Robots are being used to commercially farm more than 405,000 hectares of Australian farmland, with growers seeing them as the answer to workforce shortages.
The Bundaberg region, about 400 kilometres north of Brisbane, is known as the fruit bowl capital of Australia and produces one quarter of the nation’s fresh produce.
Growers there are investing in autonomous vehicles that can be programmed to slash and spray herbicides more efficiently.
Macadamia Farm Management agronomist Theunis Smit said his workplace was one of the first farms to bring in autonomous vehicles.
“We’ve been running the prototypes for quite a while,” Mr Smit said.
Labour shortages and extreme weather have accelerated the company’s investment in the vehicles in recent months.
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