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from the we-welcome-our-new-robot-overlords dept.
Ilan Brat reports at the WSJ that technological advances are making it possible for robots to handle the backbreaking job of gently plucking ripe strawberries from below deep-green leaves, just as the shrinking supply of available fruit pickers has made the technology more financially attractive. “It’s no longer a problem of how much does a strawberry harvester cost,” says Juan Bravo, inventor of Agrobot, the picking machine. “Now it’s about how much does it cost to leave a field unpicked, and that’s a lot more expensive.” The Agrobot costs about $100,000 and Bravo has a second, larger prototype in development.
Other devices similarly are starting to assume delicate tasks in different parts of the fresh-produce industry, from planting vegetable seedlings to harvesting lettuce to transplanting roses. While farmers of corn and other commodity crops replaced most of their workers decades ago with giant combines, growers of produce and plants have largely stuck with human pickers—partly to avoid maladroit machines marring the blemish-free appearance of items that consumers see on store shelves. With workers in short supply, “the only way to get more out of the sunshine we have is to elevate the technology,” says Soren Bjorn.
American farmers have in recent years resorted to bringing in hundreds of thousands of workers from Mexico on costly, temporary visas for such work. But the decades-old system needs to be replaced because “we don’t have the unlimited labor supply we once did,” says Rick Antle. "Americans themselves don't seem willing to take the harder farming jobs," says Charles Trauger, who has a farm in Nebraska. "Nobody's taking them. People want to live in the city instead of the farm. Hispanics who usually do that work are going to higher paying jobs in packing plants and other industrial areas."
The labor shortage spurred Tanimura & Antle Fresh Foods, one of the country’s largest vegetable farmers, to buy a Spanish startup called Plant Tape, whose system transplants vegetable seedlings from greenhouse to field using strips of biodegradable material fed through a tractor-pulled planting device. “This is the least desirable job in the entire company,” says Becky Drumright. With machines, “there are no complaints whatsoever. The robots don’t have workers' compensation, they don’t take breaks.”
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday April 27 2015, @11:18AM
On a different tangent, do you find Pick Your Own businesses in the US?
Yeah although obviously not many coasties will drive all the way to Michigan to pick blueberries.
I think "everywhere" with farmable land (aka not west of the mississippi) has at least strawberry pick your own farms.
Something I don't really understand about backbreaking work is given an enormous pile of dough to spend on capital improvements to get around the back breaking thing, why build a complicated delicate hard to fix probably DRMed to hell and back impossible to troubleshoot robot when you can just building some raised beds or container garden? I container garden in my back yard, I find it enjoyable to lift my 5-gallon buckets onto a table where I'm sitting in a comfy chair to do my harvesting.
I figure for less than the cost of the robot you could do some bulldozer/cedar plank work to make permanent raised beds, if you want to go that way.
Locally there's some hydroponic farming and thats not a bad idea either.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @11:52AM
You would be surprised. Most of the strawberry fields in particular here are picked by people that pay for the opportunity to harvest their own food by hand. Makes me wonder what farmers out west are doing wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @11:43PM
Makes me wonder what farmers out west are doing wrong
I dont think you quite understand the scope of the size of these farms. They are not 2-3 acre pick your own farms. They are 200+ acre farms. Relying on what the local town will send out to pay to pick is not economically feasible. You hire people to do it. The pay to pick is just icing on the cake. You usually pay by the flat. It is suck work. But when you have nothing, something is better...
This is a different farm in another country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKoT8E4COqc [youtube.com] But it is the same sort of problem (cant just chop off the top of the plant like with corn and run it thru a machine). Someone has to go out and pick it.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday April 27 2015, @07:59PM
Those places exist, though it largely depends on what you want to pick. Here in New York, going up the Hudson in the autumn to pick apples and other produce is a "thing." I know they have places in Maine where you can pick your own blueberries. But those places still have to get people to pick the rest of their produce that day-trippers don't get.
I do agree that container gardening or hydroponics is a much better alternative. You don't have to fight traffic to get to the farm. You can pick your produce when it's perfectly ripe. There is a bit of an apprenticeship element. Sometimes Instructables and YouTube can only get you so far.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @01:12AM
...when you can just building some raised beds or container garden?
Or swap raspberries for strawberries. Our 4 x 6 patch yields for a few weeks summer and again in the fall before the first frost (double crop strain). The raspberry plants are tall enough that no bending over is required.