Lessons to be learned in adoption of autonomous equipment for field crops
Date
2021-07-13
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Wiley on behalf of Agricultural & Applied Economics Association.
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.
Description
Publication history: Accepted - 25 June 2021; Published online - 13 July 2021.
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Article
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Keywords
autonomous, economies of scale, farm size, regulation, robot
Citation
Lowenberg‐DeBoer, J., Behrendt, K., Ehlers, M., Dillon, C., Gabriel, A., Huang, I. Y., Kumwenda, I., Mark, T., Meyer‐Aurich, A., Milics, G., Olagunju, K. O., Pedersen, S. M., Shockley, J. and Rose, D. (2021) ‘Lessons to be learned in adoption of autonomous equipment for field crops’, Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy. doi: 10.1002/aepp.13177.