Lessons to be learned in adoption of autonomous equipment for field crops

James Lowenberg-DeBoer, Karl Behrendt, Melf Hinrich Ehlers, Carl Dillon, Andreas Gabriel, Iona Yuelu Huang, Ian Kumwenda, Tyler Mark, Andreas Meyer-Aurich, Gabor Milics, Kehinde Oluseyi Olagunju, Søren Marcus Pedersen, Jordan Shockley, David Rose

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

31 Scopus citations

Abstract

Autonomous equipment for crop production is on the verge of technical and economic feasibility, but government regulation may slow its adoption. Key regulatory issues include requirements for on-site human supervision, liability for autonomous machine error, and intellectual property in robotic learning. As an example of the impact of regulation on the economic benefits of autonomous crop equipment, analysis from the United Kingdom suggests that requiring 100% on-site human supervision almost wipes out the economic benefits of autonomous crop equipment for small and medium farms and increases the economies-of-scale advantage of larger farms.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)848-864
Number of pages17
JournalApplied Economic Perspectives and Policy
Volume44
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Agricultural & Applied Economics Association.

Keywords

  • autonomous
  • economies of scale
  • farm size
  • regulation
  • robot

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Development
  • Economics and Econometrics

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