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.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-13-2021
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1002/aepp.13177
Repository Citation
Lowenberg-DeBoer, James; Behrendt, Karl; Ehlers, Melf-Hinrich; Dillon, Carl R.; Gabriel, Andreas; Huang, Iona Yuelu; Kumwenda, Ian; Mark, Tyler; Meyer-Aurich, Andreas; Milics, Gabor; Olagunju, Kehinde Oluseyi; Pedersen, Søren Marcus; Shockley, Jordan M.; and Rose, David, "Lessons to Be Learned in Adoption of Autonomous Equipment for Field Crops" (2021). Agricultural Economics Faculty Publications. 27.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/agecon_facpub/27
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy.
© 2021 The Authors
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.