The Farm Revolution

"They eat when they want, lie down when they want and feed when they want."
"And a happier cow produces more milk and better milk."
Christine Grady, general manager, Rivendale Farms

"You come away with a tremendous respect for farmers, and that the work is hard and complex."
"The key is getting the right mix of art and science."
Thomas Tull, entrepreneur, tech ventures investor, film producer

Pam Panchak/Post-Gazette

Just outside Bulger, Pennsylvania the 150 cows at Rivendale Farms are fitted with collars to monitor their movement, eating and rumination patterns and when they are milked there is no human hand involved, but rather robotic machines, not particularly new in itself, but upgraded, modernized, fully automatic. The milking machines used at the farm come with a steep price tag: $200,000 for each. They're part of the process, alongside the automated feeding system, without which the milking barn at this farm would have at least five workers, not the one currently employed there to oversee production.

Rivendale Farm is part of a new movement in farming, a similar move seen in all other methods of production where high-tech equipment is introduced and fewer human hands are required. Some deplore this, others celebrate it as the wave of the future. In some European countries up to thirty percent of cows are machine-milked; in the U.S. the share is still roughly two percent, according to Mathew Haan of Pennsylvania State University. The differential can be explained by programs supporting milk prices in Europe along with higher labour costs which combined encourage automation investment.

Investment is the word. In point of fact Rivendale Farm is an investment as much as an experiment for its owner, a wealthy man who has placed several million of his billions into modernizing Rivendale. Thomas Tull envisions his farm becoming totally self-sustained by 2020. What this investor and farm owner foresees for its future, experts recognize as a trend among small farmers purposing to raise healthy food and livestock with less reliance on fertilizer, fossil fuel and processed feed.

Rivendale Farms uses new technology in its operations, including a feed robot for its cows.   Credit Ross Mantle for The New York Times

Farms in the U.S. have joined another trend; consolidation, where smaller farms have been bought out and combined to make for bigger and sometimes very large acreage devoted to farm production on steroids, as it were. Rivendale's pasture land, crops and woods take up 70 hectares where the average size farm in the U.S. now being 180 hectares with over half of the agricultural value produced by a limited fraction of very large farms, averaging 1,080 hectares. These very large farms are highly mechanized; smaller farms are now joining that trend in their own way.

Rivendale's dairy barn is void of people, devoted only to the presence of its cows. In place of farm workers in the dairy farm there is the automated feed system and three robotic milking machines. Milked four times daily compared with the conventional twice a day when milking is done by hand, the Jersey cows have readily adjusted to the difference, producing 14 percent more milk than the breed's average production, and with a higher protein and butterfat content.

Close by the dairy barn is a greenhouse where kale, arugula and baby carrots thrive by automation where temperature, humidity and sunlight exposure are controlled by sensors and retractable metallic screens. Small robots are in the planning stages to roam about the three hectares of vegetable crops for the purpose of plucking weeds and identifying the presence of disease. Drones, satellite imagery, soil sensors and supercomputers are all deployed to assist in food production now, mostly at big industrial farms, but they're moving increasingly into small farm production.

The milk, eggs and produce from Rivendale Farms, which spans 175 acres, are sold to selected local restaurants and hotels.    CreditRoss Mantle for The New York Times