Every year, experienced traditional greenhouse managers and agricultural engineers reach retirement. The rapidly growing vertical farming industry has struggled to recruit specialized horticultural biochemists and automation software engineers, especially as indoor farms rely on complex, AI-driven nutrient delivery systems and climate control. Job roles are shifting from traditional manual seeding and harvesting to managing robotic automation systems and data-driven crop optimization. However, the adoption of automated harvesting arms and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) can mitigate some of these labor shortages. By handing over repetitive, physically demanding harvesting tasks to robotic systems, human workers can focus on high-level system calibration and genetic crop optimization in sterile, climate-controlled laboratory environments.
Using the information in Extract C and your economic knowledge, examine two factors which might influence the supply of labour in the vertical farming and automated agriculture sector.
