Farm workers may soon be made of technology, steel
DUETTE, Florida: Human and machine have 10 seconds per plant. They must find the ripe strawberries in the leaves, gently twist them off the stems and tuck them into a plastic clamshell. Repeat, repeat, repeat, before the fruit spoils.
One February afternoon, they work about an acre apart on a farm the size of 454 football fields: dozens of pickers collecting produce the way people have for centuries - and a robot that engineers say could replace most of them as soon as next year.
The future of agricultural work has arrived here in Florida, promising to ease labour shortages and reduce the cost of food, or so says the team behind Harv, a nickname for the latest model from automation company Harvest CROO Robotics.
Harv is on the cutting edge of a national push to automate the way we gather goods that bruise and squish, a challenge that has long flummoxed engineers.
Designing a robot with a gentle touch is among the biggest technical obstacles to automating the American farm. Reasonably priced fruits and vegetables are at risk without it, growers say, because of a dwindling pool of workers.
“The labour force keeps shrinking,” said Gary Wishnatzki, a third-generation strawberry farmer. “If we don’t solve this with automation, fresh fruits and veggies won’t be affordable or even available to the average person.”
During a test run last year, Harv gathered 20 per cent of strawberries on every plant without mishap. This year’s goal: Harvest half of the fruit without crushing or dropping any. The human success rate is closer to 80 per cent, making Harv the underdog in this competition.
But Harv doesn’t need a visa or sleep or sick days. The machine looks like a horizontally rolling semi-truck.
Peek underneath and see 16 smaller steel robots scooping up strawberries with spinning, clawlike fingers, guided by camera eyes and flashing lights.
Growers say it is getting harder to hire enough people to harvest crops before they rot.
Manufacturing underwent a
The labour force keeps shrinking. If we don’t solve this with automation, fresh fruits and veggies won’t be affordable or even available to the average person. — Gary Wishnatzki, a third-generation strawberry farmer
similar evolution. US factories have increased output over the past two decades with a smaller workforce, thanks to machines that improve efficiency.
One Harv is programmed to do the work of 30 people. The machine hovers over a dozen rows of plants at the same time, picking five strawberries every second and covering eight acres a day.
Agriculture economists at Arizona State University last year estimated that if farmers lost their undocumented workforce entirely, wages would have to rise by 50 per cent to replace them - and that would crank up produce prices by another 40 per cent.
Then there are other rising costs.
Wishnatzki said he lost about US$1 million due to spoilage last year. He said he pays experienced pickers about US$25 an hour.
Harv would diminish the need for field labour, Wishnatzki said, but it would create new jobs, too. Wish Farms, his family business, would train pickers to become technicians.
“We need people to clean, sanitise and repair the machines,” he said.
Some workers view that plan with anxiety and scepticism.
“I see the robot and think, ‘Maybe we’re not going to have jobs anymore,’ “said Antonio Vengas, 48, one of the about 600 employees on the farm with Harv.
Labour groups also doubt that robots are prepared for the job.
“A machine cannot harvest delicate table grapes, strawberries or tree fruit without destroying the perfect presentation demanded by consumers and the retail food industry,” said Giev Kashkooli, political and legislative director for the United Farm Workers of America, which represents about 20,000 farmworkers across the country.
Unions don’t oppose technological advances, though, Kashkooli added.
“Robotics can play a role in making the job less backbreaking and play a role in helping people earn more money,” he said.
Out West, engineers at Washington State University are working with local farmers to test an apple-picking machine that has 12 mechanical arms.
It drives down orchard rows, snapping pictures of trees. A computer brain scans the images and finds the fruit. The arms grab and lower apples onto a conveyor belt.
Expect to see this technology on the market in the next three years, said Manoj Karkee, associate professor at the school’s Centre for Precision & Automated Agricultural Systems.
Farmers who struggle to hire workers wanted it “yesterday,” he said.
“We all know we need to go in this direction,” Karkee said. “The last advancement in apple picking was the invention of the ladder.”
The robot rarely hurts the produce. But as of today, one robotic apple-picker costs at least US$300,000 - too much for most budgets.
On the day Harv is put to the test, farmers and researchers arrive in three buses to Wishnatzki’s farm. They’ve come from Canada, Australia, Germany, Switzerland and across the United States. Curiosity hangs in the air like the hawks circling overhead.
Blaine Staples, a strawberry grower from Alberta, steps through the dirt toward the machine, which hisses as it claws up fruit. Dozens of people around him crouch to the ground. The machine’s arms go to work amid exclamations of awe and disbelief from onlookers.
“This is pretty much the new industrial revolution,” Staples said.
A few strawberry rows over, Doug Carrigan, a North Carolina farmer, stands in the group with his eyes locked on Harv.
“It doesn’t care if it’s a Sunday or a holiday,” Carrigan said. “The machine will work regardless.”—