Imagine you walk into a food factory fifteen years from now. The space is black and sterile, humming with the sound of machines. No windows. No natural light. No humans in sight. A mixing machine adjusts water temperature and flour hydration in real time, its sensors reading dough elasticity to the microsecond. Perfect loaves emerge every single time. In another section, a dairy facility uses artificial intelligence to control fermentation temperatures with perfect precision. Nearby, computer vision systems automatically grade meat quality and optimize cutting patterns. Every process is measured, digitalized, and controlled by algorithms that learn from thousands of production cycles. This is smart automation powered by artificial intelligence.

It is undeniable that these systems promise great benefits. AI optimizes resource use and predicts equipment failures before they happen, reducing waste significantly. Less waste means lower environmental impact and lower costs for consumers. The food is also safer and its quality more consistent. For our health, our planet, and our wallets, this sounds like progress.

But I think that we might be losing something crucial along the way.

Food production has always been deeply human. The baker who knows intuitively when dough has the right consistency. The cheesemaker who tastes the developing cheese and adjusts temperature and humidity, making subtle changes to guide flavor and texture. This knowledge comes from years of experience and from a relationship between maker, environment, and ingredients. I believe that when we remove the human hand from food production entirely, we might also remove this wisdom and meaning.

This worries me, because the consequences could reach deep. The heritage of food production becomes obsolete when there are no experts left to pass knowledge to the next generation. Apprenticeships vanish. Young people grow up never knowing the hands that nurtured the meals they are served. The intimate connection between maker and eater dissolves. Small bakeries, family cheese producers, and artisan butchers cannot survive competing against machines that work twenty-four hours a day. They lose not just their jobs but the skills, dignity, and identity that came with them.

Yet, in my view, this is not the first time we have broken our relationship with food. Our current food system is already fractured by disconnection. Over the past decades, as food production became increasingly industrialized, people stopped connecting with the origin of their food and the labor required to produce it. This disconnection brought us food waste on a massive scale, health crises driven by cheap ultra-processed foods, and a profound devaluation of food craftsmanship. We created dependency on global markets and erased the cultural identity of regional cuisines. Now, with intelligent automation, we might be accelerating the same disconnection.

In those black factories with no humans in sight, we gain efficiency but sacrifice something irreplaceable. We risk eroding what remains of our cultural food heritage, destroying skilled livelihoods, and creating a world where food is merely algorithmic output. Smart automation has its place, for example in temperature control in large-scale dairy or meat processing, which protects public health, or in predictive systems that reduce food waste in industrial kitchens. But in artisanal food production, automation erases the very thing that makes these foods valuable.

Some things taste better because they carry human love and intention. I strongly believe that this cost is worth protecting.

Hannah Floor

Topic inspired by Matt Suter

Grammar and language check by Perplexity

Image generated by Perplexity