The investment into robotics is thought to only change the daily job of employees. It does not necessarily change how many jobs there are, but it does change the tasks that need to be completed. Generally speaking, finding qualified long-term employees to commit to milking cows twice a day for 365 days of the year is challenging, as the job becomes your way of life. It’s a big commitment and is definitely not for everyone.
Features that we can appreciate are that the robotics are able to efficiently track animal health to ensure that cows are able to produce quality milk, and they allow farmers to focus on other areas of farming.
Alberta’s dairy farmers see innovation in a positive way. More jobs are created as it becomes more of an industry standard to keep up. There will have to be more companies maintaining the standards to create robotics, salespeople and trainers who can best explain the advantages of the robot, and technicians whose expertise is in robotics to be able to come to the farm in the wee hours of the morning to repair it if something happens to go wrong.