Poinsettia plants growing under computer controlled conditions in Kent, England Andrew Errington/Getty

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The SPREAD vegetable farm, currently under construction on a science park about 25km outside Kyoto, Japan, will occupy 4,400m2 - all enclosed in a vast, warehouse-like building.



Inside, under LED lights, shelves will rise to the ceiling, each one a soil bed full of lettuces. The workforce will move seedlings, feed plants and pick 30,000 lettuce heads every day.



The striking thing, besides the scale of the operation, is that none of those workers will be human: people will plant the seeds, but after that, robots will tend the crops, control the temperature, humidity, light and CO2, and sterilise the water supply.



This is not a vision of agriculture in the distant future: SPREAD's "controlled-environment farm" will begin shipping lettuce in 2017.



To feed a world population forecast to hit 9.6 billion by 2050, global food production must increase by 70 per cent. Our planet's finite nature of land is the most obvious barrier to that, but there's also a serious rural labour shortage; across the world, people are moving from the countryside to towns and cities. By 2017, it's estimated that even less-developed countries will have majority urban populations. In the UK, a 2013 government report put the average age of farmer at 59.



Much land is already "precision farmed" - monitored by sensors, data-analysis and satellite mapping, and cultivated with machines that use that data and GPS technology to plant, spray and harvest more efficiently. Driverless tractors are already in use in Europe and the US, but at John Deere - the agricultural machinery manufacturer - the talk is of sensors and the internet of things enabling whole farms to run almost entirely unmanned.



The application of fertiliser, for example, will be carried out not by large tractor-like machines whose weight increases soil compaction, but by fleets of drones. And forget broad use of dangerous herbicides - weed-recognition software could enable robotic devices to travel fields applying a laser, or single dots of chemicals directly to the offending plant. A prototype robo-weeder is currently being built at Harper Adams University, a specialist provider of agricultural education, in Shropshire.



Livestock handling is also being automated. Robotic milkers - the first robots to make inroads on farms - are now affordable to even small-scale producers, and are able to imitate the milking action of a human. Dairymaster's MooMonitor sensors detect when a cow is in heat and ready for insemination, and alerts the farmer via text message. Irish shepherd Paul Brennan, of Carlow, uses a drone to replace sheepdogs for round-ups.


Drones are used to plant, weed and water food like lettuces with pinpoint accuracy David Doran

Of course, some of this farming technology will be redundant if lab-grown meat becomes a more affordable and appealing option. With Tel Aviv's Modern Agriculture Foundation currently developing a process for growing chicken breast from stem cells that's indistinguishable from the real thing, that "if" may soon become a "when".



Does all this mean that our countryside will become depopulated and tended only by droids, much like the Lars' family farm on Tatooine? Simon Blackstone, head of engineering at Harper Adams, believes there will still be plenty of employment for humans as "Agricultural robots will replace semi-skilled drivers, but many new, highly skilled robot engineers will be needed."



And according to Ian Bell, chief executive of the Addington Fund, which supports farming families struggling to adapt to changing conditions, there could even be new opportunities for those with old-fashioned and traditional skills.



"The more mechanised farming becomes, the more urbanites fetishise traditional farming and country living," Bell says. "We're already seeing a growing market of wealthy rural incomers willing to pay a premium for craftsmanship and artisanally produced foods. If you can work out how to use tech to minimise overheads while providing services in that area, you can make a lot more money than you will growing lettuce."