I get your point, but these seedling flats can be expensive. Depending on the plant and the chance of it dying, it sometimes is as expensive to buy these as it would be to just buy the tomato/pepper/beans several month later. I’ve had $10-$20 of strawberry plants yield a single fruit. If automation drives the cost of these down, it probably makes small-scale gardening economical or even a feasible part-time job for thousands of hobbyist gardeners, either saving grocery money or generating income. It also may mean that this company was able to expand to twice its capacity while only hiring 20% more staff. If their lower costs actually grew their market, it wouldn’t necessarily cut the number of people working in that sector either. Cheaper seedlings means fewer people planting the seeds themselves in their basements, and more people buying these instead of just letting the weeds take over their gardens. The net benefit of automation to jobs/income/food independence could be huge.
1 Like
