Sorry, but an overwhelming amount of people commenting in here are extremely ignorant of the modern agri-food system.
The notion that robots and drones will eliminate monocultures and chemical inputs is wildly untrue. In some minor cases they will reduce the need.
It amazes me that software engineers think they have the panacea for whatever faults they see in our food system without a full understanding and history of it.
That's false. Homogeneity makes it easier to harvest, process, and store crops. It also drives perfect competition which brings cost down on the commodity market.
We're not moving away from nitrogen fertilizers. Ever. Why?
Look at the following three graphs: global population, staple crop yield, and nitrogen fertilizer application.
Now overlay them. That's why.
Also, there are myriad chemical inputs that cannot be removed simply due to free labor. Sure, a robot can pluck weeds, but what about fungal and bacterial diseases?
I'm not supporting the parasitic nature of landlords.
But the right to own land is an essential part of a functioning society. The idea that no one should be able to own land is ridiculous and does not work. There are plenty of examples of this all across the globe.
Except astroturfing is coordinated. It's not a conspiracy. The shills you mention are just people who are well-informed on nuanced topic. A topic that that seemingly affects everyone (because food), and therefore everyone chimes in.
Except most people don't know jack about modern food systems and its history. All they know is: big pharma bad, big ag bad, big food bad.
Let's just take a pause and consider some key information:
-This is an association study
-If we CTLR+F "cause", "causing", "causal", etc, the only mention of causation is with extremely high levels of flouride and another mention with extremely high levels of glyphosate and zebrafish
Now let's zoom way out, and consider the use of glyphosate in general. If you plot grain yields over time compared to herbicide use over time and fertilizer use over time, you can see one thing quite clearly. The use of synthetic inputs, along with plant breeding and genetic engineering, has saved humanity from starvation and allowed unhindered growth.
Any experienced agriculturalist knows this. Any experienced commodity trader knows this. All this talk about commercial farming needing to be eradicated is fantasy talk. There are trade-offs to everything.
When you consider cost/acre and calories/acre, it is also abundantly clear that for all its flaws, modern industrial farming is a technological marvel.
When you look back into the history of herbicides, you can consider glyphosate to be way better than many of the past options. So things are definitely getting better.
As for the demonization of glyphosate, I would say that most of this literature is just provocative headlines for the sake of grant funding. It's very trendy to claim that glyphosate is causing X,Y, and Z. We saw the same thing with MSG as a food additive, and are still dealing with the proliferation of bad science, bad messaging, and a sticky belief system within genpop.
The notion that robots and drones will eliminate monocultures and chemical inputs is wildly untrue. In some minor cases they will reduce the need.
It amazes me that software engineers think they have the panacea for whatever faults they see in our food system without a full understanding and history of it.