Slashdot Mirror
Robots Step Into the Backbreaking Agricultural Work That Immigrants Won't Do
HughPickens.com writes: 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 hundreds of thousands of workers in 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."
American farmers have in recent years resorted to bringing hundreds of thousands of workers in 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."
While structural unemployment is a progressive circumstance that will hurt a lot of people very badly if it isn't handled properly I do hope these robots are good enough and cheap enough to replace human labor. Technological unemployment is a first world problem if anything is. That said, when someone says an American won't do the job what they mean is, "I'm not willing to pay a living wage for this job"
If we don't define the terms properly we'll end up with solutions that don't fit the problems.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
we don't have the unlimited labor supply we once did = we don't have an unlimited amount of "slave labor"
And I say the above as an opinion. I base that on the unwillingness of the businesses wanting to pay higher wages which would solve this issue. Or am I incorrect about this?
Man, I never even imagined seeing a time when we ran short of Mexicans.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
The choice is grow strawberries that you can sell at a price people will pay, or don't grow strawberries.
Once you put food production into the hands of robots, we are soon going to be in trouble.
Exactly. People seem to forget that labor is also a market. If people are unwilling to perform the job at a given pay rate, then the rate is then too low and must be adjusted.
For some reason we have allowed the creation of a permanent immigrant underclass in the US and convinced ourselves that no one else here is willing to do the job. Horseshit. No one is willing to do it at the artificially low wage that agribusiness wishes to pay. Supply and demand has been legislated out of the equation and has flipped the labor market upside down.
Years ago I picked blueberries and apples in Maine, cherries in NY and pecans in Arizona. It's always the same story. The farmers want low-paid slaves. They go to great lengths to discourage local workers so that they can get foreigners who can be exploited.
An apple farmer I dealt with would shout, threaten and demand that people could easily carry a 24' wood ladder vertically, with no practice. When he'd scared away the locals he'd go to the state labor board and say, "See? Americans won't do this work. I need a planeload of Jamaicans." The Jamaicans could all be housed in one big building and were not allowed off the property unescorted, by law. They were essentially incarcerated servants.
Though the picking in New England was still better paid than the picking in Arizona and S. California because the supply of desperate, illegal Mexicans was virtually unlimited in the Southwest.
The H1-B visa situation in the tech industry must surely be similar. For tech employers to say they can't find Americans for the jobs is a ludicrous lie. In any other industry if an employer said "Americans won't or can't do it" the natural answer would be that the employer is simply not willing to pay a fair wage.
The issue here is not labor. It's factory farming done by giant corporations whose R&D focuses mainly on how to cut corners in order to increase profit.
That said, when someone says an American won't do the job what they mean is, "I'm not willing to pay a living wage for this job"
It's not a matter of not being willing to pay higher wages. The economics of the industry are such that it is impossible to pay substantially higher wages. Profit margins in farming are low in the best of times and labor cost is a very substantial percent of the cost of most agriculture products. Higher wages in crop picking does not result in meaningfully higher productivity. A person has a physical limit on how much work they can accomplish in a given amount of time. Higher wages will not result in better productivity beyond a certain point. There also is no way for a single farm (even large agribusinesses) to set prices high enough to offset paying higher wages. We as consumers demand that food prices be kept low and unless you can remove the labor component from the price equation the only way to keep prices low is to pay low wages.
I would love to pay farm workers better wages for picking crops but I really do not see a way to make it a reality. Has nothing to do with a willingness or not to pay living wages.
Exactly. People seem to forget that labor is also a market. If people are unwilling to perform the job at a given pay rate, then the rate is then too low and must be adjusted. For some reason we have allowed the creation of a permanent immigrant underclass in the US and convinced ourselves that no one else here is willing to do the job. Horseshit. No one is willing to do it at the artificially low wage that agribusiness wishes to pay. Supply and demand has been legislated out of the equation and has flipped the labor market upside down.
Exactly. Employees leave out the "at the wage I want to pay" at the end of their "I can't get people to take this job..." whine. It's no surprise as people get better educated they don't want to do back breaking labor at low wages.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
You're an idiot. The middle class isn't being drained via taxation. Taxes are lower right now than at any point in the last century. It's the stagnation of wages that's causing the middle class to have problems. It's amazing how people will assert something as true that can be debunked with five seconds of Google searching.
Like almost everyone else, you're blindly blaming the business and ignoring the other half of the equation - the consumer. How much will Joe or Jane Sixpack pay for a pint of strawberries? That ultimately determines how much the business can pay the picker.
You can't have low prices, high quality, and high wages for the worker - pick two.
It's easy to talk about material goods as being "unnecessary" especially if they do not contribute to one's physical safety or health, like shelter, food and water.
For better or for worse, though, we are a consumer society and some things almost start to seem to become needs not because they contribute to our physical safety or health but because they contribute to our ability to integrate socially.
You may not "need" the latest smartphone but at the same time, especially among younger people, you could almost say you need to have a smartphone capable of accessing social networks in a reasonable manner because it's extremely difficult to integrate with many peer groups without one. You will not be able to participate in group dynamics or posses the same social information as other people.
The same thing could be said (more tentatively, because there are other outlets) about Netflix. If you're not able to engage with people socially because you are unaware of the types of programs they consume and cannot participate in discussions about them you are also hindered in group dynamics.
Outside the electronics/media sphere, you can make similar judgements about clothes. You don't "need" clothes that fit a specific fashion or brand paradigm -- you can buy used clothes or dollar store clothes and meet the minimal functional needs for clothing. But style and manner of dress is very important for engaging in peer groups, and like it or not people are in/excluded or find it easier or harder to engage in social activities if their mode of dress is compatible with their peer groups.
Now it's easy to make a lot of value judgements -- especially about social networking (the companies, phenomenon, etc) -- but their existence, usage and impact on social life is a reality and at some point I think some of these things become needs for reasonable social integration. Excluding them because they don't meet some minimalist description of "need" starts to sound myopic and mean spirited because I don't know anyone who just lives based on minimal need.
I assume the original poster doesn't want to do the backbreaking work either -- but that's a moot point, they're too rich and white for that anyway.
Oregon is a major producer of strawberries in the U.S. Sixty years ago, most of the strawberries here were picked by local youths, as their summer jobs. In the decades that followed, the tradition of kids having manual-labor jobs fell victim to increasing affluence, changing social values, and an influx of migrant workers. A new generation of parents no longer felt it important to teach their kids the work ethic through hard, manual work. Some might argue that, if the strawberries are spoiling in the fields, it started decades ago with the spoiling of our kids.
How exactly did you get from 'do it on your own dime' to 'i want a dime every time you do it'?
nobody is entitled to have people work for them at whatever price they deem sufficient. that's not how a free marked works.