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The Current Transcript for June 30, 2016

Host: Mike Finnerty

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

SOUNDCLIP

The Korean authorities, we were 100 percent under their control but we managed to outwit them. Their attempts at 100 percent control became a part of the story.

MIKE FINNERTY: How can a film where the North Korean authorities wrote the script, set up the scenes, chose the main subjects, and even directed them end up making the country's leaders so upset they're now doing everything they can to suppress it? The answer to that question is clear after even the first few frames. Something exquisitely candid emerges in Under the Sun in the cutaways and from the moments before and after the scripted scenes take place. Today, the director, Vitaly Mansky on how he outwitted the North Koreans but has still had to fight to have his film shown even in liberal New York. And in half

an hour:

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You know you still need a good work ethic on a dairy farm and he said whether the cows are milked automatically or not, there are always jobs to do.

MF: How the rise of robo-farms could revolutionize the lives of farmers and even the entire agricultural industry. I’m Mike Finnerty, welcome to the summer edition of The Current.

North Korea documentary 'Under the Sun' reveals inner workings of propaganda machine

Guests: Vitaly Mansky

MIKE FINNERTY: I'm Mike Finnerty and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[soft piano music]

No one outside is allowed to see this earthly paradise. Envy us, we saw it and we'll show it to you, the real North Korean in the rays of the sun. The sun, which for Koreans symbolizes the great Kim Il Sung.

In this film we spend one year with a girl and her classmates, parents, and their collaborators. The girl, who in front of our eyes, becomes a part of the system, the system becomes co-author of our real film.

MF: That's the trailer for the controversial new documentary, Under the Sun. The film's Russian director initially had the backing of North Korea with the understanding that the North Korean authorities had complete control over production and the script. But even under severe censorship, the film's crew managed to expose the North Korean propaganda machine. They left the camera running while each shot was set up thereby documenting every detailed instruction of where people should be, what they should do and say, and how to react to each other. The crew then smuggled out the extended footage. North Korea is not happy about it. The documentary has become the target of an international campaign of suppression. North Korean officials have asked Russia to destroy it and punish the film's director, and the controversy extended to the United States when the Museum of Modern Art in New York pulled the documentary from a film festival. It has since apologized. Vitaly Mansky is the director of Under the Sun. He joins me from New York and he spoke with me through translation. Here's that conversation. Vitaly Mansky, hello.

VITALY MANSKY: Hi Mike.

MF: Let's talk about the film which gives just an extraordinarily candid look at the North Korean state and the propaganda machine. Was that the original idea behind the documentary?

VITALY MANSKY: I have to admit that I wanted to do a different film but this idea was not destined to be realized for many reasons. I believe that the film that I wanted to do originally would have been more powerful, but after all the film we have made is no less powerful or needed for the viewer. During the years of Nazi Germany, the documentary film director, Leni Riefenstahl made a documentary, The Power of Will. Today this film is a very powerful document which helps to understand the criminal nature of Nazi ideology and of the Nazi regime, so my objective was to make a movie of the same sort but the North Korean officials didn't allow us to implement the original idea. So, we walked a different path and this is how our film, Under the Sun was born.

MF: So in the end, how much of the film was conceived by North Korean officials?

VITALY MANSKY: The Korean authorities, we were 100 percent under their control but we managed to outwit them and as a result I think about 60 or 70 percent of what we were doing, they were not able to control, but on the other hand their attempt of 100 percent control became a part of the story. One of the building bricks of the story—

MF: I suppose it's like a film in a way, in a sense a film within a film, and that film within a film had almost complete control from the North Koreans. They wrote the script, chose the principals, and even did the directing.

VITALY MANSKY: They were not directing the film, they were directing life. It is some sort of Truman Show, like the movie, which the entire state turns out to be and in its essence, our film is about this.

MF: That the North Koreans are notoriously suspicious of foreigners, Vitaly, I wonder why it was you, a Russian national, a foreigner come in and have so much access to the country and to everything that you were able to shoot.

VITALY MANSKY: Well, exactly the fact that I represented Russia, helped me film in North Korea. The thing is that the North Korea of today has only two partners in the world: China and Russia. Partially, my background as a documentary film director helped me. They knew that I made a film about Putin and the Kremlin so naturally I have not mentioned other films I made but to get more information about me, the North Korean authorities were not able because they are closed not only from the inside, but also from the outside. For example, they couldn't even see my Facebook page and they couldn't know who was visiting them.

MF: What was it like filming? You spent quite a lot of time there. What was it like filming in the country, what sort of restrictions were you under?

VITALY MANSKY: So it's a very complex question and radio listeners in Canada can hardly imagine what kind of restrictions are imposed on people in North Korea. The scale of these restrictions, nothing is permitted. If you are able to comprehend what that means, nothing is permitted, than that's what North Korea is. You know, through my career I have filmed practically everywhere, including places where a director's work is restricted. In the army, in prison, in the Kremlin, I shoot films about presidents, but nothing in my professional practice compares to the restrictions which were imposed in North Korea.

MF: You were in a sense told what you could film and many, many things were off limits, but did they, in reviewing your film, realize that you were rolling in the periods before the shot would start; a shot that they thought was intended for the final cut that would roll and did they know about the cutaways that you were taking, sometimes of people looking bored or yawning, or crying, or that sort of thing?

VITALY MANSKY: Every day, we were required to submit the footage for their control, and so they could destroy anything that was unsatisfactory to the censors. But before we submitted that footage to them, every day we copied and deleted parts which could dissatisfy them or cause concerns. Therefore, they didn't really know what we were in fact filming and if they would have discovered it, they would have stopped our work immediately. In the best case scenario, we would have been deported.

MF: You focused on one family, a young couple and their daughter, 12-year-old Zin-mi. How did that family become the focus of the film?

VITALY MANSKY: During the first research trip, when I was just getting acquainted with things and exploring, the North Koreans already had submitted the script and in the script, it was an eight-year-old girl, so I applied the maximum effort to be able to choose the girl, to cast the girl I would want to film. So, I was introduced to five girls. It was a very, very short meeting, maximum ten minutes, and I was able to ask them a couple of questions and choose the girl. It became Zin-mi and her parents but the four other girls who I had not selected stayed in the film as Zin-mi’s friends.

MF: How much of the family was real and how much of it was cast or created?

VITALY MANSKY: My answer is in the area of guessing because we don't have very [indecipherable] facts. Our guess is that this apartment is not their apartment. I have a suspicion that the majority of families in North Korea don't even live together because I saw that women worked and lived at factories, children go to school and live at some sort of boarding school, where men live, I don't know. I have never seen it and have never seen a family walking down the street, a mother, father and a child. Never. Only our family was walking down the streets together for filming.

MF: Were they a real family, genuinely the mother, father and the daughter?

VITALY MANSKY: The film opens with pictures from their family album and that allows me to assume that this is her real parents. I would underline not a real family, but real parents.

MF: Did they seem to love each other? Did they seem to have genuine affection for each other?

VITALY MANSKY: Yes, I saw a very close and warm relationship between the father and the girl, but I didn't see this type of relationship between the child and the mother, and I didn't see the relation of any close relationship between the mother and the father.

MF: Is it possible the mother wasn't really the mother?

VITALY MANSKY: No, I think this was her mother but I had a feeling that the mother lives separately from the father and the girl and they don't see each other often, but this is my guess and my suspicion since we have never been given any factual information.

MF: As you were filming, and I'm sure it was a long process, I wonder whether you realized how exquisite the candid moments were of cutaways of for instance, people being caught in an unguarded moment reacting sometimes with boredom, or I mean there's even a shot I think in the factory where you sense looking at a factory worker that there might even be a flash of exasperation, and there are moments where for instance, a General speaking loses his train of thought and then asks what should I be saying next. Did you realize those moments when you were shooting them that they were going to be golden moments in the film?

VITALY MANSKY: Yes, of course. When on the third or fourth day of the filming we understood that there was no chance for us to get through to reality, we began to feel that such reconstruction of the reality is the manifestation of reality of life; of this society.

MF: What were for you, the moments that you thought constituted those specks of gold?

VITALY MANSKY: It's impossible to single out one particular moment because 24-hours a day, you exist in this world of absolute fake-ness and you are unable to single out something because it's all fake.

MF: Can I single out one? It obviously struck you as well because it plays such an important part in the film and it's Zin-mi’s tears. There is one point where she begins to tear up in dance class and there's a point again at the end of the film where she's with the family and she tears up and that obviously struck you. I wonder whether you could tell us what that was like in the moment.

VITALY MANSKY: I must tell you that after we filmed that final episode, by the way it was a pure miracle, I was so emotionally shaken that it took me a few hours to come back to normal so I could continue the work. In general, during our stay in North Korea, there were so many moments and circumstances which were hard to express through film. Things like, for example, the cold. I mean how cold it was inside of the building; it's impossible to transmit via film, or at least, I'm lacking such talent. And there were many other things which are not in the film that overwhelmed us or you know, sometime during our second week in North Korea, I began to realize that you don't see even once, an [indecipherable] on the street, or a cat in the street, or a dog, or a bird. You don't start to understand that immediately, but when eventually you come to realize that all this is absent from daily life, you become really shocked.

MF: Vitaly, when Zin-mi was crying, it seemed, from my perspective watching it, that the people, whether they were actors or not, I mean the dance teacher obviously knew something about dance, but she seemed to be quite gentle with her. Were they gentle with her when she cried, when she, I guess, went off script and was unable to continue?

VITALY MANSKY: I can't comment on what I don't understand completely. Of course, the dance teacher was well aware that she was felt, but I can say that she was gentle to Zin-mi, only because she knew that they were filmed. One thing I know for sure, this particular dance teacher doesn't work at that school. She was, so to speak, imported from some theatre, or maybe a ballet school, to be there for the film.

MF: Do you know what happened to Zin-mi, the girl who was such a big part of the film? Because the film is so controversial from the North Korean point of view, is she okay? Was she punished in any way for unwittingly being a part of the film in the way that the North Koreans wouldn’t have wished?

VITALY MANSKY: After the film opened in the cinema theatres in South Korea, after the President of South Korea saw it and made public comments with concerns about the fate of this girl, Zin-mi, the North Korean authorities turned her into the element of propaganda and she is now the most famous child in North Korea. She presented flowers to Kim Jong-un, the leader of the nation, and now most likely, she is the most well-known child of this country.

MF: So are you feeling relieved? How are you feeling then about what's become of her and her future within North Korea?

VITALY MANSKY: In the full version of the script, which we couldn't implement, such developments in the fate of this girl have been considered. But I can tell you that it will always be a knife in my heart on account of every person in North Korea because this is an absolute tragedy of the entire nation, and this is the most criminal regime which currently exists on the planet Earth. My heart is in pain for every person who currently lives in North Korea.

MF: What has the reaction from the North Koreans been to your documentary?

VITALY MANSKY: It's interesting that the North Korean officials have never seen what we actually were filming or know the final cut of the film. Just before the premier of the film, even though they have never seen it, they sent a diplomatic note to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation accusing us of anti-North Korean propaganda; calling us facilitators of American imperialism and demanded to destroy the film. I will repeat, they have done so without actually seeing the film.

MF: Are you concerned they may target you?

VITALY MANSKY: Well, I don't exclude it.

MF: What might that look like if they did?

VITALY MANSKY: I don't have an answer on this matter.

MF: Do you think that Russian officials, your own country, do you think that they will protect you or are they as upset as the North Koreans?

VITALY MANSKY: The Russian side has taken the stand of North Korea and I should tell you that I don't live in Russia as of now.

MF: You have shot in other Communist states and you shot, as you mentioned, in the Kremlin, other places where it's very sensitive and I just wonder in terms of points of comparison, how different was it from anything you had done before to film this film in North Korea?

VITALY MANSKY: No, none of my professional and human experience can be compared to what I encountered and felt in North Korea, and I think you can't compare North Korea with anything, even with my understanding about the most terrible time in the Soviet Union’s history period under Stalin, and I would suggest that even Stalin’s Soviet Union was more a humane society than what is going on in North Korea today.

MF: What will be the most lingering image of all of the things you saw and recorded in North Korea?

VITALY MANSKY: You have the feeling as though you are on the other side of life and death. You have the feeling as if you’re beyond life; beyond the realm of life, and you have the feeling that you are in the land of zombies.

MF: Do you think that one day your film, Under the Sun might actually be shown in North Korea?

VITALY MANSKY: Of course it will happen, but we won't be around to see that.

MF: What about in Russia?

VITALY MANSKY: In Russia, yes we will be showing it one way or another. But of course, Russia currently is not at its best stage of development. Fortunately Russia is nowhere near what North Korea is now.

MF: Vitaly Mansky, thank you very much for speaking to us.

VITALY MANSKY: Thank you.

MF: The film is called Under the Sun. Vitaly Mansky is the director and he was in New York City. Thanks to interpreter Regina Kozakova in New York and to Igor Malakhov in Toronto for his assistance with translation and the voiceover. I'm Mike Finnerty and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

ENCORE: Cows that milk themselves? Farmers turn to high-tech for help

Guests: Julian Uzielli

MF: Hello. I’m Mike Finnerty and you’re listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MF: Coming up: When robots invade the pastoral life of the family farm.

SOUNDCLIP

[Old timey music playing]

Patty Garmin lives on a small farm near a large city. She and her dog Ginger are friends of all the animals. Patty’s mother has taught her to feed the chickens and collect the eggs. Here’s one, another, [rooster crows] and another. Look at the fine large eggs in Patty's pail.

MF: A quaint reminder of a bygone era. Not many farmers still collect eggs in a pail. Instead, the world of agriculture has become increasingly mechanized, and next year the world’s first robotic farm is set to open in Japan. The Current`s Julian Uzielli looked into the world of high-tech farms and shared his findings with Anna Maria in April. Here’s their conversation.

AMT: So, a robotic farm. What does that actually mean?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Just what it sounds like. Basically, almost all the tasks on this farm are going to be carried out by robots.

AMT: What are we talking about here? Little R2-D2 type robots?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Well not exactly, probably with a bit less personality, but they would be more functional. Think more conveyor belts and robotic arms.

AMT: Okay, tell me more.

JULIAN UZIELLI: So, the company that's doing this is called Spread, and they're based in Kyoto, Japan. And what they're opening is really more of a factory than a farm. It's all indoors and apart from a staff of about 25 people, who will plant the seeds, every other task on this farm will be carried out by robots.

AMT: Like what?

JULIAN UZIELLI: So, that's transplanting the plants into larger containers as they grow, watering them, trimming them, harvesting, and packaging at the end of the process.

AMT: What will they be farming?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Lettuce.

AMT: How much lettuce are we talking about?

JULIAN UZIELLI: The company claims that with this system they'll be able to harvest 30,000 heads of lettuce every day.

AMT: How does that compare to what a typical lettuce farm might do?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Well, this company already has another factory run by humans and that factory is able to produce 21,000 heads of lettuce per day.

AMT: So the thinking is robots can not only work faster, but can work longer hours?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Exactly, and the company insists they'll be able to ramp that production up over time so that 30,000 heads of lettuce is just a starting point. I spoke to the company's global marketing manager about this. His name is J.J. Price, and he said his company believes a robotic farm could start to address some global problems.

SOUNDCLIP

Such as increasing the food supply, improving food distribution, reducing food mileage and just having an overall more effective way to grow produce using less inputs but increasing overall production.

AMT: Help me through this, Julian. I'm trying to get a picture of what this farm will actually look like?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Well, it hasn’t opened yet. I asked J.J. Price to describe what it'll look like once the factory is up and running. Now he wouldn't release too many details, because a lot of this information is proprietary, but he did give me a visual to think about.

AMT: I'm ready.

JULIAN UZIELLI: So, imagine this, the factory is essentially a big warehouse, lined with racks of lettuce stacked four storeys high. They don't actually have to have floors for people to walk on because of course, it's automated. So, instead there are these giant machines that travel up and down the rows of lettuce, tending to the plants as they grow and harvest them when they're ready.

AMT: How wide spread is this technology?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Well, I started looking into that, and while it does seem this lettuce factory is going to be the first robot-run farm, the use of automated technology in agriculture is actually starting to become pretty common.

AMT: And what’s out there already?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Well, it seems there's about as many different kinds of automation as there are different kinds of agriculture because every type of farming is different. So, you've got machines that can tell when berries are ripe and then pick them faster than humans can, there are robots that can prune grape vines at vineyards, there are even attachments for tractors that can determine how much fertilizer individual plants need, then fertilize it in real time.

AMT:[laughs] I clearly need to get out of the city a little more often. How much automation are we seeing in the agricultural industry here in Canada?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Well, it's in its early stages here in Canada. You see a lot of automating of repetitive tasks, things like irrigation and packaging, but not so much in harvesting of produce yet. It’s expensive and like I said, each type of agriculture requires its own specifications. But, what is becoming common in Canada, though, is automation in the dairy sector. So to learn more about that, a couple of weeks ago I took a trip to a farm in southern Ontario.

[machinery whirring in background]

AMT: What am I hearing, Julian?

JULIAN UZIELLI: That is the sound of cows being milked in Wallenstein, Ontario, which is a small community near Kitchener-Waterloo.

SOUNDCLIP

So, we're milking 78 cows, and we have, we call them dry cows, is it 15 dry cows? Stuff that's going to get ready to calve here shortly, eh?

JULIAN UZIELLI: This is Rick Shantz. He's a fourth-generation farmer, and he runs Rickeen Farms with his wife Doreen and son, Brett and we're in his barn.

AMT: Rick and Doreen, Rickeen Farms. And the noise we are hearing there?

JULIAN UZIELLI: That is coming from their two robotic milking machines that the family uses to milk all their cows.

AMT: Milking machines have been around for a long time, so what's different about the machines they use?

JULIAN UZIELLI: They have been around a long time but they're evolving. Traditionally, the farmer has to physically connect the machine to the cow, and then the machine does the rest. But the farmer still has to be there to set everything up, they have to get up before the crack of dawn to start the whole process, but with these machines that Rick and Doreen are using, they don't have to lift a finger. They actually don't even have to be there.

AMT: Really? So what do these things look like?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Basically, there's a stall that the cow walks into and one side is open to the barn, and on the other side is a big machine with a robotic arm attached.

[mechanical whooshing of air]

JULIAN UZIELLI: So, what you're hearing right now is that robotic arm moving in under the cow’s udder and then cleaning each teat individually, before attaching four milking cups, which are connected to hoses which take the milk out of the cow into a big tank.

AMT: And how long does it take to milk the cow?

JULIAN UZIELLI: About six minutes on average and it's all monitored by a computer so the machine knows each cow it is milking at any given time because they all have this unique electronic collar that they wear, so it knows exactly how much milk each cow has already given that day, and how long it's been since she was last milked.

AMT: So, there are two machines for a herd of more than 70 cows, it must take a while to milk them all?

JULIAN UZIELLI: That's true, but like I said the farmer doesn’t actually have to be there since the machines are running 24/7, the cows can go to be milked any time of day they want. They just walk up and get in line.

AMT: They walk up and get in line?

JULIAN UZIELLI: They actually line up. It may not be an orderly line—

AMT:[laughs] It’s a cow line.

JULIAN UZIELLI: [laughs] They are cows, after all. When I was there, at least three cows were waiting their turn. As soon as one cow left the milking stall, another would walk right in. And the family told me the farmer's milk production per cow has actually increased because sometimes the cows want to be milked more than twice a day and now they can do that.

AMT: Who knew? But what if something goes wrong?

JULIAN UZIELLI: The machine will just send a notification to Rick and Doreen's smartphone.

SOUNDCLIP

One time we were down at the ACC, watching the Leaf game, eh, and I remember, did the robot call us? I know we pulled it up on our screen and we just started the robot again, and watched the end of the game and we came home again.

AMT:[laughs] The robot calls them on their phone in Toronto and says I have a problem?

JULIAN UZIELLI: It takes a lot to surprise me with a smartphone app, but I thought that was pretty cool.

AMT: You know, smartphones are handy, but I never knew they would be good for milking cows.

JULIAN UZIELLI: I mean, if we can set our home thermostat from work, it shouldn't be that surprising that we can fix a milking machine from a hockey game, right?

AMT: Of course. I should know that. What about the cows? How have they been affected by the automation?

JULIAN UZIELLI: This may surprise you, but apparently the cows are actually happier than they used to be. And as Rick pointed out that the evidence of this was all around me in the barn.

SOUNDCLIP

JULIAN UZIELLI: This may just be me, that I'm an ignorant city boy, but I don't hear any mooing.

RICK SHANTZ:[Laughs] They're not supposed to be. If cows are mooing—

DOREEN SHANTZ: That means they're content.

RICK SHANTZ: Those are contented cows, eh? Those are cows that are producing milk.

AMT: He thought that was pretty funny. I didn’t know that either, so—

JULIAN UZIELLI: I was embarrassed before I even asked the question.

AMT: So when they’re mooing, they’re not happy?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Apparently not. I have to get out of the city more, too.

AMT: And what about the Shantz family? Are they happy? Are they contented, no more getting up before dawn to milk the cows?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Right. They don’t have to do that anymore, but there are still plenty of other chores to do. A farm is a big operation, there is lots to be done at any given time, so it's not like they can all leave the farm and let it run itself. But, the automation has meant that they've been able to carry on with the farm. Rick's parents used to help with the chores but, they are getting older and they've retired, and their son Brett, his two siblings, they used to help but now they’ve grown up and moved away. But now, because of these machines, Rick, Doreen and Brett can now do the same amount of work with fewer hands which is really important to them because their family has owned this land for over 100 years.

SOUNDCLIP

RICK SHANTZ: So, 1912 is when my great-grandfather would have bought the farm.

JULIAN UZIELLI: And what do you think he would make of all these changes?

RICK SHANTZ: [Laughs] I'm not sure what my grandpa would have thought, but my great-grandpa, sorry, but I know my dad, for him too it was, he never really discouraged me, but he didn't really encourage it. He's wondering, what're you doing, eh? Very skeptical about the whole process of this automated milking and stuff.

JULIAN UZIELLI: And now, a few years in, has he changed his mind?

RICK SHANTZ: Oh, definitely, eh? I think he quite enjoys just walking through and seeing how everything's working.

AMT: So, they can do the same amount of work with fewer people. Does that mean that people are losing jobs, or potential jobs aren't being created because of technology?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Well, that's the big question. The answer is kind of complicated, and it changes depending who you ask. For Rick and Doreen, they said as a family farm they don't want to hire any outside labour if they don't have to, that’s important to them. They say the machines haven't actually deprived anyone of work on their farm.

AMT: But at the same time a farm could hire people rather than buying robots, could it not?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Well, in theory, yes, but the other problem is it's not like there's people lining up for the job getting up before dawn to milk cows day and night. If they don't have a personal stake in the farm--

AMT: Then they are not going to look for that job.

JULIAN UZIELLI: Exactly. Interestingly, just getting back to the robot-run farm in Japan for a second, one of the reasons the company gives for amping up the automation there is Japan’s aging population.

AMT: Which translates to a shrinking workforce.

JULIAN UZIELLI: Yeah. And here at home, there is another problem that farmers have. Take a listen to Matt Reimer. He farms wheat and canola in Killarney, Manitoba.

SOUNDCLIP

MATT REIMER: Harvest time is terribly busy. There's more work than we know what to do with. So basically, farmers at harvest time will hire all the good people they can find. But the trick is it's only six weeks or something, so it's tough to find somebody that is a good operator for that amount of time.

AMT: So, part of the problem, Julian is that it is seasonal work.

JULIAN UZIELLI: Exactly. And I'll come back to the jobs issue in a moment, but first I just want to tell you why I was talking to Matt Reimer.

AMT: Why were you?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Okay. I know you're well aware of all the hype about self-driving cars.

AMT: Well, it's been pretty hard to avoid that one over the past year or so.

JULIAN UZIELLI: Right. But what Matt Reimer did is he's created a self-driving tractor.

AMT: He created his own?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Yes. It looks just like a regular tractor, and in fact it was a regular tractor before he fixed it up, but he ordered some parts that are usually used by hobbyists for remote-control drones, and took an online coding course from MIT, and seven months later his tractor could drive itself.

AMT: Wow, that’s initiative. He just taught himself how to do it, and then did it just like that?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Yes, and he says he's not even a tinkerer, he doesn’t even like computer all that much, he just wanted to see if he can do this. A couple of weeks ago, he happened to be in Toronto so he came into the studio and he showed me a video he made.

SOUNDCLIP

MATT REIMER: Okay, I’m going show you, this is a bit of a promo video I put together. (Music starts) And so basically what we see here is the tractor driving towards the combine, and now it's unloading on the go. And there's no one in this tractor for basically the entire duration of the video. And so the tractor always comes from in front of the combine and turns in like you see it, and the reason that we did that is because there was no safety sensors at all on the tractor this fall, so that way the combine driver could always see it and then if there was something in the way, you don't call it over.

JULIAN UZIELLI: So, what's actually happening here is, Matt's driving his combine down the fields harvesting his grain, and when the grain hopper on the combine is full he pushes a button and that summons the driverless tractor across the field and pull up alongside the combine. Then while it is harvesting, it will offload its grain into the hopper being pulled by the tractor.

AMT: So very clever, but let’s get back to the jobs. That's a job lost there, is there not?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Well, the way Matt sees it is, instead of losing an employee, he's actually making better use of the employees he has.

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MATT REIMER: So, the guy in the grain cart is working for five minutes, and then sitting for 15. And you know, it's actually quite a boring job, and it's really repetitive, so if you can get that guy out of there doing other things, you can really increase your productivity, so that makes a huge difference in fall, because that's when we're really busy. So now the grain cart driver, he can be going for fuel, he can be doing all the other fall work we need to do, so I had the, probably the easiest fall we've ever had. And a lot of that was due to just everything running smoothly because we had that extra help around.

AMT: Okay, but hang on, Julian. He just did this by basically tinkering in his garage and he gets this machine up and running all by itself. Is that legal?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Well, that's a bit of a grey area. I did check and the Manitoba Highway Traffic Act doesn't have any laws about self-driving vehicles one way or the other. But, Matt said he's only driving the tractor on his property, not on public roads, and no one's given him a hard time even though he's gotten a lot of media coverage.

AMT: And what about safety?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Well, the tractor has a blinking light on top and a beeper, and everyone on the farm knows when it is in self-driving mode and everybody else carries a little fob that can stop the tractor remotely if they have to. He says next year he's hoping to install sensors so it can stop automatically in case anything happens.

AMT: And in his estimation, how does it compare to a human driven tractor?

JULIAN UZIELLI: This is how he put it to me.

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MATT REIMER: I mean I grew up on a farm, so I grew up driving tractor. I have as many hours in a tractor as anybody my age and I did hop in the tractor one time and I drove it manually, and I radioed the combine driver afterward and I said, so what did you think of that unload? And he said, you were driving, weren't you? and I said, yeah, and he says, turn the computer back on. [laughs]

AMT: So, he's making this out to be a pretty good thing. Is he trying to market this as well?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Yes, but that wasn't his intention when he began. Originally he didn't even want to sell it, but he got so many inquiries that he set up a small business called Reimer Robotics, and he’ll just help other farmers install this technology on their tractors. It’s still all open source, so he is not charging for the technology, he just charges for the installation. There are also a couple of companies outside Canada that are starting to sell self-driving tractors as well.

AMT: How much would that cost?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Well, Matt charges $35,000 per installation, so it's not cheap.

AMT: Okay. Not cheap.

JULIAN UZIELLI: And there are important questions for farmers here beyond just the financial implications. I spoke to a philosopher about this.

AMT: I like that, a little philosophizing on the robotification of the farm.

JULIAN UZIELLI: [laughs] I thought you would like that.

AMT: Can I say robotification?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Why not? I talked to Jason Millar. He teaches at Carleton University and he actually specializes in the ethics of robots. He told me a story about how in the 1940's a new machine was introduced to harvest tomatoes. It was efficient and the price of tomatoes but he says:

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JASON MILLAR: When you automate in a farming industry, you end up having to shape the tomatoes and the plants and the animals to the machines. So, with the tomato, they end up having to change the style of tomato they were planting, and by all accounts these tomatoes were, they were a little bit tougher, so they had to be able to withstand this kind of mechanized process so they wouldn't get bruised because remember, prior to that you had people hand-picking the ripe tomatoes and putting them in baskets or whatever they did, and sending them off to market. But, in this case now you have to start shaping the tomato to fit the machine.

AMT: In other words, in some cases automation could necessitate changes to the very product itself.

JULIAN UZIELLI: Right, and he also argues automation could in fact, cause changes to the very nature of the industry.

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JASON MILLAR: As soon as you introduce these cost-savings mechanisms through automation, that comes at a cost to the farmer that sometimes isn't entirely obvious, or a cost to other farmers because this equipment locks you into a system where in order to compete with the person who has the automated tomato harvester, you then have to get your own automated tomato harvester and that's not always going to be cost effective for everyone. So, what you end up, this is the interesting job angle I think, is that as soon as you industrialize, you know, industrialization is all about corporations growing bigger and bigger, and pushing competition out so there's this natural trend towards single entities owning larger pieces of the agriculture industry. And we certainly see that in industrialized farming in the cattle industry, and in other farming operations, corn, soybeans, things like this.

AMT: AT the same time, Julian, this has all been happening for a long time in other industries. Automation is both efficient and one of the reasons there have been so many job losses in manufacturing.

JULIAN UZIELLI: Right. Pretty much any job that involves repetitive tasks has the potential to be automated, if that hasn't happened already.

AMT: That’s the old line, robots are going to take all our jobs.

JULIAN UZIELLI: Right, and it's not a new prediction, but there are people now who say we are actually closer to that happening than ever before just because of the stage of technology today.

AMT: So, if they are right, what are the implications?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Well, I talked to several people about this, and they all had a similar answer, which is that we need to re-think the point of jobs themselves.

AMT: What does that mean, what are you telling me?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Well, one of those people I reached out to was Douglas Rushkoff. He's a professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at the City University of New York, and he's just released a book called Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity.

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DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: The only reason why such technologies should be threatening, assuming they can really work, and do the things, and do them as well, is if we have an economic system that only lets people eat and enjoy things if they have jobs. If we can start to see human beings beyond their utility value, and say oh, as machines can take over more and more of human labour, what are humans for? Are humans for work, or was work to allow humans to do something else? Are we okay with people actually enjoying the abundance of human productivity?

AMT: Fascinating. He's saying if we can let machines do our work, maybe we should be allowed simply to enjoy life and not worry about work. Of course, there is a fly in that ointment.

JULIAN UZIELLI: Right, which is how are we going to afford to pay for everything and live?? I asked him how he envisions that working and I asked whether he is advocating something known as a guaranteed minimum income.

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DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Well, I'm suggesting that if we had a whole bunch of stuff for free, that it's not a bad thing to let people have it. So, if you want to call it guaranteed minimum income, then call it that. I mean, it's just that that term even frightens people, particularly here in America where we're still afraid of communists coming in and taking over the country somehow, or socialists, oh my god. [Laughs]

AMT: Do the farmers you spoke with worry at all about the future of automation and how it might affect people?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Well, yes and no. In fact, it was actually Matt Reimer, the grain farmer, who told me about Douglas Rushkoff because he's reading his book.

AMT: And what does he think of it?

JULIAN UZIELLI: Well, it's made him think more critically about inventions like his self-driving tractor, about how they might impact jobs, but at the same time, he's skeptical that farmers could ever be replaced by robots entirely. And same for the Shantz family, they say despite automation, cows always need a personal touch.

AMT: Well, even if humans aren't totally replaceable on farms, is there any nostalgia for what might get lost with automation?

JULIAN UZIELLI: I did wonder how Rick and Doreen’s son, Brett Shantz felt about that, as the future head of his family farm, so I asked him this.

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JULIAN UZIELLI: You would have grown up milking the cows, I would imagine, right, so if you're going to stay here and have your own kids, your own family, your kids may not have that experience. How does that make you feel?

BRETT SHANTZ: [laughs] Oh, there's always dirty jobs for kids to do on a farm whether the cows get milked by themselves or not. But yeah you know, if it's not chores, there's always something that needs fixed, and there's always cropping and picking stones off the field is a pretty brutal job that as a kid, you don't look forward to doing that. But still, pens need to be cleaned out, and you know, it doesn't matter how your cows are milked, you still need a good work ethic on a dairy farm, and that's important and I hope to pass that on to my own kids someday, and yeah, like I said, whether the cows are milked automatically or not, there's always jobs to do.

AMT: Dairy farmers are really tied to their farms 24/7 usually. This is a bit of a break.

JULIAN UZIELLI: They are. It’s so intense and that’s one of the incentives for them to install these kinds of machines, right?

AMT: And he talks about other jobs to do. The job could be planting lettuce at that Japanese robot-run farm, for one.

JULIAN UZIELLI: For now, yes. That and a few other jobs do still exist.

AMT: So interesting. Thank you, Julian.

JULIAN UZIELLI: Thanks, Anna Maria.

MF: The Current’s Julian Uzielli spoke with Anna Maria in April. And we have some photos and video of the farms Julian talked about. They’re on our website. It’s at cbc.ca/thecurrent. I’m Mike Finnerty. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current. And we’ll see you tomorrow.

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June 30, 2016 full episode transcript

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