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As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots

latimes.com

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Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots

#171

Post by criddell »

rfrank wrote: post #170
criddell wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So farmers don't matter, just like other workers who lose their jobs to automation. Nobody said that and I can't believe you would think anybody actually sees the world like that. I would hope that we can find more meaningful ways for people to spend their days than doing things that can be better accomplished via machinery. Otherwise we really are just paying one group to break windows so another group can be paid…

Automating people's jobs away without meaningful replacements is how regions get decimated, and you end up with very large swaths of very angry people without much to lose.

True and nobody is really arguing that point.

Producers should be looking for ways to produce more efficiently. Governments should be working on the social problems. We all have a part to play in making our economy work well.

Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots

#172

Post by Animats »

evgen wrote: post #52
Retric wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speed is significantly less important than your suggesting. The hard parts are not damaging the crop and most importantly not doing the wrong thing.

I would have to disagree on that point; speed is vitally important for equipment like this. Speed and accuracy determine how many of these machines you would need during the short window of peak ripeness. Speed determines how long it will take to get a return (if any) on the capital investment required for the machine. There is a reason that agricultural equipment is so large and most of it has to do with the short w…

Speed, cost, and product quality all matter. Harvesting mechanization has been a slow progression from easy crops (wheat) to medium difficulty crops (cotton) to moderately hard crops (grapes) [1]. Just about everything which can be picked by some clever combination of blades, blowers, brushes, shakers, springy tines, and vacuums has been done. The final frontier is the ones that need eye-hand coordination.

Today, you need a smartphone's worth of compute power, good vision and control software, and very good mechanical engineering. There are demos of machines picking almost everything; it's now a student project at ag schools. Here's an orange picker, built using an off-the-shelf robot arm. Too slow to be useful. [2] The electronics cost is no longer the problem; its the mechanical parts.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDDVdBLHY7I [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnQ94JFqYZY

Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots

#173

Post by rgbrenner »

rjsw wrote: post #163
rgbrenner wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They dont get welfare. Farms are heavily dependent on immigrants, mostly illegal immigrants from mexico (90% are foreign born) for crop workers. They work on our farms for very little pay (but probably more than they would have in mexico), work here for 10 years or so saving as much as possible, then go back to mexico. They may travel from CA > WA through the season; or on the east: FL > OH > ME (this prolongs their…

I realize that most farm workers up to now have been immigrants. I was trying to find out how things would work if a legal worker alternated between working on farms and living on welfare somewhere out of any work season. The UK is starting a similar shakeup, most seasonal agricultural work is done by workers from poorer countries in the EU who go back home once the work is done. I feel that it will be hard to find t…

There's no welfare program like that. You cant work a seasonal job and live off welfare the rest of the year.. you're going to be homeless.

Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots

#174

Post by mac01021 »

delbel wrote: post #63

Does anyone know of any groups or hacker like groups working on these types of problems? I own a small farm and for the life of me I cant find workers even at $25/hr. I have so far bought several tractors and implements and I am planning to semi-automate as much as possible. But that is not ready this year and I am basically by myself with a shovel... I would like to fully automate as much as possible, and I have zer…

> I cant find workers even at $25/hr?

How is that possible? What part of the country are you in?

Is it that everyone willing to do the work lacks the necessary skills? Or just that no one is willing?

You can probably go to your local FedEx hub and find a bunch of guys who load trucks for less than $15/hr.

Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots

#175

Post by sumedh »

1024core wrote: post #167
sumedh wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> go back as needed. The problem is, many people dont go back.

Because they have no choice. It's so hard to cross the border, that once you're in, you have no choice but to stay in. They also bring their families in, because otherwise they would not see them. Implement a farmworker visa that lets these workers go back and forth as needed, and suddenly they don't have to bring their families here; they can go back for events and festivals, maintaining a healthy social life. They…

> suddenly they don't have to bring their families here

How can you claim this? Why not bring your family over and let them enjoy the good life.

Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots

#176

Post by rfrank »

criddell wrote: post #171
rfrank wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automating people's jobs away without meaningful replacements is how regions get decimated, and you end up with very large swaths of very angry people without much to lose.

True and nobody is really arguing that point. Producers should be looking for ways to produce more efficiently. Governments should be working on the social problems. We all have a part to play in making our economy work well.

> True and nobody is really arguing that point.

Or providing solutions, just automating their jobs away.

Ignore the social repercussions or try and shift responsibility for who should help them all you want, I suggest it is a very unwise thing to do.

Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots

#177

Post by frabbit »

KGIII wrote: post #158
frabbit wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely it's 95.6897% ? It would be a mistake to simply call this "land reform" and confuse it with (e.g. Zimbabwe) while ignoring positive examples (e.g. Ireland). It's a fundamentally different situation brought about by technological progress. The balance of benefits to society of having a risk-taking entrepreneur who is able to (often) produce a desired good and disperse some of the profit to employees is altered.…

If I recall correctly, it was land reform that led to the potato famine being as devastating as it was. I'm not sure Ireland is a good example.

You remember incorrectly. The famine was the result of laissez-faire capitalism (Wiki-1) combined with active discrimination against the majority Catholic population which explicitly interfered with the paternalist regulation of land in the interests of the majority.

And Ireland is not the only EU nation with a history of positive land reform movements in the late 19th and early 20th century.

-- Refs: Wiki-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Landlor...

Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots

#178

Post by jessaustin »

frabbit wrote: post #177
KGIII wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I recall correctly, it was land reform that led to the potato famine being as devastating as it was. I'm not sure Ireland is a good example.

You remember incorrectly. The famine was the result of laissez-faire capitalism (Wiki-1) combined with active discrimination against the majority Catholic population which explicitly interfered with the paternalist regulation of land in the interests of the majority. And Ireland is not the only EU nation with a history of positive land reform movements in the late 19th and early 20th century. -- Refs: Wiki-1 https://…

Should tyrants really be praised for slightly moderating their tyranny? Ireland was happy and agriculturally productive for millennia before the Tudor Conquest. That the Plantation of Ulster was a slow-motion disaster, makes it no less a disaster.
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