Robots to revolutionize farming, ease labor woes

Associated Press ^ | Jul 14, 2013 10:42 AM EDT | Gosia Wozniacka and Terence Chea

[Olog-hai]

On a windy morning in California’s Salinas Valley, a tractor pulled a wheeled, refrigerator-sized contraption over rows of budding iceberg lettuce plants. Engineers from Silicon Valley tinkered with the software on a laptop to ensure the machine was eliminating the right leafy buds.

Hired by a Salinas-based agricultural produce company, the engineers were testing the Lettuce Bot, a machine that can “thin” a field of lettuce in the time it takes about 20 workers to do the job by hand.

The thinner is part of a new generation of machines that target the last frontier of agricultural mechanization—fruits and vegetables destined for the fresh market, not processing, which have thus far resisted mechanization because they’re sensitive to bruising.

Researchers are now designing robots for these most delicate crops by integrating advanced sensors, powerful computing, electronics, computer vision, robotic hardware and algorithms, as well as networking and high precision GPS localization technologies. Most ag robots won’t be commercially available for at least a few years. …

[cripplecreek]

It does no good to have robots do the farming, if there is no land upon which to farm.

Out here in rural country we have plenty of farmland.

[Average Al]

"What happens to the illegals when they become legal and these robots take over? How will these low skill workers make a living when they are no longer needed?"

They will be eligible to free career retraining on your nickel...

[Born to Conserve]

Will the robots urinate and defecate on our food like the Mexicans do?

[cripplecreek]

Can they all be retrained as bot maintenance?

I think you would be surprised at how many will and contrary to popular belief, they won't need college educations to do it.

I'm a high school dropout and I learned to program, operate, and maintain painting robots while on the job. Its how I became the foreman on that job.

[Born to Conserve]

Robot programming and maintenance will be automated too.

Robots will be so modular, mass produced, and cheap, that repairing one of them would be as silly as repairing a coffee maker.

[BfloGuy]

great....more jobs done away with.....more people with nothing to do...nothing but collect welfare/unemployment/disability....

The problem is not the mechanization, it's the easy availability of those last three.

[BwanaNdege]

Will this make Mexicans obsolete?

No problem, though. The Democrats will get 20 votes for each robot purchased by "Big Ag".

[Razz Barry]

Well, John McCain said Americans wouldn't pick lettuce for $50.00 an hour. I guess he was right. Americans will make a machine that will do it. I hope people will call McCain's office and tell him about this.
Many people who want to secure the border have been saying for years, cheap illegal immigrant labor has stifled farm automation. I wonder if this would have happened if states, like Arizona and Georgia had not passed their illegal immigration laws.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

"Stoop Labor" is something very few people will do. There isn't much that's harder on your body. I drove through the Pajaro Valley on the way to Carmel last weekend and am always amazed and saddened watching people perform these jobs. It makes you very appreciative of the food on your table. Using machines to perform these literally backbreaking jobs is long overdue.

[Olog-hai]

They might leak oil onto the food.

[Olog-hai]

I suspect he isn’t even right about that. I also suspect that he was talking only from his own perspective.

[GraceG]

Will this make Mexicans obsolete?

Nah, the state can always use more welfare leeches and democrap lever pullers...

[GraceG]

They might leak oil onto the food.

They will use fish oil to lubricate the robots cause fish oil is good for......

Aw dammit another gubermint study came out and says fish oil is bad for you....

They should just use motor oil i guess.....

[Mamzelle]

Re:What happens to the illegals when they become legal and these robots take over? How will these low skill workers make a living when they are no olonger needed?

They can get jibs cleaning up after Laura Bush and Cindy McCain. RINO queens can't be making their own beds, after all.

[blueunicorn6]

The farmers will go for these machines. Migrant farm workers are a tremendous risk.

[Regulator]

Do not feel sorry.

The UFW under Cesar Chavez lobbied Jerry Brown back in the 70s to prevent mechanization from coming to the fields...especially in Watsonville.

Much of what’s being developed now was already in development in the 70s, funded by the state. That funding was shut down.

The UFW wanted numbers. They did not care about conditions. More workers, more misery, more power for them. Luis Alejo would not be in Sacramento without it.

The toiling Indigeanos you see from hwy 1 are unnecessary. Strawberry harvesting is mechanized in Washington state, for example.

It was stopped in California by the illegal alien dominated unions.

Watsonville was 10 % Mexican in 1950. It is now about 80%. Do you think anyone would have cared if the displaced workers were white Okies?

No. They would tell them tuff Luk, get a job over the hill.

[tbw2]

Especially if the bees continue to disappear.

[cripplecreek]

When I was on my way out of the shop, new presses that used vegetable oil as hydrualic fluid were on their way in.

[Windflier]

Robots doing the work illegals don’t want to do....

[Razz Barry]

It was funny when Americans showed up at rallies with lettuce wanting their fifty bucks.