As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers race to replace workers with robots

LA Times ^ | July 21, 2017 | Geoffrey Mohan

[C19fan]

Driscoll’s is so secretive about its robotic strawberry picker it won’t let photographers within telephoto range of it.

But if you do get a peek, you won’t see anything humanoid or space-aged. AgroBot is still more John Deere than C-3PO — a boxy contraption moving in fits and starts, with its computer-driven sensors, graspers and cutters missing 1 in 3 berries.

[C19fan]

But but I was told all the food would rot if farmers did not get their annual inflow of Mexican and like farm workers. Instead farmers are using machines to replace humans and the machine don't require a welfare state.

[Right Brother]

[grobdriver]

a boxy contraption moving in fits and starts, with its computer-driven sensors, graspers and cutters missing 1 in 3 berries.

But it will get better as these machines are developed, and while prices may increase in the short term, the end result will be goodness.

[MichaelCorleone]

...and they don’t relieve themselves on the lettuce either.

[central_va]

Robotic pickers beget rock hard engineered fruit. A better solution is to kick out illegals and use Americans to hand pick delicious soft juicy natural fruit. Yes, the fruit would cost about 1% more at retail, but so worth it.

What "business" people don't realize is squeezing every cent out of the cost equation often leads to inferior products.

[Vlad The Inhaler]

While 45 million Americans receive government welfare and other handouts so they don’t have to work.

What proportion of that 45 million are able bodied and what proportion are truly needy and unable to provide for themselves?

You can bet that is a detail the government doesn’t want known.

[Oldexpat]

We buy Driscoll’s strawberries when they are a buck a pack. Which is often.

[Parmy]

Kalifornia has plenty of workers on their welfare rolls.

[KarlInOhio]

Are the hard fruits for picking orshipping? I’m eager for tomato season so I can get real tomatoes rather than the shaved orange tennis balls the groceries have.

[samtheman]

“We’ve been masking this problem all these years with a system that basically allowed you to accept fraudulent documents as legal, and that’s what has been keeping this workforce going,” said Steve Scaroni

---

But of course there’s no voter fraud. And the media all roll their eyes when Trump mentions voter fraud.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

Where are all the homies and cholos? There are millions of them and they are all unemployed.

[JudyinCanada]

So true!

Why are the already hard working tax payers sending money to second and third generation welfare bums when labor is badly needed in the field.

Oh, but then we’re back to the workers relieving themselves on the produce. In face, I’m quite sure most of them are unemployable.

[KeyLargo]

This will get the RINOs undies in a twist along with the WSJ and Chamber of Commerce.

Tsk, tsk.

[PGR88]

The immigrants are the customers of the leftist nanny-state. If they work, well, that’s OK, but its not why they were allowed in.

[xp38]

What's all this I hear about a laser shortage?

[xp38]

What's all this I hear about a laser shortage?

[Moonman62]

Robotic pickers beget rock hard engineered fruit. A better solution is to kick out illegals and use Americans to hand pick delicious soft juicy natural fruit. Yes, the fruit would cost about 1% more at retail, but so worth it.

...

The robotic picked fruit has a market, and so does your perfect fruit, but I suspect your 1% estimate is way off.

[elpadre]

Bring back the old “bracero” program (not sure of the name) in which labor companies hired workers in mexico and returned them to mexico after the harvest with no families involved. They contracted with the farm associations. It worked great in 40’s and 50’s. I am not certain, but it seems the workers received part of their pay after returning to mexico.

[arthurus]

End welfare and revert to an old time work-or-starve system and wach the “shortage” collapse.

[RckyRaCoCo]

Heh, as soon as I read the title an image popped in my head.

...that's it...exactly.