
Robot Crop Pickers Means Fewer Farm Workers - hourislate
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-20/robot-crop-pickers-limit-loss-of-u-s-farm-workers-to-trump-wall
======
Animats
The apple-picking machine from Phil Brown Welding shown not only isn't
robotic, it doesn't pick apples. It just supports human apple pickers by
putting them in a good position for picking, and collecting the fruit.[1]

Real robotic apple-picking machines are still experimental.[2] Too slow, too
fragile, too much tech support required. The video of the SRI International
spinoff, Abundant Robotics, shows too many people involved, and too much duct
tape. FFI Robotics in Israel has a similar demo system. Someone should build a
good one within the next few years. But they're not here yet.

In practice, many apples are harvested with tree shakers.[3] Simple, cheap,
and fast, but a bit hard on the tree. Then they're picked up off the ground
with another large, but dumb, machine.[4] There's a variation on this where
the tree shaker snaps a net around the tree and catches the fruit as it falls.

Once out of the fields, all further processing can be mechanized, and usually
is in the developed world. Incredibly fast computer vision systems inspect
fruit, berries, and sometimes even kernels of corn and grains of rice. Here's
a typical grape-sorting machine, with good slow-motion closeups of the
separation of perfect grapes from defective ones.[5]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJEtz8ejPvw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJEtz8ejPvw)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBcWZcjXr-I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBcWZcjXr-I)
[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6kBvc92KB0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6kBvc92KB0)
[4]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzQ0pfbIW0w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzQ0pfbIW0w)
[5]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbSww5SBqN4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbSww5SBqN4)

------
philipkglass
It's funny how two people can read the same article and come away with
opposite impressions. I didn't see anything in the article mourning the loss
of these jobs. I won't mourn the displaced jobs either. They're physically
demanding, don't offer steady employment, and don't pay very well.

I didn't see anything like Luddism expressed or implied in the article. Is it
Luddism if articles about labor saving technology don't always tack on a fairy
tale ending that goes "...and the surplus workers lived happily ever after,
assured that Lump of Labor is a fallacy and that there's no such thing as
demand satiation."?

~~~
st3v3r
But the thing is, it's not labor saving. It's labor displacing. That's not to
say we shouldn't try to automate this kind of thing; as you said, it's
terrible work. But it's still work that someone depends on to be able to
support themselves and their families. And usually, with this kind of thing,
there isn't much thought put into how to help those who are displaced by
increased automation. Those people still need to be able to support their
families.

~~~
philipkglass
I'm a big fan of decoupling the historical relationship between having salable
labor-power and having an income that can be exchanged for goods and services.
If the productive economy can go Full Robot, I think that it should, and
governments should start planning how their people can get _goods and
services_ as opposed to getting _jobs_.

That said, I think it's fair to expect displaced workers' countries to take
the lead on adaptation strategies for their own voters. Some displaced crop
pickers are eligible to vote in the US but I think that the bulk of them are
eligible only in countries outside the US. Undocumented immigrants don't
bother me but neither do I feel like it's the responsibility of Americans to
provide temporary foreign workers, documented or not, with jobs in the US.

------
pjc50
We can regret the loss of jobs to automation, but picking is _brutal_. Very
hard on the body. And it's seasonal, so it won't sustain you all year. I don't
think it'll be missed.

~~~
st3v3r
I mean, it'll probably be missed by those who rely on it for their livelihood.
I doubt they'll be offered much in the way of retraining or scholarship.

~~~
pjc50
The thing is, it's not much of a livelihood or career - you can't do it all
year, and it's very much only for the young and fit. And usually imported
guest workers.

Citation for "young":
[https://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2004-06-10.175439.h](https://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2004-06-10.175439.h)
: average age of guest workers issued permits was 22.

Broader discussion of fruit picking seasonal immigration (which mentions
automation too):
[https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2016-11-30/debates/9F8...](https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2016-11-30/debates/9F85AF34-B112-4AA8-BBF7-6ECB4542EC14/SeasonalAgriculturalWorkersScheme)

------
up_and_up
I have friends that have lived, worked and farmed in Watsonville, CA for a
long time. My wife's grandfather has also farmed in MI for decades. The
consensus is that farm-workers are getting harder and harder to come by. There
is a labor shortage. This shortage has encouraged the investments and greater
interest in picking technologies.

So to reframe, there are fewer farm workers anyway, due to better border
control, lack of interest, or whatever and the picking technologies become
more useful.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>There is a labor shortage. This shortage has encouraged the investments and
greater interest in picking technologies.

It's funny how it hasn't encouraged paying people more.

~~~
up_and_up
Its tough to raise the price of an agricultural product to accommodate for
higher wages. The market sets the price.

Plus its literally backbreaking work. Illegals would rather hang drywall,
paint houses or whatever and make 50% more.

~~~
leereeves
And it's an international market. Pickers in America are competing against the
cost of labor in developing nations.

------
phreeza
We read quite a bit on here about robots and machine learning replacing jobs.
Yet productivity growth seems to be almost stagnant, last I heard. So judging
by the statistics, this is as yet not a real, large scale phenomenon.

------
mvidal01
It would have been nice of Bloomberg to mention that Brad Goehring is a
politician. [https://www.facebook.com/pg/Brad-
Goehring-118538778165929/ab...](https://www.facebook.com/pg/Brad-
Goehring-118538778165929/about/)

------
jelliclesfarm
harvest automation is the most difficult and imo, the least urgent. there is a
difference between robots assisting human labour and robots replacing human
labour.

strawberry picking in japanese hydroponic farms comes closest to decent
automation. the robotic gripper can pick the ripest strawberry just in time.
this is mostly possible because ripe strawberries can be easily recognised
because it completely turns colour. colour sensors are utilised here. i have
heard of brix measuring also, but i cant imagine how it can be done.

strawberry picking is brutal in a regular farm and it is hideous for the soil.
it has to be picked a tad unripe so it is ripe when it reaches the supermarket
or wholesalers. that's why u-pick strawberry farms are so prevalent.

dutch milking robots are the best example of automation in agriculture..altho'
its not technically 'agriculture', but rather animal husbandry..but..oh well.

------
chris_va
This site has estimates for agricultural workforce over time:
[https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-
employment/](https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-employment/)

It is impressive to see how small the fraction has gotten already.

------
beat
Robots have been replacing farm workers a lot longer than this. 200 years ago,
90% of the population was involved in farming. Today, it's less than 3%.

------
mars4rp
there is a huge opportunity for robotic in farming. Tech industry completely
ignores it because it's not sexy enough!

~~~
tobltobs
or is it because a fruit picker working for a few $ per hour is just cheaper?

~~~
mars4rp
hiring taxi drivers are relatively cheap too, but all big tech companies are
investing on self driving cars. and because of all the investments and
research we know we will have a working model soon. also investment reduce the
cost. I can argue that cheaper and better food is even more important for the
society and human race than autonomous cars, but because it is not sexy enough
no one really spent money on it!

~~~
tobltobs
Is all this investment in self driving cars done to replace taxi drivers? Will
food get cheaper if picked by robots? And even if, what the use of it if
nobody can pay the cheaper prices anymore, because they don't have work
anymore, because their work is done by robots? Do you really think big money
does decide by sexiness of the product where to invest? Like some JS Hippster
selects a framework?

~~~
mars4rp
yes absolutely I believe that is how investments get decided on big
corporations. think about it, the only goal of any CEO is to drive the stock
price up. investing on sexy projects create hype and drives the stock prices
up, the more you get media coverage about your new project and more people
here about it, there going to be more investors and stock prices are going
higher !

------
tn13
Email puts mail delivery man out of work.

This luddite news clickbait should not have a place on HN.

~~~
Jedd
Historically, the luddite concern was that technology would replace humans
_with no consideration for what society would do with /for those humans_. This
was, and assuredly still is, a valid and pressing concern.

Technologies (outside of military) are rarely regarded as intrinsically bad,
but very few administrations over the millennia have felt comfortable talking
to their citizenry about how they're going to approach massive social and
economic changes.

This is in part a failing with governments throughout history, but doubtless
also a sad indictment on human nature (difficulty with short vs long term
plans, concerns over wealth disparity, preference for inherited social
expectations / status quo, etc).

------
rm_-rf_slash
Just gonna put an idea out here: what if food was so abundant it was free? How
much cheaper would it be to live? How much could be saved on redistribution
schemes like unemployment benefits or Social Security?

50,000 years ago, everybody's job was to find or hunt food. If you didn't your
kin-group starved. Then the Ice Ages thawed and we developed agriculture, so
only about 70% of the people had to produce food, while the others could
specialize in the production of tools or the provision of services like health
care. Industrialization and the Green Revolution have made food so plentiful,
we can have foods from all over the world available to us at any time of year.

So instead of worrying about the future of yesterday's dead jobs, let's make
the cost of living as low as possible.

~~~
WaxProlix
> Just gonna put an idea out here: what if food was so abundant it was free?

The land it's farmed on has inherent value to someone; there's no amount of
labor cost reduction or automation that can bring food costs below the value
of the land + whatever raw materials go into production (seed, feed,
whatever).

> Industrialization and the Green Revolution have made food so plentiful, we
> can have foods from all over the world available to us at any time of year.

And yet people starve all over the place; not just in 3rd world countries but
here in the USA. So either it's not that plentiful or we have a serious
logistical problem.

~~~
chris_va
> And yet people starve all over the place; not just in 3rd world countries
> but here in the USA. So either it's not that plentiful or we have a serious
> logistical problem.

It is the latter, in case you were curious. Access to food requires
uninterrupted distribution, which is not always the case.

~~~
DougN7
I don't think it's distribution - there is food available in every store I've
seen. It's money to buy the food with, or money to buy mobility to get to the
food.

~~~
khedoros1
They've been playing a PSA lately saying that "40% of the food produced in
America goes to waste". So, on average, people in this country are already
spending close to double the amount that they should for food.

So, there's distribution from farm to store to home, but there's a non-
existent link out of the home into a second-stage distribution pipeline, or
something.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
i have a farm and more than 40% never reaches anyone. it is not worth it for
me to harvest it even to donate it because the labour would wipe out my
profits. but if i let it rot and decompose..make my own compost, there is some
value in it for me. isnt that awful? but yea...farming reality. it is what it
is..

~~~
khedoros1
Is that one of the situations where subsidies make it worth it to grow in the
first place? Or where growing it as use for fertilizer makes it worthwhile?

I'd note that the paper that your sibling comment posted breaks down waste
into the different segments of the supply chain. The biggest single chunk
looks like they're in the "consumer losses" segment, and that the PSAs I've
seen are focused on how to interpret "best by" dates, eating leftovers, and
buying only what you need right then, rather than trying to blame farms for
waste.

------
whyileft
Sooo... the workers still doing the work get paid more than they used to and
we create new jobs designing and manufacturing the equipment. HN really needs
to starting flagging these poor stupid workers will all be out of work porn.

Diagnosing doctors will be replaced way before migrant farm labor disappears.

~~~
ceejayoz
Do you really think the proportions of that are going to work out? That laying
off a thousand farm workers will somehow generate a thousand replacement
engineering jobs (and that these farm workers will somehow get trained to fill
them)?

~~~
whyileft
They will not be laid off in such numbers because there is little economic
incentive to do so. Machines cost a lot of money. And they require maintenance
over time. You have to realize how little these workers make. Paying US rent
full time a person could barely afford to feed and shelter themselves on the
money these workers make.

We are talking 50 cents a bucket. Pennies per item. There is not a lot of room
for automation to undercut.

Workers in decision making and diagnosis type roles cost significantly more
and mostly only require software(not hardware) to replace. Think about how
much a doctor gets paid per cancer diagnosis? Or per cancer treatment
prescribed?

