Agriculture is one of the main driving forces behind New Zealand’s economy. Whether it is for dairy or the cultivation of the golden kiwifruit large chunks of land are used in this industry, however, it does have huge impacts on both the biodiversity and health of our ecosystem. A large amount of fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides are used "immunize" large chunks of the land but this is often to the detriment of nearby waterways and ecosystems. Runoff from these areas often end up in our waterways and go on to pollute both our local fauna and the ocean at large. This contributes to the loss of wildlife, the development of bacterial strains and the pollution of Millenial reserves. As a way to combat this and raise awareness on the severity of this issue, we started an initiative to show the alternative strategies people can employ to, in the future, use more sustainable methods. This initiative was to build a FarmBot a complicately off-grid independent robot that waters, weeds, and seeds a 3x1.5m patch of land. The idea behind this robot is that instead of looking at large scale farming with requiring large amounts of chemicals to remain commercially viable companies can change to focusing on small plots of land and maximizing their profit by having rigorous care for their vegetables. This is what the FarmBot offers. At this moment in time, all the machinery has been built and the robot awaits programming by the robotics team. Ultimately we hope that this small example of sustainable alternatives will inspire people to think about the possibilities available to us and the initiatives we could sponsor and develop in the future as a stellar example of innovative thinking.
- Alizee Fisher
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