Eggs:
Chickens could be conditioned in captivity to lay eggs into a collector in return for feed, after which they could be released. The reward would not sustain them, but they could be free to range over any area including fields, where they could eat pests.
Dairy:
A soft robotics milker could be worn by a free-range cow like a backpack. A weak vacuum would keep the softer tips of the tubes fastened to the teats, and a stronger vacuum would cause them to contract. When the farmer is absent, it could be left open. From a plugged tube fastened to the neck, the milk could be pumped out and water could be pumped in and out to clean the milker.
Aqua+Hydroponics:
Waste could be processed into fertilizer safely by incinerating it and feeding the ashes to algae to replace the nitrates. The algae could then feed fish, which would circulate the algae like an open pond system, and fertilize crops on transparent floats with their excrement.
Crops:
All crop farming could be done with motorized cables looping across geoponics (or hydroponics): blades could transport seedlings and harvest, fastened on top so that they can be turned into the substrate while the cables are supported; while pneumatic tubes could transport seeds, water and fertilizer, fastened to the blades so that it can fall over the blades into the substrate. Engines would move the cables over pulleys, the submoving them back and forth during harvest and vibrate them during plowing. In permaculture (no weeds) the crops regrow faster, but cannot be rotated and must be intercropped, but each set of blades can only reach on one side of the loop anyway. Hedgerows around the field could further stop some pests, (1) while another, harvester ants, could even be used like bees for grain (750,000 seeds per day per colony, (2) times 30 colonies per hectare (3) times 2 mg per seed (4) would equal 45 kilograms per day per hectare of just grassland).
2 C. Detrain et al.: Seed drops and caches by the harvester ant Messor barbarus
3 Lee Rogers et al.: The Ecological Effects of the Western Harvester Ant (…)
4 Deborah Gordon: The Spatial Scale of Seed Collection by Harvest Ants
5 Walter R. Tschinkel: Sociometry and Sociogenesis of Colony-Level Attributes of the Florida Harvester Ant
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