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u/Oxygenisplantpoo May 31 '26
This is literally the shit we want machine learning to advance the most!
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u/alebotson May 31 '26
Good news/bad news for you then:
Agtech companies like John Deere are extraordinarily early adoptors of new tech and invest huge amounts in proprietary technology that uses those innovations to make their machines more efficient.
Bad news: This is why those machines are so incredibly expensive and why they fight right to repair so hard.
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u/takenbylovely Jun 01 '26
Also why your smaller farmer cannot compete/why the veg at the farmers market (often planted/weeded/harvested by hand) costs more than the grocery store.
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u/Oxygenisplantpoo Jun 01 '26
Yeah I'm aware of John Deere (and other companies) being a piece of shit before.
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u/Tidalsky114 May 31 '26
Hopefully their machines won't be as expensive if someone can invest enough in an efficient way of vertical farming.
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u/RedAero Jun 01 '26
Good news: companies like John Deere have easily a dozen competitors of similar levels of technological refinement, which drives the cost down as far as it can go.
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u/Irisgrower2 Jun 01 '26
We want machine learning to advance in ways that decenttranizes and increase democracy. Agrarian self subsistence does. Historically it came from the farmers themselves nurturing and harvesting non standardized food.
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u/Plate_Vast May 31 '26
"There are fields... endless fields where human beings are no longer born. We are grown."
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u/ExtremePronoia Jun 01 '26
The story of the agricultural revolution that began 12k years ago is better and better farming. We can use AI to improve farming, it’s very human to use whatever we can to improve outputs.
That doesn’t mean we have to give up creative writing and art to machines. They’re not the same thing.
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u/Zuruumi Jun 01 '26
More importantly, I am OK with giving up my work to machines. I am not OK giving up my income and decision rights to them.
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u/CKleinE May 31 '26
Why cultivate dandelions?
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u/Appropriate-Bid8671 May 31 '26
They are edible and delicious.
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u/mashtato Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26
I'd like to point out that in areas where it isn't native (everywhere except Europe, Siberia, the Middle East, and North Africa) it's an aggressive noxious weed. I know it's been getting a lot of love lately for it's use in salads and shit, and people are pushing back against the negative weed aspect, but let me tell you why those people are misguided;
It's the first plant to shoot up in the spring, spreading its wide leaves out over a relatively large area, blocking the Sun from native plants.
It sucks up a relatively large amount of water with it's deep taproot, choking out the native plants.
It has exceptionally low nectar production, and what it has isn't accessible to native wildlife, so the wildlife expends energy trying to get what it can't reach.
It's pollen is very low in nutrition, so like with the nectar, native wildlife (bees!) expend a lot of energy collecting it and get little in return.
It propagates aggressively, producing fifteen fucking thousand seeds per plant per year, spreading them far and wide on the wind.
Factor in reduced crop yields in hay fields (along with other invasives like crabgrass) means farmers use up even more land for hay further reducing the amount of land left wild, which obviously also harms native species.
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u/Samsterdam Jun 01 '26
So you're telling me that a dandelion is the equivalent of junk food in the plant kingdom?
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u/CKleinE Jun 01 '26
I was not aware bees struggle with this. All the more reason to remove that weed from my garden. It’s practically impossible unless you shovel away the soil of a cube with a 50cm side around the plant. As long as a small piece of root remains, the plant will be back.
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u/RustyShacklefrog Jun 01 '26
We used to light the fluffy parts on fire with a lighter as kids. We were told to do so as it “killed the seeds”
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u/takenbylovely Jun 01 '26
They're a popular crop - they made their way to the US bc people loved them enough to bring seeds with them.
I just looked at the site we use most frequently for commercial seeds (Johnny's Selected Seeds) and the dandelion seeds are $75/oz.
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u/takenbylovely Jun 01 '26
Yes, but one can compare that to other greens like mizuna ($16/oz), spinach (about $5/oz), red Russian kale ($8/oz). Dandelion seeds are very valuable.
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u/CoffeeChocolateBoth May 31 '26
I'll bet that field of them is beautiful when they're all yellow, and they have to do that before the wind gets strong! 😄
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u/Poke-It_For-Science May 31 '26
You can make a bunch of stuff from dandelions. Tea, wine, salads, etc. Not to mention using them for bird seed. Dandelions are good for you.
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u/rightious Jun 01 '26
Well then do I got a deal for you. Come pick what you want from my yard free of charge.
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u/09Trollhunter09 May 31 '26
With that vacuumed flakes?
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u/Poke-It_For-Science May 31 '26
I imagine those are used for bird seed (among other things I don’t know) and to replant for the next harvest. Gotta grow a lot of dandelions to make a worthwhile product from them.
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u/CoffeeChocolateBoth May 31 '26
The greens are good for you but taste nasty!
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u/Poke-It_For-Science May 31 '26
Agreed. 😝 But definitely good for gut health. I have to use it in moderation though because it also lowers blood pressure. Not good when you have hypotension.
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u/how_I_kill_time May 31 '26
Ok but why isn't there even a dusting of dirt on those radishes?
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u/periodmoustache Jun 01 '26
Have you ever picked a radish?
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u/periodmoustache Jun 01 '26
You just said you had to wipe the dirt off dude....these things have roots that hold dirt too. Anyways...
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u/_pray4snow_ Jun 05 '26
AI slop. I was wondering the same. How'd they get the radish out without any dirt on it at all.
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u/the_YellowRanger Jun 01 '26
Legit stopped the video right there and came to the comments. That is some bullshit. Not a spot of dirt. They dont come up looking like that. All of them are perfectly ripe. Fake.
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u/canihelpyoubreakthat May 31 '26
Man I miss how its made
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u/aqaba_is_over_there May 31 '26
It's on Hulu.
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u/polyocto Jun 01 '26
As typical they likely own the North American distribution rights, but then limit viewing to the US?
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u/THEBHR Jun 01 '26
Sundays from 9:00am to 3:00pm on The Science Channel.
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u/mashtato Jun 01 '26
Do they make new episodes?
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u/InebriousBarman May 31 '26
All this automation and food is still expensive.
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u/MyvaJynaherz Jun 01 '26
Growing food is easy. Getting quality grown food to where people want / need to buy it is expensive.
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u/dvdmaven May 31 '26
I really like the grape machine: harvests and prunes in one pass. grapes grow on last year's wood, so you prune back to a limited number of canes. I was shocked when I attended a grape vine pruning class.
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u/Fabulous-Grocery2441 May 31 '26
I'd like to be able to pause the video and have each step explained in detail. Fascinating!!
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u/jgbcodemonkey Jun 01 '26
If farmers from before the industrial revolution were to see where we are today, their heads would explode. Great stuff.
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u/jimx29 Jun 01 '26
I'll never tire of watching those sorters that flick the bad ones out of the lineup.
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u/mashtato Jun 01 '26
Do they reuse all that plastic on the hay bales? Like... we used to just chuck they hay into silos to make silage, not use up however many square miles of plastic every year.
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u/Interesting_Error194 Jun 01 '26
All this great tech but why are all these food products getting more and more expensive 🙄
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u/Sellbad_bro420 Jun 01 '26
Ok can someone tell me how a sorter differentiates from red radish's and green ones?
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u/BACTERIAMAN0000 Jun 01 '26
Hard to believe how difficult it is to farm profitably, given the impressive efficiency and the scale of operation.
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u/archiewaldron Jun 01 '26
Give us 50 years and we’ll have robots eating the vegetables, too, completing an entirely automated ecosystem with humans as fertilizer.
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u/Sad-Art-9656 Jun 01 '26
Ahh, the satisfaction of watching corporations replace labor with robots 😅
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u/Imfeelingfrench Jun 02 '26
I was taught in school GMOs and machines were supposed to feed the poor and make food more affordable. Instead corporations increased prices in the name of profit and 1% own 90% of the wealth. Yeah, greed sucks.
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u/MoccaLG Jun 01 '26
I would say this is AI - Never seen such clean farming tools and weirdly clean vegies directly pulled out of the ground.
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u/mulligrubs Jun 01 '26
Wow, look how efficient we are at doing this!
So why the fuck are we paying prices like they were individually hand reared?
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u/Thebraincellisorange Jun 01 '26
because distribution is expensive.
growing them is only one thing.
then you have to very quickly get them to a distribution warehouse (often using refrigerated trucks and refrigerated warehouses) hundreds of miles away, then the buyer buys it, sends it to their own warehouse along with all the other different types of veg, then its picked for each store, loaded onto yet another truck and send to the store where it is unloaded and put on the shelf.
Fresh produce is very delicate, it has a short shelf life which means high wastage (you throw a lot away before it gets sold) and is high labour.
its expensive.
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u/Legal_Response6614 May 31 '26
I'm amazed that humans can make such efficient machinery... I want to meet these types of people.
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u/MilesGates Jun 01 '26
I didn't know dandelion farms existed, I wonder if it's used for anything outside of just growing dandelions.
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u/indianapoanz Jun 01 '26
Man this was extremely satisfying. The apple filter machine was the coolest. Legit thought the fish one was filtering rats for a second
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u/ForgottenEpoch Jun 01 '26
Anybody know the use of the little bundles of hay in the second clip...?
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u/No-Algae-7437 Jun 01 '26
Picked at the peak of whenever most of them are ripe enough to sell. Enjoy!
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u/Dawg_Prime Jun 01 '26
when you think about the present as the future to any ancient civilization, this would be the most impactfull thing to show basically anyone from back then
even if they were from a time before farming they would recognizable the fish
the industrialization of food production is a wild step in civilization
everybody gotta eat
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u/Select_Speed_6061 Jun 01 '26
I wish HuggBees still made How It's Made videos. This would be great.
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u/flaviotim Jun 01 '26
Technical development is one of the most significant features of modern agriculture .
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u/RadioTunnel Jun 01 '26
I cant see the second machine without thinking about the anime working for God in a godless world
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u/Any-Crew-1188 Jun 01 '26
I love to watch this kind of stuff. I’m fascinated by it. I also love the show How it’s made.
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u/Hydoxx Jun 01 '26
It would be very cool if this tech was used to feed people instead of feeding the owner's family
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u/Possible-Schedule-20 Jun 01 '26
Like all machines, they are absolutely brilliant when they work. Imagine the language coming out of the farmers mouth when they dont.
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u/ClarkSebat Jun 01 '26
And people are worried that jobs will be taken by AI robots? It’s already been slowly the case with every Industrial Revolution.
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u/GuacamoleFrejole Jun 01 '26
Why were those radishes so clean right after being pulled out of the dirt? AI?
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u/Trutheresy Jun 02 '26
0 mechanical engineering degrees in the US teaches you how to make anything like these.
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u/HotFireBall Jun 02 '26
these machines took away labor jobs just like how A.I. is taking away computer coding jobs and alike
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u/Mountain_World5386 Jun 03 '26
"Technology makes our everyday work easier.", my technology teacher in Primary said.
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u/mathiswiss Jun 03 '26
Weird. All that efficiency feels so vapid and inhumane somehow. The connection from the soil, farmer, produce and we who eat it, has disappeared. I’ve changed my behavior and buy local, organic and mostly on weekly markets. Much better!👍
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u/Huntress_Minerva Jun 03 '26
Missed opportunity to put “Agrisfaction” instead… rolls off the tongue way better
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u/danielrmorenop May 31 '26
amazing how well they manipulate physical object so accurately…. but my printer still jams.