The digital age is arriving at Pennsylvania farms in style, with milking robots, farm management software, and planters and pesticide machines guided by GPS, writes Jason Nark for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Dave Bitler, a dairy farmer from Berks County, is giving laser-guided milking robots a chance, and is satisfied with the results so far.

“I see great potential that it will make my life easier someday,” he said.

Bitler currently uses two “automatic milkers” designed by AMS Galaxy. They can handle between 25 and 28 cows per hour. Before, Bitler used to milk 180 cows in a little under four hours with the help of five people.

Bradley Biehl, President of AMS Galaxy, got his first milking robot from Europe seven years ago.

“In Europe, the farm’s a little bit different,” he said. “There’s not a ton of labor around or people willing to milk cows.”

Neither Bitler nor Biehl believe the agriculture workforce in Pennsylvania is being hurt by milking robots. Mark O’Neill of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau also believes that new technologies are essential.

“New machinery over the past decade has significantly reduced the time it takes farmers to plant and harvest their crops,” said O’Neill.

Read more about new farming technology in the Philadelphia Inquirer by clicking here.