[FBD]

-B4 Ranch had the correct answer to who will pick our lettuce, and the politics behind old school farming, vs mechanization in post#24:

>"Just so you don't lose sleep over who will pick the lettuce, allow me to explain some facts to you.

When Cesar Chavez decided that he would organize the crop workers into not picking tomatoes, a couple of brothers decided that since tomatoes are a row crop, they could design a machine to harvest them.

What happened? In three years all tomatoes were being picked by machines, the farmers planted more acreage of tomatoes and the the price of tomatoes dropped.
Lettuce is a row crop. Get ready for a price drop"<

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Here is an article by an agricultural engineer, Harold Brewer, on the subject of mechanization of farming, and the politics that stifle mechanical innovation:


"My favorite season on the farm during the 1930s was summer, when we harvested wheat, oats, and alfalfa. Harvest started when we rolled out a binder and thresher, stored since last summer. The binder cut stalks, tied them into bundles, and dumped them into rows. The thresher separated grain from straw and chaff. At threshing time, several neighbors and many itinerant workers assembled at our farm. With luck, no rain fell and the grain was safely stored in the granary within a few days.

Now, a combine rolls into a field. In a matter of hours, one or two workers harvest and store the grain. Labor is reduced at least tenfold.
Similarly, for harvesting alfalfa. What took many days and people is now accomplished in a few days with one or two people.

Childhood ended. I left the farm, completed military service, then enrolled at the University of California at Davis in the Agricultural Engineering Department.

Its researchers were world-renowned for developing machines for field production. Field production machines are important because each replaces ten or more workers. Nations with the lowest percentage of workers on farms are the wealthiest.

For example, the U.S.A. has 2% of its population working on farms, while Ethiopia has 84%. More? Japan 5% and China 68%.
My major at UCD, power and machinery, brought me into contact with people developing harvesters for crops such as grapes, peaches, and tomatoes.

The tomato project was particularly interesting. Several people contributed in various ways, such as developing a variety that could withstand mechanical handling. But the key element of the harvester proved elusive. This finally fell into place when Steven Sluka, a refugee from the 1956 Hungarian Revolution - (some immigrants can be useful!)
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conceived the idea of cutting vines loose from the ground, lifting them, then shaking the tomatoes off the vines. His technique was the basis for the first successful mechanical tomato harvesters.

Growers in California were faced with the loss of workers who were hand-harvesting their crops. Politicians and Labor had teamed up to discontinue the bracero program, so that wages paid domestic laborers could be driven up. However, UCD researchers, with grower funding, had just successively tested the mechanical tomato harvester. When braceros walked out of the fields, mechanical harvesters rolled in.


Several years later, the mechanization program at UCD was shut down and dismantled. Politicians did not intend to have their labor-friendly policies thwarted again. Just to make sure, they and their allies reached out to the Agricultural Research Service in the U. S. Department of Agriculture and dismantled all field mechanization programs there, too.

Mechanical lettuce harvesters were under development in the 1960s. That work was stopped. Today, lettuce is still harvested by hand in the field.

The dismantling occurred over a period of years starting in the 1960s. Nothing overt, just not renewing any mechanization projects or starting any new ones. The mechanical tomato harvester had rankled a lot of labor-friendly people. When we say "labor," we might as well say Mexican workers, legal or illegal.

But the precipitating event - I am relying on memory - was when a Secretary of Agriculture was due for a photo op in Northern California with UCD researchers, spotlighting a fruit-catching frame used in mechanization. Word got out and the next thing we knew the event was called off.

Cesar Chavez, head of the agricultural workers union, pulled the right strings and stopped it cold. He didn't want any more mechanization, which would put his union members out of work.

That big hole in the Mexican border started in earnest when politicians and their labor allies stopped the development of any new agricultural field machines. The stopper on mechanization went all the way through the 1980's and extended into the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA.

Finally, around 1990, it was all right to "quietly" do mechanization research again, but it had to be labeled as being for the environment, or for food quality, or whatever. Field mechanization to save labor was still not allowed.

Meanwhile, across the Pacific at an Institute outside Tokyo, the mechanization work continued without interruption.

And rural America fills up with foreigners.

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About the author- Harold Brewer:

(Harold Brewer was born in Wichita and raised on a farm in central Kansas. He served in the U.S. Air Force during the Berlin Airlift and the Korean War.

After leaving military service, he attended the University of California and received degrees in agricultural engineering from Berkeley and Davis. He has done research at the university and federal government levels on advanced agricultural systems."

This article is adapted from his recent book Fig Leaves And Masks; available at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0967545501/vdare)

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[Ginifer]

It all boils down to cheap labor and votes. We have the technology to harvest the crops, but big business, special interests, and our Congress would rather propagate the "We need illegal immigrants".

I've written to my senators and told them not to expect my vote when they come up for re-election. They were put in by the people and the people can vote them out. Bet they start listening to us then after their job security is on the line.

[Dat Mon]

Excellent post...thanks for the ping.

Ive stated repeatedly on this forum that cheap labor disrupts the natural free market dynamics of our economy. Those market dynamics work in two ways:

1) The cost / productivity ratio of labor intensive operations provides incentive for engineers such as myself to invent and manufacture high tech machinery or equipment to automate the labor process, thus greatly increasing productivity. Your post shows some results of this activity.

Instead of low skilled labor sweating in the fields, higher skilled labor is needed to manufacture and maintain the machines, as well as program and run them.

American companies manufacture the machines in America, providing high quality jobs and incomes, and sell those machines around the world, increasing our trade.

Those machines, in turn, allow other less developed nations to increase their standard of living as well. Its a win-win all around.

2) When American industry is less competitive due to tax policies, an out of control legal system, and burdensome regulations, AND there is no quick payback / relief in the form of cheap labor, CONGRESS is forced to take action.

The kind of action I want to see is tax reform, tort reform, and regulation reform.

Providing cheap labor is a temporary balm which will cost us big time in the long run, IMHO

[moehoward]

Amazing information. Thank you.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

RE: Mr. Harold Brewer and UCDavis

Good post and information.

IMO there are jobs that most Americans won't do and I have sympathy for the small businessman.

But the reason many of those jobs still exist is because there are people who are more equal than others. They can stop progress with the stroke of a pen on a political contribution check.

I have watched tomatoes being harvested, one machine and one truck along side as vines are uprooted, shaken and tomatoes fill the conveyor belt leading into the open trailers. It's fast and other trucks returning for more wait nearby. 24/7. Tomatoes spilling off the trailers litter the roads especially at corners.

The more-equal ones would rather see the poor stooped over filling that conveyor belt. Go figure.

[B4Ranch]

I heard rumors that lettuce harvestors have already been designed and are waiting for the correct political moment to be introduced.

When you think of the vegetable row crops that are now harvested by mechanical harvestors, I can't think why lettuce would be a problem. Onions, potatoes, asparagus, broccoli, corn, tomatoes, sugar beets, peppers, grapes, all the seed crops, peanuts, tobacco, cotton, and a bunch more are now under mechanical harvesting.


The Legacy 2480 brings a higher level of reliability, efficiency and productivity to vegetable harvesting.

[KiloLima]

Here is an interesting correlation when it comes to machinery. While the Mexican illegal alien lobby, as you say, opposed mechanical harvesting in order to save their agricultural jobs, when it comes to doing the "gardening" in urban areas they instituted and advocated the use of leaf blowers and weed whackers, machines that real gardeners do not need.

The Los Angeles City Council passed an ordinance banning the use of leaf blowers but the Mexican "gardeners" went right ahead -- to this day -- breaking that law. This defiance of the law was advocated by the manufacturers of the leaf blowers. Now, we have flooding in our streets because the storm drains are clogged by leaves and debris that got there via leaf blower.