labor and machines like tractors are much more affordable for small farms.