The Blog post contains the following IELTS Reading Questions:
- IELTS reading sentence completion
- IELTS reading yes/no/not given.
Stay informed and prepared for success – Explore our comprehensive Reading Test Info page to get valuable insights, exam format details, and expert tips for mastering the IELTS Reading section.
IELTS reading passage – The rise of the agribots
The rise of the agribots
Remember the farmers that helped fill your grocery basket the next time you’re at the supermarket checkout since life is tough for them right now. This, in turn, means higher grocery expenditures for consumers and more misery for millions of people in nations where food scarcity is a matter of life and death. Worse, projections indicate that by 2050, the globe will require twice as much food. Farmers must squeeze more out of the land while also addressing the need to reduce their effect on the soil, rivers, and environment. All of this requires rethinking agriculture and pushing automation to a whole new level. Precision will be essential for the new model farms of the future. Why cover an entire field with chemicals when you can spray them only where they are needed? Each plant could receive just the proper quantity of everything, no more or less, reducing chemical use while increasing yields in a single step. Yet, this is easier said than done; the largest farms in Europe and the United States can span thousands of acres. That is why precise farming requires automation. Precision farming, according to agricultural engineers, requires robot farmers.
One day, we may witness fields with ‘agribots’ (agricultural robots) that can recognize individual seedlings and stimulate them with fertilizer drips. Other devices would recognize troublesome weeds from crops and destroy them with high-powered laser blasts or a chemical microdot. These devices will also be able to recognize and gather various types of crops. Farming has already become an industrial-scale enterprise in much of the world after more than a century of mechanization, with cereal farms being the most intensively mechanized.
Nevertheless, a number of other crops, including oranges and tomatoes meant for processing, are also picked mechanically, albeit to a lower extent. Yet, the next generation of self-driving agricultural gear is already in operation. You probably didn’t notice since these robots are camouflaged as tractors. Many self-steer, utilize GPS to travel a field, and can even ‘speak’ to their equipment, such as a plough or sprayer. And the implements can respond by warning the tractor that it is traveling too quickly or that it should go to the left. This type of communication is being explored in other agricultural vehicles as well. A new technology, for example, allows a combine harvester to transmit a call to a tractor-trailer driver, who can then unload the grain as needed.
Nonetheless, when completely autonomous systems hit the road, they won’t look like tractors. Because of their massive size and weight, today’s agricultural tractors have substantial drawbacks: they compress the soil, limiting porosity and eliminating beneficial life, resulting in poor crop growth. Simon Blackmore, an agricultural technology researcher at Harper Adams University College in England, believes fleets of lightweight autonomous robots have the ability to tackle this problem and that substituting raw force with accuracy is critical. ‘A seed requires only one cubic centimeter of soil to flourish. We can cultivate with very little energy and the plants will still develop wonderfully. According to Eldert van Henten, a robotics researcher at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, there is another reason why automation may be the way forward. ‘As the population grows and has to be fed, a progressively declining number of individuals are prepared to work in agriculture,’ he observes. Other academics, like Linda Calvin, an economist at the United States Department of Agriculture, and Philip Martin at the University of California, Davis, have researched mechanization patterns to forecast how American farms would perform in the future. Calvin and Martin have previously noticed how increased labor costs have resulted in the development of labor-saving farm technologies, citing the raisin sector as one example. A record harvest in 2000 drove down prices, and with earnings constrained, farmers sought a solution. With labor being one of their major expenditures — 42 percent of production expenses on US fields on average — they began employing a mechanized harvester modified from a winemaker’s equipment. By 2007, about half of California’s raisins were machine picked, and a 50,000-person labor force had decreased to 30,000.
In addition to having an influence on the employment sector, the broad adoption of agribots may result in changes at the supermarket. According to Lewis Holloway, an agricultural researcher at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom, robotic milking is expected to alter the genetics of dairy herds as producers choose ‘robot-friendly’ cows with udder form and even attitudes suitable to automated milking. Similarly, he believes that agribots might affect which fruit and vegetable types reach the market, because farmers may choose to plant those with, for instance, leaf forms that are simpler for their robots to distinguish from weeds. These devices will very certainly change the landscape as well. According to Salah Sukkarieh, a robotics researcher at the Australian Center for Field Robotics in Sydney, the true tipping point for robot agriculture will occur when farms are planned with agribots in mind. This might mean that crops are planted in grids rather than rows, and fruit trees are trimmed into two-dimensional patterns to make harvesting easier. This extraterrestrial environment nurtured by robots, he argues, is still a long way off, but it will happen.
Unlock your full potential in the IELTS Reading section – Visit our IELTS Reading Practice Question Answer page now!
Recommended Questions:
Renewable Energy IELTS Reading Question with Answer
Questions
Questions 1-4
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage? In boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
- Farmers’ reliance on chemicals is anticipated to expand in the future.
- Precision farming may be difficult to implement on farms in Europe and the United States.
- Governments should do more to make food more inexpensive in general.
- Farmers must decrease the environmental damage they do.
Want to excel in identifying the writer’s views and claims? Click here to explore our in-depth guide on how to accurately determine Yes, No, or Not Given in the IELTS Reading section.
Questions 5-8
Complete the sentences below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
5. To get rid of undesirable plants, some machines will use chemicals or ___________.
6. Agribots will provide ____________ to young plants in the future.
7. _____________ amongst machinery such as tractors is increasing farming efficiency.
8. The majority of agricultural machinery is presently used in the production of ____________.
Enhance your sentence completion skills in the IELTS Reading section. Click here to access our comprehensive guide and learn effective strategies for filling in missing words or phrases in sentences.
Questions 9-13
Look at the following researchers (Questions 9-13) and the list of statements below. Match each researcher with the correct statement, A-H.
9. Simon Blackmore – _____
10. Eldert van Henten – _____
11. Linda Calvin and Philip Martin – _____
12. Lewis Holloway – _____
13. Salah Sukkarieh – _____
List of Findings
- The environmental benefits of automation are limited.
- Modern machinery may necessitate a larger investment than some farmers can afford.
- Economic reasons are frequently the driving force behind equipment development.
- The farming business is experiencing a labor deficit.
- We must evaluate the impact of rising automation on jobs.
- The look of farmland will alter as farming gets increasingly mechanized.
- The usage of automation may have an effect on the evolution of specific animal and plant species.
- We need machines of the future, not more powerful ones.
Unlock your full potential in the IELTS Reading section – Visit our IELTS Reading Practice Question Answer page now!
Recommended Questions:
Renewable Energy IELTS Reading Question with Answer
The rise of the agribots reading answers
1. Answer: No
2. Answer: Not given
3. Answer: Not given
4. Answer: Yes
5. Answer: Lasers
6. Answer: Fertilizer
7. Answer: Communication
8. Answer: Cereals
9. Answer: H
10. Answer: D
11. Answer: C
12. Answer: G
13. Answer: F
We hope you found this post useful in helping you to study for the IELTS Test. If you have any questions please let us know in the comments below or on the Facebook page.
The best way to keep up to date with posts like this is to like us on Facebook, then follow us on Instagram and Pinterest. If you need help preparing for the IELTS Test, join the IELTS Achieve Academy and see how we can assist you to achieve your desired band score. We offer an essay correction service, mock exams and online courses.
