美国国家公共电台 NPR When Robots Milk Cows, Farm Families Taste Freedom

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SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

On a growing number of dairy farms, people don't decide when the cows need to be milked. The cows do. That's because farmers have called in robots to do the milking - day or night. And for some families - the ones that run small dairies - the robots mean freedom. NPR's Dan Charles reports.

DAN CHARLES, BYLINE¹: Carol and Bill Shuler and their two sons, Billy and Wyatt, run a dairy farm near the town of Baroda in southwest Michigan. And for decades, family life revolved² around milking 40 cows.

BILL SHULER: At quarter to four every morning, the first thing we did - we would clean the barn out.

BILLY SHULER: We fed the cows. We milked the cows. And then at 3:00 in the afternoon, it all started over again. Feed the cows. Milk the cows.

CAROL SHULER: Milking time is kind of like our meal time. You know, we were more likely to be together during milking time than we were during meal time.

CHARLES: That was Bill, Billy and Carol Shuler. There were no weekends off - no holidays. If there was a big family get-together³ like a wedding, Bill Shuler says, they'd get there late or leave early.

BILL SHULER: If you're a small operation and you can't hire help, you're a virtual slave to your farm.

CHARLES: On top of that, recent years have been really tough for dairy farmers. Milk prices have slumped⁴, as they sometimes do. Farmers are eating into their savings⁵. Some are giving up on dairying. Bill and Carol Shuler wondered if their two sons really would want this life. Their grandmother, Shirley Shuler, really had her doubts.

SHIRLEY SHULER: You couldn't encourage them because you know it isn't easy. You know it isn't easy.

CHARLES: But a couple of years ago, Billy and Wyatt told their parents they did want to be dairy farmers, and the Shulers decided⁶ to make a big investment for the future of the farm and the family.

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CHARLES: There's a big new barn on the farm now. Inside it, a hundred cows spend their days lounging on sawdust. And every once in a while, one of them decides it's her own personal milking time. She strolls down to one end of the barn where there's a small, trailer-sized building.

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CHARLES: She pushes through a metal gate and walks into that building into a special cow-sized chamber⁷ that holds her in place. A sensor⁸ reads her ID tag, and a robotic arm swings into action, reaching toward her udder.

BILL SHULER: OK. So here we go.

CHARLES: Yep.

BILL SHULER: The first thing it's going to do is sanitize each teat with an iodine⁹ solution. Then it'll go back and put the milkers on individually.

CHARLES: I see a little red light. Is that...

BILL SHULER: Those are the lasers.

CHARLES: That's right - lasers. That's how the robot finds the teats. It takes the machine a couple of tries to attach the milkers. A human would do this much faster. But eventually, it succeeds, and milk flows through hoses into a big storage tank. Bill Shuler's sons are usually here, but they don't have to be - at least not every minute. If something goes wrong, they'll get an alert on their phones.

Robots are milking just a small minority of American cows - maybe 5 percent. But the share is growing. Big dairies are buying them to replace workers, often immigrants. Small farms have been getting them to replace family labor¹⁰.

BILL SHULER: It absolutely changes your lifestyle. It gives you a life.

CHARLES: There's been a lot of talk lately about robots taking people's jobs. Bill Shuler hopes this robot will help his sons stay in the dairy business.

BILL SHULER: If this technology was available 25 or 30 years ago, I'd still have more friends milking cows today. I have a friend - he's a couple years older than I am. I'm sure he would have robots. He'd still be milking cows today. His son would probably be there with him.

CHARLES: In fact, a small family-run dairy farm like this is rare enough these days, Shuler's turning it into a tourist attraction. Hundreds of people visited last year. Kids love the cows, he says. Older people are amazed by the robots. Dan Charles, NPR News.

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