http://www.gbcmotors.com.au/braud.php
Posted on 07/17/2007 7:15:21 AM PDT by BGHater
Labor - A mechanical grape harvester could be the answer to a shortage of farmworkers in Oregon's vineyards
Surrounded by shiny new tractors, Carl Capps spends most days talking about horsepower, hydraulics and transmissions. He paid little attention to anti- and pro-immigrant-legalization activists who marched at the state Capitol.
Then the immigration debate came to him last fall, after he sold a quarter-million-dollar machine that harvests wine grapes -- the first in the Willamette Valley.
The New Holland Braud grape harvester can do the work of 40 handpickers in a fraction of the time.
Suddenly, vineyard owners were calling Capps to schedule demonstrations, saying they couldn't cope with worsening worker shortages -- or immigration raids. Their concerns were heightened after a U.S. Senate immigration bill that would have offered legal status for up to 900,000 undocumented agricultural workers failed, and immigration officers detained nearly 200 workers at a Portland produce processing plant.
Oregonians for Immigration Reform, a restrictionist group, touted the European machine as a beacon of a future without illegal labor.
"As soon as word about this got out, the immigration issue was the first thing that came up," Capps said. "The bloggers are all over it. They're saying, 'Finally, see? We told you that you could get by without all this immigration.' "
The harvester is a powerful and controversial symbol as Oregon and the nation struggle with the economic realities of immigration. As public pressure drives a border crackdown and increased enforcement, farmers nationwide face labor shortages as high as 30 percent to 50 percent during harvest. Further complicating matters, large numbers of former migrant laborers have switched to construction jobs for the higher pay and year-round stability.
The high-tech machine -- which uses "shaker rod" technology to coax grapes off the vine into molded silicon rubber collection baskets -- may herald a future of all-mechanized agriculture.
"Oregon doesn't have the scale or the research to make an immediate leap," said Brent Searle, special assistant to the director of the Oregon Department of Agriculture. "But in farming, it's always taken a crisis to make big changes.
"Necessity is the mother of invention."
Machine comes to Oregon
Often when Jim Ludwick, president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform, tried to change people's minds about illegal immigration, they'd come back with the need for labor "that no one else wants to do."
"They'd always want to talk about farmworkers," Ludwick said. He'd tell them about California farmers who had mechanized lettuce harvesting and were using citrus pickers with infrared sensors to detect ripe fruit. "They didn't buy it. There's an aura about farming, and they like to think there are farmworkers out there."
Then last fall, he read in a local farming newspaper about the New Holland Braud harvester at Evergreen Vineyards in McMinnville. The aviation giant, which has vineyards adjacent to its aviation museum -- and a Spruce Goose wine label that honors its star attraction -- bought the machine for the 2006 harvest.
It picked 3.5 tons of pinot noir grapes in 20 minutes with three workers, the Capital Press article said. Usually that would have taken 34 workers an hour.
Finally, Ludwick had an Oregon example to make his case. He began to tout the New Holland harvester in speeches, as well as to state legislators, members of Congress and radio talk-show hosts.
"This is what modern societies do," he said. "They mechanize and wean themselves off cheap stoop labor."
Ludwick said mechanized tomato-harvesting took off only after the end of the 1960s Bracero guest-worker program ended a steady supply of Mexican workers.
The only problem with Ludwick's pitch? Evergreen Vineyards won't touch the immigration debate with a 10-foot shaking rod.
"We are not going to latch onto any political connection whatsoever," said Mike Wilhoit, a vice president of the McMinnville vineyard owned by the international aviation mega-company. "We bought this machine for the quality of the grapes."
Wilhoit said Evergreen's primary motivation was to pick grapes at night, when they are cool and will not ferment. Because of the machine's speed, grapes spend little time sitting in bins before they're whisked off to refrigeration.
"They never get warm once," he said.
Evergreen still relies on handpicking, he said. "We love our workers, no matter what country they come from."
Oregon's farms too hilly
Though many California vineyards have entire fleets of harvesters, it's unlikely Oregon will follow suit.
Unlike California's hundreds of acres of flat vineyards, Oregon vineyards tend to be small operations on rolling hillsides, said Dick Shea, owner of Shea Vineyards in Yamhill County. Few can afford a six-figure piece of equipment, and the large, tall machines have typically not been stable on hills. Evergreen is more like a California vineyard, large and on a flat valley floor.
If machines were feasible and could produce the same quality of wine, Shea said, "I think everybody would prefer not to be worried about seasonal laborers. Inevitably there is not as much as you want, and it seems harder every year."
Shea is also skeptical that a machine can handle a high-end wine grape delicately enough to measure up to hand labor. Even if a machine could pick that well, other jobs -- particularly leaf removal to prevent mildew and expose grapes to more sunlight -- still require hand labor.
Capps said New Holland has developed attachments for those tasks.
The demonstrations have converted a lot of skeptics. Many start with vintners standing with crossed arms, determined not to let a machine-picked grape touch their fermenting vats, he said.
"Give me a break," Capps said. "I defy anyone to distinguish handpicked grapes from the ones picked by these machines."
For all agriculture that relies on hand labor, customer perception plays a big role, said Ken Bailey, a cherry farmer in The Dalles and vice chairman of the Oregon Department of Agriculture Board.
For example, mechanically harvested cherries require pre-treating with a chemical that loosens the fruit, followed by a machine that shakes it off.
"What results is a stemless cherry. It does not necessarily affect the quality of the cherry," Bailey said. "But will customers be willing to pay as much if it was sprayed with this chemical and has no stem?"
How much the stem on a cherry, the cachet of handpicked pinot noir or other intangibles affect the consumer experience -- and hence demand -- remain to be seen.
"If you change your harvesting, you're going to change your product. That's too big a risk for a lot of farmers to take right now," Bailey said.
"But if there's no labor, you'll have to switch."
1 man-hour or 34 man-hours. No contest.........
That is a wonderful invention.
This is what ingenuity brings when presented with a shortage (of legal workers).
Maybe they can go home now.
Is it different for cab-sauv? And, is it linear or exponential when applied to other crops such as, oh say, lettuce?
I read an article about the evolution of picking machines some time back.
Basically it said that corn harvesters and such were relatively easy to engineer but machines for ‘delicate’ stuff would be harder and more expensive to develop and that there was no demand so it wasn’t being pursued.
Not that it couldn’t be done just that there was no demand for the R&D investment.
Has been used in Australia and New Zealand for years. The farmers just thought the illegals were cheaper than the machine. And the tax payer was footing the rest of the bills.
Interesting. This reminds me of a bumper sticker I’ve seen a few times, which reads: “If I’d known about THIS, I would’ve picked my own damned cotton.”
Substitution Effect in action. Capital goods can substitute for labor if the price of labor increases. So, for example, if all illegal immigrants obeyed the law and returned to their native countries leaving us with “jobs Americans won’t do,” then we’ll primarily mechanize our way to the same end result, if at a slightly higher cost.
Example #2: I’ll bet anything that meat packing is perfectly mechanizable if labor costs increased enough. Who really wants to piece chickens? I can see by the cut of the salmon at the market that fish packers already have mechanized fillet machines.
Substitution Effect #3: If the Illegals leave, then there will be incentive to offer busing and summer jobs to poor inner city kids to go pick fruit. I know that the Ranier Valley in Seattle has enough labor to pick all the Ranier Cherries in Yakima, given the right price for people’s time. And those rural jobs would have a salutory effect on many social problems in the inner city.
Economics cures most ills. We can enforce the laws of the country and survive, with the substitution effect ensuring that most jobs “Americans won’t do” are still accomplished, if at a marginally higher price.
Price: The adjusting factor by which most anything is possible.
John Henry was a railroad man,
He worked from six ‘till five,
“Raise ‘em up bullies and let ‘em drop down,
I’ll beat you to the bottom or die.”
John Henry said to his captain:
“You are nothing but a common man,
Before that steam drill shall beat me down,
I’ll die with my hammer in my hand.”
John Henry said to the Shakers:
“You must listen to my call,
Before that steam drill shall beat me down,
I’ll jar these mountains till they fall.”
John Henry’s captain said to him:
“I believe these mountains are caving in.”
John Henry said to his captain: “Oh, Lord!”
“That’s my hammer you hear in the wind.”
John Henry he said to his captain:
“Your money is getting mighty slim,
When I hammer through this old mountain,
Oh Captain will you walk in?”
John Henry’s captain came to him
With fifty dollars in his hand,
He laid his hand on his shoulder and said:
“This belongs to a steel driving man.”
John Henry was hammering on the right side,
The big steam drill on the left,
Before that steam drill could beat him down,
He hammered his fool self to death.
They carried John Henry to the mountains,
From his shoulder his hammer would ring,
She caught on fire by a little blue blaze
Not a legitimate comparison. You need to calculate the hourly costs of the machine as well. Fuel, maintenence, depreciation, debt service, taxes, etc.
There might even be some unemployed or welfare people that might work for $9 an hour.
To me, the answer for this is a "clearing house" for migrant workers. There, they could get background checks, fingerprints, and the proper documents to be hired. An employer calls for the cleared workers and says "I need 50 pickers for next Monday", and they are on their way. They need to stay out of trouble, out of our school system, out of our welfare system, and out of our legal system to stay and work. Once they are finished, they go home, to Mexico. Anyone failing any of these provisions for work here is banned forever. The problem is, they aren't all food pickers and dishwashers. They shouldn't be able to be carpenters, brick layers, electricians, etc. These are definitely jobs Americans need and want, if paid properly. When I was growing up, a brick layer could support his family and live pretty good on his salary. The cheaper labor doesn't make the house cheaper, just more profit and less quality.
I remember General Homes had to give refunds on hundreds of homes because the mortar wasn't mixed properly and inferior bricks were used. Whole walls fell off houses within a year or two in Houston.
I need a machine that will pick blackberries. I’m tired of getting all scratched up just to have some homemade cobbler. Although this machine may be a little bit pricey.
As long as cheap or slave labor is available, no labor saving device is desirable.
Idle hands, and all that...
Check your math; one machine hour, 102 man hours.
My machines won’t run away or get uppity.........
How you get 102?.......
I'd agree, but I'm busy trying to get a windoze application to do what is says it's doing...
BTW why will WMP burn an MP3, but can't play an MP3????
I don’t use WMP...........
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