The Effects of Automation and Robots in the Food Industry with Sam Korus

We are joined by our very own automation, energy, and space analyst, Sam Korus. Our topic of conversation is automation in the food industry and how robotics “in front and back of house” might change the industry. A simple reaction to more automated jobs is that it decreases the demand for human roles. However, Sam explains how further automation can actually stimulate human employment through price drops and demand increases. We chat about what sorts of roles can be fulfilled by robots currently and the types of services that are already in place in certain locations. Sam quickly explains how the predicted job increase could work and shares with us his research findings for automation in the food industry. Sam will talk about collaborative robots, use cases coming out of China, and more.              Key Points From This Episode: Why more automation and robots could actually increase job numbers. Obvious options for automation in the food industry. An overview of the predicted results of higher automation. The statistical growth we could see in the US food industry. Collaborative robots and “back of house” use cases.   Tweetables: “We wanted to kind of tackle this in a quantitative way, to show, you could have robotics enter an industry and create growth in that industry without destroying jobs.” — @skorusARK [0:01:31] “When we’re looking at it, we say that if the price elasticity of demand is greater than productivity improvements, then that should create jobs.” — @skorusARK [0:02:09]