Necessity is the mother of invention. If you can figure out how to put music on a CD you can damn well figure out how to pick strawberries with a machine.
And don't run the 'cheap lettuce' argument here.....after you add in the schooling, medicating, and incarcerating of the illegals that head of lettuce costs a fortune.
Machines pick and pack our tomatos, that is why we have to grow our own or find a boutique grower of heirloom varieties somewhere to get an edible tomato.
Mechanization works fine with crops that are already sturdy enough to survive, but no one has yet figured out how to pick delicates mechanically and they have been selling machines to supposedly do it for 50 years.
So9