Automation in Manufacturing, Agriculture, and Farming
Socio Economic Reform
We live in a world where almost 1 billion people are without food, hungry, and around 1.6 billion people are either homeless or living in inadequate shelter. The arms crisis around the middle east and Africa are making millions more homeless every month, making kids orphans or disabled. Its time for America to prove to the world that American exceptionalism is not based on Imperialism anymore. It has no place in our future. It was a policy followed by some of the good-for-nothing power-hungry politicians who cared about themselves more than the country, Democrats and Republicans alike.
As I mentioned in my last article, the United States leads in Global Arms exports. Please check the Statista Link below to see the graph.
Instead of being the Merchant of death, the United States can adapt the automation in Manufacturing and agriculture to make products and food which regular people in this world desperately need, cheaper, competitive, and closer to the consumer. This can be done for both, our needs here in the United States and also for the people around the world. No one in this world needs any more guns and missiles, What the people around the world need is a home to shelter in, food to eat, and drugs to survive. These are the three areas which are getting heavily automated nowadays and which could drive down the cost of everything.
In the midst of a Pandemic, China is showing the world that massive Quarantine Camps to house thousands of people can be built in a couple of Days using modular prefabrication and onsite assembling. Even though the United States is the pioneer in these technologies, we are still heavily dependent on conventional construction methods. China is nowhere near the technology which the US possesses when it comes to innovations in construction. That’s because, In addition to the homegrown talent, the US also imports talent from all around the world and that’s why we have the best minds in the world when it comes to any type of innovation including construction. Check out this CNN article which details how a Texas-based construction firm called Lennar and ICON is using large robotic "Vulcan" printers, to 3D print homes. As per the article, these 3D printed homes are more resilient, sustainable, cost-efficient, and energy self-sufficient. And the construction process is superfast. They are also using this 3D printing robot to build social or subsidized, housing in Mexico for low-income families.
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/icon-3d-printed-homes-austin/index.html
The US has to adapt and invest in cutting-edge automation in the new Manufacturing jobs. This is the only way to compete against manufacturing outsourcing using cheap labor which the other countries offer. Automation is the new frontier in Manufacturing and services. With new technologies like additive manufacturing and 3D printing, both commercial and consumer home-use products can be easily 3D printed in industrial and home settings. Also, Companies in the services industry like business process outsourcing and document processing areas started using machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cloud technologies. The companies who don’t adapt to these technologies are going out of business because they cannot be competitive in pricing for the product or the services they offer. The only way all these can be accelerated is by training the US labor force to use automation platforms, integration, and quality control. This will bring the jobs back to US, both in manufacturing and services industries. The existing colleges and community colleges should start offering courses and training to prepare the workforce to adapt to the needs of Manufacturing and services automation. If we are not training the American workforce to meet the manufacturing re-shoring demands on automation, other countries who have already started this will get a head start.
Please read the Brookings institute article which explains the future of global manufacturing below.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/03/04/the-future-of-global-manufacturing/
Please also check the GE link below which talks about the Additive manufacturing in an industrial scale
https://www.ge.com/additive/additive-manufacturing
When it comes to Agriculture and Farming, Smart farming powered by automation is making both Crop and livestock production very efficient with predictable results. Robotic machinery is being used Heavily in harvesting, seeding, and watering with targeted treatments based on the needs. It’s also called precision agriculture that helps the farmers to treat areas based on the need instead of treating the entire field. It saves water, fertilizers, and insecticides significantly and drives the overall profit high. Autonomous Tractors which communicate between them and work collectively using machine learning and artificial intelligence are a reality now. Automation is also heavily used in livestock feeding, maintenance, health monitoring, and even processing. Drones are being used in overall supervision and Maintenance. The introduction of 5G accelerated all this. If Conventional farmers don’t adapt to smart farming techniques, they will go out of business. The key thing in smart farming is that the new labor force needs to be trained to use automation instead of losing jobs to automation. With all these innovations, the US can modernize the entire agriculture industry and be the food source for the whole world and the money you get in return will have God’s signature on it. The United States has so much unused land which we can put to use for agriculture and farming by adapting low-cost smart farming, automation, and clean energy techniques. In other big countries like China and Russia, two thirds of their land is uninhabitable because of dry deserts and extreme weather conditions. In China 94% of their population (1.2 billion people) live on the east side of the HU -Line and other 6 % live in the uninhabitable deserts and wastelands in the west side. Please see the bigthink.com article below.
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/hu-line/
When other countries are struggling with over population, America is blessed with natural resources and fertile lands. In addition to modernizing and expanding the agriculture sector, we can also make cutting-edge farm equipment that could be exported and sold around the world and end the hunger in countries around the world, instead of making cutting edge killing machines.
We live in a world where even the vaccines or drugs could also be made using Molecular 3D printing Micro factories. Tesla was going to do such a thing with Curevac covid vaccine.
The main challenge we are having in Manufacturing and Agriculture is the labor shortage and lack of skills or training in the automation field. Like I mentioned earlier, People are unevenly populated in the country where 80% of the population is concentrated in the urban areas. We should be training people to adapt to the needs in automation and also provide an effective transportation infrastructure for the people to commute or relocate anywhere in the country to address the labor needs . Automation does not take jobs away, but you need to get people trained and adapt to the automation job needs.
by Hari Ramachandran