HOMESTEAD, Fla. “Jeremy Ford hates to waste water.”

As a mist of rain sprinkled the fields around him in Homestead, Florida, Ford lamented how expensive it was to run a fossil fuel-powered irrigation system on his five-acre farm—and how bad it was for the planet.

Earlier this month, Ford installed an automated underground system that uses a solar-powered pump to periodically saturate the roots of its crops, saving “thousands of gallons of water.” While they may be more expensive up front, he sees such green investments as a necessary expense — and more affordable than expanding the workforce of two.

It’s “much more efficient,” Ford said. “We tried to figure out, ‘How do we do this?’ with the least amount of labor added.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is a collaboration between The Associated Press and Grist.

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A growing number of companies are bringing automation to agriculture. It could ease the sector’s deepening labor shortages, 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 alleviating some of the challenges of growing food in an increasingly warming world.

But many farmers and small producers across the country are not convinced. Barriers to adoption go beyond steep price tags to questions of whether the tools can do the tasks nearly as well as the workers they would replace. Some of these same workers wonder what this trend could mean for them and whether machines will lead to exploitation.

How autonomous is farm automation? Not completely – yet

On some farms, driverless tractors plow through acres of corn, soybeans, lettuce and more. Such equipment is expensive and requires the mastery of new tools, but row crops are quite easy to automate. Harvesting small, uneven and easily damaged fruit such as blackberries or large citrus fruits, which require little strength and dexterity to pull off a tree, would be much more difficult.

That doesn’t deter scientists like Xin Zhang, a biological and agricultural engineer at Mississippi State University. Working with a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology, she wants to apply some of the automation techniques that surgeons use and the object-recognition power of advanced cameras and computers to create robotic berry-picking arms that they can pluck the fruit without creating a sticky, purple mess.

Scientists have been working with farmers for field tests, but Zhang isn’t sure when the machine might be ready for consumers. Although robotic harvesting is not widespread, a number of products have reached the market and can be seen working from orchards in Washington to produce farms in Florida.

“I feel like this is the future,” Zhang said.

But where she sees promise, others see trouble.

Frank James, executive director of grassroots agriculture group Dakota Rural Action, grew up on a cattle and crop farm in northeastern South Dakota. His family once employed a few farm workers but had to cut back due, in part, to a lack of available labor. Much of the work is now done by his brother and sister-in-law, while his 80-year-old father steps in occasionally.

They swear by tractor autosteer, an automated system that communicates with a satellite to help keep the car on track. But it can’t identify moisture levels in fields that can make the tools hamstring or cause the tractor to stall, and it requires human supervision to work as it should. Technology also complicates maintenance. For these reasons, he doubts automation will become the “absolute” future of farm work.

“You build a relationship with the land, with the animals, with the place where you produce it. And we’re moving away from that,” James said.

Some farmers say automation answers labor problems

Tim Bucher grew up on a farm in Northern California and has worked in agriculture since he was 16 years old. Dealing with weather problems such as drought has always been a reality for him, but climate change has brought new challenges as temperatures regularly reach triple digits and blankets of smoke ruin entire vineyards.

The toll of climate change compounded by labor challenges inspired him to combine his experience in agriculture with his engineering and startup experience in Silicon Valley to found AgTonomy in 2021. It works with equipment manufacturers such as Doosan Bobcat to produce automated tractors and other tools.

Since the pilot programs began in 2022, Bucher says the company has been “inundated” with customers, mainly grape and orchard growers in California and Washington.

Sector watchers say farmers, often skeptical of new technology, will consider automation if it makes their business more profitable and their lives easier. Will Brigham, a Vermont dairy and maple farmer, sees such tools as solutions to the nation’s agricultural labor shortage.

“A lot of farmers are struggling with labor,” he said, citing “high competition” for jobs where “you don’t have to deal with the weather.”

Since 2021, the Brigham family farm has been using Farmblox, an artificial intelligence-powered farm monitoring and management system that helps them get ahead of problems like leaking pipes used in maple production. Six months ago, he joined the company as a senior sales engineer to help other farmers embrace such technology.

Workers worry about losing their jobs or their rights to automation

Shelling corn was a rite of passage for some young people in the Midwest. Teenagers waded through seas of corn removing tassels — the bits that look like a dusting of yellow feathers at the top of each stalk — to prevent unwanted pollination.

Extreme heat, drought, and heavy rainfall made this labor-intensive task difficult. And now it’s more often done by migrant farm workers, who sometimes put in 20-hour days to keep up. That’s why Jason Cope, co-founder of agricultural technology company PowerPollen, believes it’s essential to mechanize tough tasks like mowing. His team has created a tool that a tractor can use to collect 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 the pollen perfectly as it is delivered,” he said. “And it takes a lot of work, which is hard to get out of the equation.”

Erik Nicholson, who previously worked as a farm labor organizer and now runs Semillero de Ideas, a nonprofit focused on farmworkers and technology, said he has heard from farmworkers worried about job losses to automation. Some have also expressed concern about the safety of working alongside self-driving cars, but are hesitant to raise issues because they fear losing their jobs. He would like to see the companies building these machines, and the farm owners who use them, put people first.

Luis Jimenez, a New York dairy worker, agrees. He described a farm that uses technology to monitor cows for disease. These types of tools can sometimes identify infections earlier than a dairy worker or veterinarian.

It also helps the workers know how the cows are doing, Jimenez said, speaking in Spanish. But they can reduce the number of people needed on farms and put extra pressure on the workers who remain, he said. This pressure is heightened by increasingly automated technology, such as video cameras used to monitor worker productivity.

Automation can be “a tactic, like a strategy, for the bosses, so people are afraid and won’t demand their rights,” said Jimenez, who advocates for immigrant farmworkers with the grassroots organization Alianza Agrícola. After all, robots “are machines that don’t ask for anything,” he added. “We don’t want to be replaced by cars.”

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Associated Press reporters Amy Taxin in Santa Ana, Calif. and Dorany Pineda in Los Angeles contributed. Walling reported from Chicago.

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Follow Melina Walling on X at @MelinaWalling.