Autonomous tech is coming to farming. What will it mean for crops and workers who harvest them?

By MELINA WALLING, Associated Press and AYURELLA HORN-MULLER, Grist

HOMESTEAD, Fla. (AP) — Jeremy Ford hates wasting water.

As a mist of rain sprinkled the fields around him in Homestead, Florida, Ford bemoaned how expensive it had been running a fossil fuel-powered irrigation system on his five-acre farm — and how bad it was for the planet.

Earlier this month, Ford installed an automated underground system that uses a solar-powered pump to periodically saturate the roots of his crops...