In 2011, the number of people on Earth passed 7 billion and by 2050 that number is expected to jump up to almost 10 billion. Aside from trying to feed all these people, we'll still need to feed livestock as well (at least given current dietary needs and preferences). One efficient way to do this is through vertical farming—growing plants on trays indoors, which has the advantage of using far less space than traditional farming. But even this requires lots of human labor and equipment that farmers and ranchers can't always afford. Enter California agricultural tech company FodderWorks (a division of Simply Country, Inc). FodderWorks has created a fully automated robotic fodder-growing system that can produce daily quantities of fresh, non-genetically-modified food for livestock. It takes a system that already greatly reduces water and land use, and maximizes it even further, by making it faster. You can watch the robot work in a dramatic video posted by Fodder Works on YouTube (above). It’s like Ridley Scott’s take on ag-tech.

 

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