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Washington State Orchard Owners Look To Robots As Labor Shortage Worsens (seattletimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Seattle Times: Harvesting Washington state's vast fruit orchards each year requires thousands of farmworkers, and many of them work illegally in the United States. That system eventually could change dramatically as at least two companies are rushing to get robotic fruit-picking machines to market. The robotic pickers don't get tired and can work 24 hours a day. FFRobotics and Abundant Robotics, of Hayward, California, are racing to get their mechanical pickers to market within the next couple of years. Members of the $7.5 billion annual Washington agriculture industry have long grappled with labor shortages, and depend on workers coming up from Mexico each year to harvest many crops. While financial details are not available, the builders say the robotic pickers should pay for themselves in two years. That puts the likely cost of the machines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each. FFRobotics is developing a machine that has three-fingered grips to grab fruit and twist or clip it from a branch. The machine would have between four and 12 robotic arms, and can pick up to 10,000 apples an hour, Gad Kober, a co-founder of Israel-based FFRobotics, said. One machine would be able to harvest a variety of crops, taking 85 to 90 percent of the crop off the trees, Kober said. Humans could pick the rest. Abundant Robotics is working on a picker that uses suction to vacuum apples off trees.
Wait until a field full of semi autonomous, agile robots with significant dexterity decide they're not getting recharged often enough.
Ever argue with your computer? Who wins?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If you can't compete with the cost of automation, give up and find something else, the price has been set.
Europe has long had robotic pickers. They don't have Mexicans. Poles want real money.
It's not done until the robot pickers are INXS. They should be running up and down the rows looking for perfectly ripe fruit with an array of sensors, not taking 90% in one pass.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'm in a "weird" part of the country without much in the way of migrant workers and Americans do all "the jobs Americans won't do".
A friend of mine has a teenage son who's worked at a nearby orchard for a couple years, after school and summers. I know, he can't exist according to labor economists who don't get that bottom-wage jobs are for kids with no experience. He's off to college next year, and I doubt a robot will be taking his job.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Automation will mean that millions of low-paying, back-breaking agricultural jobs will be carried out by machines. 50-70% of those farm workers are in the country illegally.
Those jobs will be replaced by thousands of well-paying jobs in IT, programming, design, manufacturing, and maintenance, filled by educated Americans that pay more in taxes than they require in services.
And at the same time, agricultural products will end up being cheaper and higher quality.
That's a good deal all around.
Picking fruit in a commercial production orchard is not like wandering in a pleasant garden and occasionally reaching out to pluck an apple. It is a grueling, dawn-to-dusk exertion in which you position a ladder, fill a container as fast as you can, carry the now 50lb+ container to the truck or drop point, and then repeat over and over again. For each ton of apples you pick, you get around $30. There is a reason that American teenagers aren't working in orchards... if growers paid enough to get teens to take the jobs, nobody would be able to afford fruit.
It's harder to enter the country illegally, so it's harder to hire people illegally, so you buy robots cuz people on welfare won't do the job.
I fail to see the problem, outside of the "people on welfare" part.
If pickets get $30 per ton, that is 1.5c per pound,.doubling the pay would result in a whopping 1.5c increase per pound then.
I'd still be able to afford that.
Here's what happened up here in Canada. In the late 1980's you could pick fruit/veggies/tobacco/etc and earn enough money to put you through a year of university, if you got on a good farm you could earn enough to put you through 2-3 years. This was still the norm in the early 90's, by say '94ish there was a great push of factory farms. And suddenly there were people saying "oh we can't afford to pay these people those wages." And suddenly they loosened the wage rate, and more followed suit. It went from hourly to bushel, and then you started hearing the "but people won't work for what we're paying!" So they relaxed the hiring regs, and allowed the importing of 3rd world labor to do those jobs. And the wages still fell.
If you want to fix the problem, the laws have to be changed. Most governments have no interest in changing the laws on this, and now it's the norm. Now people are seeing this with the abuse of H1B's in the US, and here in Canada with TFW's. The difference between the two is a TFW can be used in any job. The current area we're seeing a flood of people in is with business cleaning run by fly-by-night shops that hire people who are illegally in Canada. But businesses from the CIBC(big bank up here) replacing workers with TFW's, to skilled trades in the oil patch have been hit.
Om, nomnomnom...
I can guarantee that I could afford apples at double $60/ton picking wage, or even $120, but it would cut into the growers profits and probably make them less competitive with foreign imports from Chile. As I said in a post yesterday, when the illegals are gone, engineers and technicians will take their jobs, just a lot fewer engineers designing picking robots that work 24/7 and don't defecate in the fields, giving the customers food poisoning. It is a net win all the way around (except for the illegals that have to go home and get in line for legal immigration/guest worker programs).
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Docking pay is illegal in the US and if you are a legal worker, it does not happen. In college I worked hard manual labor 10-12h days all summer to pay for college. It was good for me.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
There is a reason that American teenagers aren't working in orchards... if growers paid enough to get teens to take the jobs, nobody would be able to afford fruit.
No. The reason is that the laws (child labor, working conditions) make it impossible for them to use teenagers any more.
Meanwhile the illegals can't complain about working conditions - and will work for less than minimum wage in (those occupations where it applies.)
US citizens needn't apply because they can't compete. (Even if they were willing to work for sub-legal prices and/or in sub-legal conditions, the employer can't risk that they might turn around and demand the missing money or compensation for the conditions.) The illegals, meanwhile, can afford to work that cheaply because social programs can pay for much of the support of them and their families - turning programs intended to help the poor into subsidies for their employers.
Meanwhile, the government's non-enforcement of the laws against the illegals working means that, in highly competitive markets (such as construction contracting), employers are left with a Hobson's choice: Use illegal labor and be competitive, or try to use legal labor and go out of business.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
My wife worked the peach packing shed for several years as a teenager to make money to buy school clothes during the summer. Lots of teachers worked there to supplement their salary while out during the summer. People once had to work because there was no other option if you wanted something. I worked like a dog bucking hay and stringing fence for a little money and was glad to get it. I didn't know any better, it never occurred to me that I didn't have to.
Either you pay the kids to do useful work ...
Doing a subsidized job that a robot could do better is not "useful work".
How about the kids stay in school or apprentice in a useful trade instead?
Now I have this vision of a battalion of chromed-skeleton terminators, grinning evilly, moving from tree to tree, scanning the fruit with the same assembler routines they used to track Sarah Connor and then gently twisting the almost-ripe apples from the branch and carefully placing them in a basket. With that sinister music playing.
He's off to college next year, and I doubt a robot will be taking his job.
I'm sure someone could invent a robot that smokes weed, listens to Ween, sleeps in until three in the afternoon and then gets online to beg for help writing that essay that's due tomorrow.
There is no labor shortage in the United States. Given high enough pay and benefits, all jobs will be filled by legal workers.
America's unemployment rate is at 4.7%, which is already about as low as NAIRU unemployment can go. There are 11 million illegal workers. There is no way all those jobs could be filled with legal workers. That is not realistic at all.
If picking fruit paid more and had more benefits than programming, I would have no problem picking fruit on the side.
Would you have any problem with the four hour commute from your desk in the city to a broccoli field in Modesto?
... forced, child, or illegal labor
You are lumping together unrelated things. Forced and child labor are harmful to the laborer. Hiring an illegal worker benefits that worker. I have no problem with hard-working Mexicans coming here and making a better life for themselves. It is the laws that try to prevent that which are immoral, not the employers who skirt those laws. Just because something is illegal, that doesn't make it wrong.
They should be running up and down the rows looking for perfectly ripe fruit with an array of sensors, not taking 90% in one pass.
Depends on the fruit. Most apples and pears you do pick all the fruit at once as it ripens fairly evenly, though even in that case you could do the sorting (colour and size) on the tree though it is probably more efficient to do it at the packing house. Soft fruits such as peaches, plums and cherries do need to be spot picked and in the case of peaches, it is actually a feel thing as well as colour.
I went fruit picking here in BC back in the early '80's and could make up to $200 a day (average was closer to $100) which wasn't bad money 35 years ago. There were no Mexicans, it was locals, young people from eastern Canada, especially Quebec and young people from Europe working illegally. Now they probably still pay the same and I understand the farmers import pickers from Central America, paying airfare and housing and $15+ an hour for the 6 months that they're here on the foreign workers visa.
If the prices had gone up with inflation, they'd probably have no problem with finding workers, especially if they let tourists work. Of course the killer was the small BC orchidist having to compete with the Washington factory farm that probably got government aid as well as a blind eye turned to the desperate Mexicans doing the picking. Sure hope that Trump does kick out the Mexicans and stop the government welfare programs to the industrial farms so our farms can compete and people can pay a realistic price for food, at least until the robots are perfected and their price comes down to where the small farmer can afford them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
What exactly is an apple tree bear?
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