I am not saying we should expect people to grow their own food, and I am very supportive of small farmers. but i do think we should first question whether it's logical to wholeheartedly adopt a new technology before considering the strings attached to this technology and the consequences.
you mentioned spraying crops and commercial scale, and that is why i questioned this tech. why that is even needed in farming when chemicals are so dangerous to consumers and alternative means are available. will this tech be good for a few corporate farmers yet drive small organic farmers out because they wont be able to replicate the crop numbers?
should we not plan for misplaced workers? bank tellers and travel advisers can find jobs in a city a lot more easily because of transferable skills and retraining programs. migrant farm workers and small farm owners in the country, not so much. but not many people consider that.
as for drastically improving our standards of living, i disagree. it may seem like we have "better" because we have more food choice and better access. but our food prices, food quality and our general understanding of nutrition is worse due to our lifestyle - we are no longer connected to producing food, and take it for granted. in a dystopian scenario, we would be screwed. is that wise?
automated farming might be good on a small scale IF its affordable and diversified, but any large scale farming would require an investment small farmers might not be able to compete with. unless they had the resources or programs to compete. commercial farmers, the people selling this new tech, support the adoption of GMOs. their objective is fair: feed the burgeoning world population with as little effort as possible. but its their methods I question.
if we shift the manufacturing process out of the hands of the many into the few, who does it help? if a box of brand name prepared grain mix is $3 in the store but only 50c raw, but i cant buy any bulk grain to cook myself because its not offered for sale because it doesn't make enough profit, how is that better?
i don't consider it an advantage when people have to pay a markup because food goes through three middlemen to get to market.
...not everyone has the land to grow their food, not everyone has the time or money, not everyone knows how...
i consider this part of the problem. why dont we have the land, why dont we have the money if our lives are so much improved? perception is a funny thing, polls and news tell us what to think. and we accept and accept because we dont know how to fight what is pushed onto us without having time to consider how this will change our lives.