We could have had one already. It's Ceasar Chavez's legacy. He, through the UFW and other unions saw to it that government sponsored R & D programs (that attempted to find new and improved ways in which to automate stoope labor) were effectively dismantled. Tragic. Every single time in our nation's history were our farmers have been forced to mechanize it has paid huge dividends. Take a fraction of the department of Agriculture's budget ( a few billion dollars) and devote it exclusively to developing new mechanization prototypes and the program would pay for itself in short order. Should have done it a long time ago.
Personally, I'd put Philip Martin from the University of California in charge of the program.