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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: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday April 27 2015, @10:51AM
> Americans themselves don't seem willing to take the harder farming jobs,
How much are you offering to pay them? Chances are, people aren't willing to do the work not because it's hard, but because you're offering sub-living wage remuneration. Also, it's seasonal: People who are desperate enough for that kind of low-wage work aren't going to hang around in Badiddlyboing Odawidaho all year waiting for your strawberries to ripen. They're going to be in the city where there's at least a theoretical chance of getting full-time work at a living wage.
Now I'm not blaming the farmers for the low wages. They are under huge pressure from the supermarkets to lower their costs, and they in turn are driven by the consumers. In other words, this is just the inevitable fallout from America's obsession with driving everything to the lowest possible price and damn the consequences. Capitalism is all very well in its proper place, but let it get out of control and this is what it will bring you.
On a different tangent, do you find Pick Your Own businesses in the US? They are quite popular on this side of the pond (especially for strawberries). Maybe that's a potential solution for some of these farms, although most of them will probably be too large and/or too remote.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @11:06AM
How much are you offering to pay them? Chances are, people aren't willing to do the work not because it's hard, but because you're offering sub-living wage remuneration.
Now I'm not blaming the farmers for the low wages. They are under huge pressure from the supermarkets to lower their costs, and they in turn are driven by the consumers. In other words, this is just the inevitable fallout from America's obsession with driving everything to the lowest possible price and damn the consequences. Capitalism is all very well in its proper place, but let it get out of control and this is what it will bring you.
You hit the nail on the head! Farmers can't hire 'american' workers because those american workers aren't willing to pay what it really costs to harvest what said 'american' workers want to consume. The problem is not with the farmers, the problem is with the consumer.
But hey, for all you other guys out there, the free market works... don't let me break that illusion for you!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by curunir_wolf on Monday April 27 2015, @12:40PM
But hey, for all you other guys out there, the free market works... don't let me break that illusion for you!
The American agricultural industry hasn't existed in a free market since FDR. If you think it does, then you've bought into the illusion.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Monday April 27 2015, @02:22PM
But hey, for all you other guys out there, the free market works... don't let me break that illusion for you!
Counterexamples: corn [taxpayer.net], sugar [salon.com], peanuts [cagw.org], raisins [reason.com], and rice [breitbart.com]. While some of the examples show a market working, they all show substantial interference in the operation of these supposed free markets. And agriculture is notorious world-wide for being far from free markets.
(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.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @11:36AM
> not because it's hard, but because you're offering sub-living wage remuneration
Having done farm work as a child, I'll comment that not only is it hard, it is incredibly hard. I would not go back to it for $100 an hour, and there's no way to grow crops with $100 an hour labor.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday April 27 2015, @11:44AM
Well there are strawberries on the supermarket shelves right now, so clearly some people (but not you) are willing to do that work if the price is right. I think there must be a fair wage somewhere between current rates and an unaffordable $100/hr.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @11:58AM
I urge you to go do it for a week and then come back and suggest a "fair" wage.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday April 27 2015, @12:56PM
So what do you suggest? That there is no fair price for manually-picked agricultural goods below $100 per hour? Should strawberries be a luxury reserved only for the 1% who can afford to pay four thousand dollars per kilo? Should we stop buying certain foods on ethical grounds?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @01:07PM
I'm suggesting that it's such shit work, that no one in their right mind would want to do it at any reasonable wage.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @01:40PM
I could say the same thing about software development in large corporations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @02:08PM
That really discounts farm work nicely.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @02:09PM
I could say the same thing about every sort of work. Why would anyone want to work at all? Activities are called work when we have to do them, play when we don't, even if they look the same from the outside.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @02:18PM
You don't have a very interesting job, do you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @04:28PM
You don't have anything to say worth listening to, do you?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 28 2015, @05:22AM
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday April 27 2015, @05:17PM
Some of us like to grow our own food. I might like to have a farm, but actually being able to turn a profit on a farm is the difficult part.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2015, @02:39AM
Damn near impossible, on a small scale. Feeder pigs in the northeast US this year are running $150 and up. Then feed it for 5 or 6 months to net 300 to 400 pounds of pork. It's cheaper to buy pork at the supermarket for a buck or 2 a pound.
Raising your own chickens or eggs is a similar labor of love.
Factory farms produce a vastly inferior product, but they've beaten their costs way down.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @11:58AM
Well, you were a child. I delivered drywall for some years. I had a friend that did it and did not believe his stories of carrying 240 pound, 14 foot long things up stairs all by himself. It was the sort of "get off my lawn" "uphill in the snow both ways" stories that everyone rolls their eyes at. Until the recession hit full swing and I had to take whatever job I could get. Paid 10 bucks an hour. Took a year to get strong enough to do what he did. Within three years 2/3 of all workers already had surgery for injuries on the job. Now that things are more economically stable the pay rate has doubled and apparently nobody lasts more than the time it takes to find their next job. Turnover per year at hundreds of percent. These farmers are in the same boat. It isn't the work, it is the opportunity cost.
But I know where you are coming from. You could not pay me enough to haul drywall around a commercial jobsite for someone else again.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday April 27 2015, @01:41PM
I've also done manual labour requiring hauling heavy objects around and driving a truck. Best part was getting to a customer in Manhattan, no parking, no loading dock and having to haul 10 foot long 350 pound equipment up five flights of stairs. Then you come back down to a ticket on the truck. Back breaking work that deserves more than $10 an hour. I'd never do it again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @02:13PM
Yep, fuck that. At least I had a crane that worked until I ran out of boom. It makes no wonderment over why blue collar guys are so prone to crime, violence, divorce, alcoholism, and all the rest. Truly treated as lowest of the low.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Monday April 27 2015, @02:51PM
It always pisses me off to no end that society is taught to look down on the blue collar workers. No college degree? Then you must be dumb and don't deserve a decent wage. Just recently I read this article by some elitist shit who thinks it's okay to tell those Mcdonalds workers fighting for $15 that they DON'T DESERVE $15 an hour. I wish I could get in that fuckers face and demand why his lowly job of publishing an opinion piece is deserving of a decent wage (IMHO it isn't.)
Bottom line is we have created a wage rift based upon the metric of intelligence needed to complete a job while ignoring the physical demands. Sitting behind a desk earning >$20/hr is perfectly acceptable. But someone who is in the hot sun busting their ass picking strawberries is barely qualified for >$10/hr. Or behind a cash register, or pushing a broom (though union broom pushers are well paid.) or driving a truck. Maybe the unions should make a comeback and people will see the real cost of doing business is when everyone is paid a decent wage.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday April 27 2015, @03:23PM
Unfortunately, ALL monopolies are bad. And that all includes unions. The only justification for unions is that they are dealing with a centralized power that ignores the needs of those without power. That's enough, until the unions start getting corrupt. But then you've got two monopolies rather than one.
The only answer I can see involves a negative income tax, or guaranteed annual wage. And that would require an honest government.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @05:21PM
Paraphrasing Heinlein, government is usually honest though never truthful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @05:14PM
Well we had it tough...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fritsd on Monday April 27 2015, @01:18PM
When I was a boy, strawberries and runner beans were seen as jobs for kids to earn some pocket money. But if you do it three days in a row, you'll really feel it in your back and legs (maybe I was just not very fit :-) ).
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday April 27 2015, @02:00PM
If there are in fact fewer people desperate enough to do slave-like labor for a subsistence living then that's probably a good thing.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday April 27 2015, @05:18PM
If there are in fact fewer people desperate enough to do slave-like labor for a subsistence living then that's probably a good thing.
The problem is, it seems the "one percent" are trying to bring us back to the good old days when this was the case.
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Monday April 27 2015, @02:17PM
There are some. The one nearby me didn't last a summer.
Website on it of course: http://www.pickyourown.org/ [pickyourown.org]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday April 27 2015, @03:47PM
I've spent enough time in Oxnard, CA (US strawberry capital) to know exactly what kind of people do the job. Most are here year-round because there are crops year-round, though they probably get a few hundred extra bussed in at prime picking season.
It's extremely strenuous, and they wear full-cover clothing because the sun would burn them to a crisp (same latitude as the Sahara).
Oxnard is the most affordable city on the South California, by the way. You probably don't want your children to have to grow there.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday April 28 2015, @02:43AM
I'm not American, but I did grow up in a small town in a rural part of a country that is economically similar.
My experience with working holiday jobs while I was at school was that during the harvesting season the local growers, (apples, strawberries, melons, etc) paid the least money possible to attract high school students to do the work, then complain bitterly when we left their employ for better money.
In fact the best job I had in those years was at an Oyster farm, not only because it paid well, (we got $3 per hour) but because the two guys who owned the farm were cheerful good natured bosses who quite enjoyed having teenagers around the place.
Also if you were working on the barge, out in the harbour, you could drop a fishing line over the side and have fresh snapper for lunch.
(Score: 2) by caseih on Tuesday April 28 2015, @03:38AM
Wrong question. How much are you as a consumer willing to pay? Farmers are willing to pay as much as people are willing to pay them for their commodities. They are price takers and the only way to increase profit margins is to reduce costs to the absolute minimum. We farm close to 3000 acres with 4 people total. If it made economic sense, we would definitely hire a horde of people to weed the fields. But until then, large-scale tillage and herbicides are used.
But it is true that people generally do eschew physical labor jobs these days. Go get an education so you don't have to dig ditches. The problem is that digging ditches is important, and needs to be done, and there is still money in it. Education is important as well. We're approaching a crisis in North America with the trades right now. Very soon we will be short welders, electricians, pipe fitters, etc. All of these things are highly skilled, just not what you go to uni for. Seems like there is a disparity between university and the real world in many respects. I think a BS degree is a good idea and will teach you how to think. But there is satisfaction in a job that involves hard work and doing something useful. Reminds me of the end of "Office Space."