As Immigrant Farmworkers Become More Scarce, Robots Replace Humans

SALINAS, Calif. — As a boy, Abel Montoya remembers his father arriving home from the lettuce fields each evening, the picture of exhaustion, mud caked knee-high on his trousers. “Dad wanted me to stay away from manual labor. He was keen for me to stick to the books,” Mr. Montoya said. So he did, and went to college.

Yet Mr. Montoya, a 28-year-old immigrant’s son, recently took a job at a lettuce-packing facility, where it is wet, loud, freezing — and much of the work is physically taxing, even mind-numbing.

Mr. Montoya is among a new generation of farmworkers here at Taylor Farms, one of the world’s largest producers and sellers of fresh-cut vegetables, which recently unveiled a fleet of robots designed to replace humans — one of the agriculture industry’s latest answers to a diminishing supply of immigrant labor.

The smart machines can assemble 60 to 80 salad bags a minute, double the output of a worker.

Enlisting robots made sound economic sense, Taylor Farms officials said, for a company seeking to capitalize on Americans’ insatiable appetite for healthy fare at a time when it cannot recruit enough people to work in the fields or the factory.

A decade ago, people lined up by the hundreds for jobs at packing houses in California and Arizona during the lettuce season. No more.

“Our work force is getting older,” said Mark Borman, chief operating officer of Taylor Farms. “We aren’t attracting young people to our industry. We aren’t getting an influx of immigrants. How do we deal with that? Innovation.”

Moving up the technology ladder creates higher-skilled positions that can attract young people like Mr. Montoya, who is finishing a computer science degree

This is manure. More than 3 million migrant and seasonal farmworkers are estimated to be in the United States.

In an expanded study, according to the National Center for Farmworker Health, Inc, the majority (72%) of all farmworkers are foreign born, 68 percent of all farmworkers were born in Mexico, 45 percent were from the traditional sending states of west central Mexico, including Guanajuato, Jalisco and Michoacán, 20 percent of farmworkers were from the non-traditional sending states of southern Mexico, including Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Puebla, Morelos and Veracruz, 3 percent of farmworkers were born in Central American countries, 1 percent of farmworkers was born elsewhere.

Twenty-nine percent (29%) of foreign-born farmworkers have spent 20 or more years in the United States, 26 percent have been in the U.S. for 10 to 19 years, 19% have been in the U.S. for 5 to 9 years, and 26% have been here for 4 or less years. Farmworkers in the United States have an average age of 36. Seventy-six percent (76%) are over 25 years old, 13 percent are between 18 and 21, 9 percent are between 22 and 24, and 3 percent are between 14 and 17.

Seventy-eight percent (78%) of crop workers were male and 22% were female. Fifty-nine percent (59%) of farmworkers surveyed were married, 35% were single and 6% were divorced, separated or widowed. Fifty two percent (52%) of all agricultural workers were parents. And noted for English speaking ability: 35 percent said they could not speak English “at all,” 30 percent said they could speak English “well,” 27 percent said they could speak English “a little,” and 8 percent said they could speak English “somewhat.”

The average level of completed education was 8th grade. 40 percent had completed grades 1 to 6, 17 percent completed grades 7 to 9, 28 percent had completed grades 10 to 12, and 9 percent attained some form of higher education.

As for the families of the low-skilled working immigration population in the country, 51 percent (76 percent counting immigrant-led households with children) are collecting some sort of check from our welfare services.

So they aren’t getting younger because the welfare capacity and the free education they get handed to them is lucid enough to sustain them without taking low level jobs they are barely trained to accomplish. Pavlov rang the dinner bell and they showed up in force. They aren’t getting younger because the US is providing a better form of life than they will ever get doing what they are actually capable of using funds through the welfare system. And taxpayers are paying the bills.

So, as usual, the NY Times is not telling the truth. They are covering the real problem. If it wasn’t for the welfare system, the free health care, and the free educations system so they can get enough education to get a better job, they would be in the farm workers status just like the people that got into the US before them and weren’t offered the benefits they are receiving and were trapped in their position and held there. So they had to continue to support the people that put them there so they could eat and send money home to a family they can’t bring up to the US for lack of funds or their illegal status.

rwood

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