Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
Not sure if there are any experts here, but if there are, I&#x27;m quite curious about the following:<p>1. Do we have any technology (independent of cost) existing today to have a fully automated farm? Meaning, set everything up and it&#x27;ll just spit out yield? This would include taking into account weather, planting, removing weeds, etc. The input into this &quot;system&quot; of course would be the &quot;ingredients&quot; such as soil, soil, and of course, sunlight.  [1]<p>2. What&#x27;s the maximum yield we can get out of an acre these days? If I wanted to buy, say, an acre (for food) and start a small town in southern United States and feed 1000 people easily, is that possible? For simplicity let&#x27;s say everyone is vegan.<p>[1] Here&#x27;s a snippet of research I&#x27;ve done that may be of interest to readers.<p>Air and soil: There&#x27;s been some advancements in sensors which is an obvious requisite towards the auto-farm. However I haven&#x27;t read anything recently about this. Most recent was (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;swarms-of-soil-sensors-may-help-farmers-water-smarter-d-1713098054)<p>Robotics: I know they (farm bots) exist (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;modernfarmer.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;08&#x2F;5-robots-on-the-farm&#x2F;), but I haven&#x27;t heard of them actually being more productive than existing high-yield solutions. I do think in the end they&#x27;ll be superior.<p>The single most advanced modern farm I&#x27;ve heard of is: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;seedstock.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;01&#x2F;24&#x2F;indoor-grower&#x2F;. Anyone know of anything that surpasses this? Just making farming (perhaps one of the most labor intensive things you can do these days) less of a burden will prove to be a game changer (e.g. you may find a single person willing and able to maintain an entire one acre farm).