China has high hopes for automated farm

Robot help: China is launching a seven-year autonomous agriculture pilot programme in Jiangsu province in efforts to bring unproductive farm lands into the information age. — Reuters

The country has to deal with issues of skills and reduced jobs with the use of advanced technologies

AS RICH countries welcome autonomous cars, trucks and boats onto their roads and waterways, the developing world is grappling with a humbler revolution: automated farming. What was once the world's most labour-intensive profession may be soon run by smartphones. And that could change agriculture as profoundly as mechanisation did last century.