Jim O'Brien: I've seen the future of farming and it's robotic

Robotic milking has reduced the need to be present for the dairy milking routine.

Jim O'Brien

A trip around the stalls and stands at the recent ploughing extravaganza left one in no doubt that the future will be robotic. From the invention of the hoe 11,000 years ago in the fertile plain between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates in southern Iraq, farming has been characterised by ever increasing mechanisation.

The most recent and revolutionary descendant of the hoe is the robot, a contraption that is leading industrial, technological, intellectual and social change and taking us to places we haven't dared dream of. Hopefully, the robot will always be led by the human, but that is another story and not as far-fetched an eventuality as we once thought.