Legal consequences of autonomous farming

With the increasing world population placing greater and greater pressure on food production, the issue of food security is high on the world agenda. In the search for strategies to address this looming crisis, attention is being drawn to the power of new digital and autonomous technologies to increase agricultural productivity: “the next leg of food production growth will come from greater precision in agriculture, with advances in hardware, software and computing power converging with technologies like self-driving tractors and drones to help farmers feed humanity's next century. (Revich, 2015) Along with the growth in precision farming, there has been the increasing automation of processes and farm machinery. Goldman Sachs said it sees a $240-billion market for automation on the farm and the predicted $45-billion market for small driverless tractors alone is evidence of this. (Revich, 2015) The potential economic impact that these new autonomous technologies will have in Australian agriculture has not gone unnoticed (Perrett, 2017) however to date there has been little attention paid to the potential legal consequences of autonomous farming. The aim of this paper is to do just that: to highlight the potential legal consequences of the introduction of autonomous machines and technologies into Australian agriculture. As autonomous and robotic equipment use increases so too will the rate of incidents or accidents involving such autonomous and robotic equipment. We will focus on the potential legal issues that may arise where an autonomous farming machinery causes an incident or accident that results in legal action for compensation for personal injury and/or property damage and discuss how the current laws in Australia are likely to respond. Legal issues relating to potential criminal liability; workers compensation and specifically the CASA regulations around the use of drones claims are beyond the scope of this paper. While more transparency and equity in the contractual provisions that are governing liabilities for these new technologies will improve understanding in the sector of the legal consequences, we conclude by suggesting that is some cases the strength of the Australia’s consumer laws may give some confidence of compensation to those who suffer harm caused by autonomous farming equipment. However, as is happening in other countries, we argue it is time for a review of the current schemes of compensation available for loss or injuries caused by autonomous farm machinery, keeping in mind those who are using these technologies are ultimately contributing to a food secure future.Arts, Education & Law Group, Griffith Law SchoolFull Tex