
Machines replace migrants as Maine blueberry harvest blooms - prostoalex
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article34266051.html
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generic_user
How anyone can lament the disappearance of back breaking unskilled field work
is beyond me. Mechanisation and destruction of repetitive unskilled work is
the driving force for the improvement of living standards and the advancement
of civilization since the beginning of recorded history. The invention of
agrarian civilization itself displaced hunter-gatherer tribes, should we
lament the disappearance of nomads also? This romanticism seems a tad silly.

~~~
mc32
It's because the major proportion of those laborers have little to offer
beside manual labor. Therefore as a labor force at a disadvantage, the
publication takes the side of the plight of the disadvantaged. Of course a lot
of the blame can be placed on the societies who value education too little to
educate their population. On the other hand many of the laborers are
unprivileged in their home countries as well. So it's also a double whammy for
them.

This particular issue is of less concern to American workers and if anything
it's a good thing in that no one has to do backbreaking labor. It's like
decrying the loss of coal mining --yes, it's a loss for the people losing
those jobs, but society as a whole and the labor force as a whole is better
off without those kinds of thankless and really hard jobs.

The sad part is that we have unskilled people willing to do these jobs.

~~~
generic_user
I share your concern for the people effected but the notion that these people
have little to offer and can not, or will not move up the labor chain does far
more harm then good. Most westerners great grand parents were either farm
laborers or did some form of back breaking manual labour. The literacy rate
was horrible and so forth. I doubt very much these farm workers could not
transition into some from of service jobs with very little training. Or some
lateral move into other manual labor positions in other parts of the economy.

I hired someone from Mexico on a visa into a 6 figure a year job who's father
was literally a farm laborer. He was quite capable to do his job. Expecting
nothing from people is a self fulfilling prophecy.

~~~
mc32
While it's true immigrants in the 19 and early 20th centuries were uneducated,
they had a generation or two available to catch up. In today's day and age,
they have a few years to adjust to this new reality.

It's true that a good many could transition to other higher level jobs, but at
that cost of labor, jobs will go to the domestic labor force. I.e. If I have a
job where the going rate is 25/hr, why would I go thru the hoops of
sponsorship in one case and on the other hand running afoul of immigration law
by hiring a worker who can't legally work? Foreign migrant laborers are on
special visas and don't transfer to other sectors.

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eru
And that's why we need easier immigration with less strings attached.

~~~
mc32
On the other hand if software is eating the world, I'm sure constituents will
want to ensure their system protects their access to jobs over people who are
trying to hop into the less worse off system.

So, for example, if Brazil is doing particularly well, I'm sure the citizens
will want to fend off workers from places where jobs have eroded more quickly.

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ghshephard
It's particularly import for people who are legislating minimum wage laws to
read articles like this. Most of the legislation I've seen drafted, always has
an exception for farm labor - and here is an example why. If you _didn 't_
have that exception, then it would quickly become the case that
automation/machinery ends up being cheaper (or soon will), and those jobs will
vanish pretty quickly.

Now, that might not be entirely undesirable, from the perspective of the
legislator (I.E. Move people up the feeding chain to more productive, better
paying jobs, and automate the drudge work like raking berries) - but at the
very least, they need to be aware of the impact of what they are doing.

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brc
My local McDonalds is experimenting with touch screen menus. I guess automated
kitchens won't be far behind.

It will be a shame when such an entry level job is no longer available to
teenagers to learn about doing a job and working in a team.

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blazespin
No, it won't. The sooner we shift from labor to education as our source of
social dignity the better. Let's pay people to go to school rather than to
flip burgers.

~~~
generic_user
Its ridiculous that people think the destruction of menial labour will be
destructive given all the evidence to the contrary. Jobs have been render
obsolete for centuries and the outcome has been an increase in education and
skilled labour to do more rewarding jobs.

~~~
ecoponderosa
An exception is small scale local artisanal natural/organic market gardens and
family farms that rely on skilled hand labor almost exclusively. You will
never and should never consider replacing that with automation and machines.
The quality products made available to the public from these operations
benefit from the extra attention to detail and experience gained from a
lifetime spent in this type of agriculture, sometimes called peasant farming.
If you want to know more about peasant sovereignty read the following: Peasant
Sovereignty? [http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/peasant-
so...](http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/peasant-sovereignty/)
By Evaggelos Vallianatos See also:
[http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture](http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture)
Permaculture

~~~
ghshephard
I would take the opposite perspective - I would think that artisanal/organic
gardening, in _particular_ would benefit from automation. Automation will give
us the ability to spend significant periods of time _on each specific piece of
produce_ , in a way that no human being ever could. In particular, with
organic gardening, you can completely eliminate the need for insecticides and
pesticides _AND_ not rely on inherently insect/pest resistant produce (which
can be innately toxic) by growing in clean rooms.

The key reasons to automate, is it allows us to make this type of food
available to masses for fractions of the cost of what it would take for a
human to grow it.

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violentvinyl
I'm now visualizing a micro drone that flies around and harpoons insects.
Thank you for that.

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3Pi
Despite the impact it has on the availability of unskilled manual labour jobs,
I think it's great that machines are finally turning to harvesting - having
worked on a similar project to do with grapes (specifically, pruning), it's
not always the easiest of things.

It does highlight to me that we are getting closer to the point of needing to
rethink labour distribution, because the non-technical jobs are the easiest to
replace with machines.

~~~
brc
Even the people who get replaced get some benefit in that they get access to
cheaper food. Not enough to replace their income, but the point is that
automation is good for humanity.

Only the Luddites want to smash machines and keep a shirt costing a days
wages.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Even the people who get replaced get some benefit in that they get access to
> cheaper food.

As long as that food is not then exported to consumers who are willing to pay
more for it than the poor are able.

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Animats
There have been automated picking machines for almost everything for years,
mostly with purely mechanical systems. All the big field crops were mechanized
decades ago. Blueberry picking machines have been around for decades. They
require flat ground and neat plant rows, though.

Automated strawberry picking is still hard, but Agrobot makes a robotic
strawberry picking machine.[1] This is an vision-guided multi-arm robot
system, which is rare in agriculture. These more complex machines are still
marginal economically, but the electronics can only get cheaper.

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/video/agrobot-automates-the-work-of-
berry...](http://www.wsj.com/video/agrobot-automates-the-work-of-berry-
harvesting/D07A91E8-C453-4652-8ECE-2229FB862F6E.html)

~~~
danieltillett
Good as strawberry picking has to be one of the worst jobs in agriculture.

I think bananas are one of the hardest to automate, but I can't find the old
reference I had on this.

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afarrell
I wonder if there is some sort of more incremental way to introduce basic
minimum income that won't get legislative pushback and will scale with
automation.

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blazespin
This is already happening in the form of welfare, food stamps, tax credits,
etc. lots of different programs.

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afarrell
The whole point of BMI is to eliminate those programs and the perverse
incentives that come with them (ex: people on CA-TANF are not allowed to have
more than $2500 in savings or something.) and replace it with just cutting a
cheque.

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hiou
In other news Excel has replaced 1,000s of programmers. So sick of this lame
tech worker bias with these "poors" jobs. These posts on HN really reinforce
every stereotype toward tech culture. Please stop posting and upvoting this
crap.

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ISL
It's news of change; the article didn't seem like it had too much of a slant.

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hiou
Its not. It's the posting of this crap like only the poors will be replaced

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GFK_of_xmaspast
Who the hell says 'the poors'.

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dbcooper
Gawker posters and writers.

