Fruit and vegetable growers have looked with a longing eye to mechanization as a way out of the chronic labor shortage.
Certainly, there have been developments, although progress has been piecemeal.
In the spring of 2020, Augean Robotics released its “Burro,” an autonomous robot that ferries table grapes from pickers in the field to packers.
Another company, Abundant Robotics, is working on a preproduction prototype for an apple picker.
Automato, another product from the company, harvests tomatoes individually, which Abundant Robotics claims is affordable for small- and medium-sized farmers. Although it picks more slowly than a human, the Automato can work for up to 16 hours a day.
Yet another company, Octinion, has a machine it claims can pick strawberries, sort them by weight, and place them in a box, according to an article in Robotics Business Review. Indeed, Wish Farms, a berry grower based in Plant City, FL, introduced a mechanic strawberry harvester in 2017.
At this point, Philip L. Martin, a professor at the University of California at Davis, believes, there has been “overpromise on the technology front.” Nevertheless, he acknowledges the coronavirus has sped up developments in this area.
Moving Abroad
As has been observed in many industries, Martin argues the coronavirus has been “speeding up changes that were going to be happening anyway.” He identifies three major changes: an increase in mechanization, a rise in the H-2A program, and a rise in imports.
“Industry chatter suggests that imports were up from 2019 levels,” Martin says, but he resists comparisons between increased produce imports and offshoring in manufacturing. With produce, it is not merely a matter of labor costs, but also increasing restrictions on agrichemical use, such as the loss of methyl bromide as a tool for fumigating strawberry fields.
Development of new varieties is another factor.
“Growers are looking into plants and varieties that will do well in more humid climates,” Martin explains, such as those in the California and Arizona melon industries.
Another example is blueberries, as the development of new varieties has made it possible to grow the fruit—formerly produced only in cool northern conditions—in Mexico.
None of these developments has to do with labor, per se, but clearly the possibility of growing crops in countries with considerably lower labor costs is going to push production abroad.
This is a feature from the the March/April issue of Produce Blueprints Magazine. Click here to read the full issue.
