September 24, 2022
Public Release: Agricultural Automation Program
In cooperation with the entire cabinet and imbued with the authority granted to this ministry by the law, the Constitution, and His Excellent Majesty the Leader, as well as the powers granted by the Agricultural Automation Program Enabling Act (AAPE) ratified by His Excellent Majesty's Parliament, the Union Ministry of Economics will be conducting a program of economic reform that will intend to automate the agricultural sector of the NGU economy.
Following the resounding success of the Imperial Ministry of Economics' Manufacturing Automation Program, which began in 2008, the government and the manufacturing industry worked together to modernize the lacking manufacturing sector by providing new research and development into robotics, computerized assembly processes, and other 21st-century manufacturing technologies. Additionally, the government gave tax credits and service sector scholarships to displaced manufacturing workers, resulting in a booming service class. As a result, by 2010, 25% of the manufacturing industry was automated and by 2020, estimates were at 75%. Now, the Nationalist Gold Union is the number 1 place in the world for companies to have their products built. The NGU is followed distantly by Panjal, which uses extremely underpaid human labor, which is still much more expensive by a longshot than robotic assembly configurations.
The Agricultural Automation Program will model the Manufacturing Automation Program's footsteps by providing similar reform to the struggling agricultural sector of our economy, which initially benefited from eastern and southern expansion, yet has taken a beating thanks to global economic recession as well as powerful foreign competitors. The truth is, large cash crop industrial farms, which have been employing cheap Miltonian migrant labor for too long, have held back technological progress. The first step of this plan is to phase out the use of migrant agricultural labor, and encourage large firms to automate the farmhand process instead.
The UME will work with industry leaders in the agricultural sector to devise an intellectual effort to create and subsidize the manufacturing of modern and effective automated technology that is much cheaper and effective than human labor. The NGU will then grant massive tax credits to farming corporations that replace farmhands with automated machinery to the point that it would be stupidly more profitable for farming corporations to use automated machinery rather than migrant workers. The UME will provide in-depth and intense surveys of the appropriate farming corporations to ensure that they meet the standards of automation, which are intense, before receiving any tax credit.
Secondly, in regard to the human impact of the program. Similar to the Manufacturing Automation Program, displaced agricultural workers who are citizens of the NGU will receive a $3,500 credit and service skill scholarships to encourage them to find work in the rapidly expanding NGU service industry. Additionally, generational and local farms, which do not create massive amounts of crops and instead serve their local community with fresh and locally sourced produce, will continue to be protected by the NGU government as provided by the Family Farms Protection Act (2019). To limit the environmental impact of automatic machinery, the UME will be working with the provincial government of Boston, which has made great efforts to convert the city into using green energy, to find energy efficient and environmentally friendly methods to power and create automated farmhands.
The short term goal of this program is to have 25% automation of the sector by 2025. The long term goal of the program is to have 80% automation by 2040. The program was devised across party lines to ensure that, in the event of another democratic party taking control of the government, the program will not be infringed upon greatly.
The first priority of the government of the Nationalist Gold Union is to defend the safety and prosperity of the citizens of the Union. By automating the agricultural sector, the Nationalist Gold Union will finally race ahead of foreign competition in the industry as it did with manufacturing, enabling the country to hopefully pull out of the dire economic slump which the rest of the world has fell into.
Reed Xu
Union Minister of Economics
Nationalist Gold Union