How do big farmers hope to pick the next crop? Carefully -- but with robots
How do big farmers hope to pick the next
crop? Carefully -- but with robots
Updated Posted
Human and machine have 10 seconds per plant.
They must find the ripe strawberries in the leaves, gently twist them off the
stems and tuck them into a plastic clamshell. Repeat, repeat, repeat, before
the fruit spoils.
One February afternoon, they work about an acre apart on
a farm the size of 454 football fields: dozens of pickers collecting produce
the way people have for centuries - and a robot that engineers say could
replace most of them as soon as next year.
The future of agricultural work has arrived here in
Florida, promising to ease labor shortages and reduce the cost of food, or so
says the team behind Harv, a nickname for the latest model from automation
company Harvest CROO Robotics.
Harv is on the cutting edge of a national push to
automate the way we gather goods that bruise and squish, a challenge that has
long flummoxed engineers.
Designing a robot with a gentle touch is among the biggest
technical obstacles to automating the American farm. Reasonably priced fruits
and vegetables are at risk without it, growers say, because of a dwindling pool
of workers.
"The labor force keeps shrinking," said Gary
Wishnatzki, a third-generation strawberry farmer. "If we don't solve this
with automation, fresh fruits and veggies won't be affordable or even available
to the average person."
The problem is so pressing that competitors are banding
together to fund Harv, which has raised about $9 million from corporate
behemoths like Driscoll's and Naturipe Farms, as well as from local farmers.
Wishnatzki, who created Harv with former Intel engineer
Bob Pitzer, one of the minds behind the television hit "BattleBots,"
has invested $3 million of his own money.
The electronic picker is still pretty clumsy.
During a test run last year, Harv gathered 20 percent of
strawberries on every plant without mishap. This year's goal: Harvest half of
the fruit without crushing or dropping any. The human success rate is closer to
80 percent, making Harv the underdog in this competition.
But Harv doesn't need a visa or sleep or sick days. The
machine looks like a horizontally rolling semitruck.
Peek underneath and see 16 smaller steel robots scooping
up strawberries with spinning, claw-like fingers, guided by camera eyes and
flashing lights.
Growers say it is getting harder to hire enough people to
harvest crops before they rot. Fewer seasonal laborers are coming from Mexico,
the biggest supplier of U.S. farmworkers. Fewer Americans want to bend over all
day in a field, farmers say, even when offered higher wages, free housing and
recruitment bonuses.
The number of agricultural employees in the United States
is expected to stay flat over the next seven years, according to the latest
projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As
"productivity-enhancing technologies" mature in the realm of
mechanization, farms will require fewer people, even as demand for crops grow,
the government researchers wrote.
Manufacturing underwent a similar evolution. U.S.
factories have increased output over the past two decades with a smaller
workforce, thanks to machines that improve efficiency.
One Harv is programmed to do the work of 30 people. The
machine hovers over a dozen rows of plants at the same time, picking five
strawberries every second and covering 8 acres a day.
That potential is increasingly attractive to growers, who
say the Trump administration's tighter immigration policies are squeezing off
the supply of seasonal workers, as well as undocumented labor.
About half of the country's 850,000 farmworkers are not
in the United States legally, according to 2016 data from the Department of
Labor, the most recent available.
Agricultural analysts say the labor shortage is already
forcing up wages.
From 2014 to 2018, the average pay for farmworkers rose
faster than employees in the broader economy, jumping from $11.29 to $13.25,
according to numbers from the Department of Agriculture.
Agriculture economists at Arizona State University last
year estimated that if farmers lost their undocumented workforce entirely,
wages would have to rise by 50 percent to replace them - and that would crank
up produce prices by another 40 percent.
Then there are other rising costs.
Starting in 2025, all farms in California - the nation's
largest fresh-food producer - must pay their employees overtime after eight
hours a day instead of 10.
"Automation is the long-term solution, given the
reluctance of domestic workers to do these jobs," said Tim Richards, the
Morrison chair of agribusiness in the W.P. Carey School of Business at ASU.
Wishnatzki said he lost about $1 million due to spoilage
last year. He said he pays experienced pickers about $25 an hour.
Harv would diminish the need for field labor, Wishnatzki
said, but it would create new jobs, too. Wish Farms, his family business, would
train pickers to become technicians.
"We need people to clean, sanitize and repair the
machines," he said.
Some workers view that plan with anxiety and skepticism.
"I see the robot and think, 'Maybe we're not going
to have jobs anymore,' " said Antonio Vengas, 48, one of the about 600
employees on the farm with Harv.
Vengas moved to Florida 15 years ago from the Mexican
state of Oaxaca and makes about $25 an hour. About 75 percent of his co-workers
are Mexicans on seasonal work visas.
They all make good money, he said. They're motivated.
"People can pick strawberries without hurting
them," he said. "They know which ones are too little or rotten.
Machines can't do that."
Labor groups also doubt that robots are prepared for the
job.
"A machine cannot harvest delicate table grapes,
strawberries or tree fruit without destroying the perfect presentation demanded
by consumers and the retail food industry," said Giev Kashkooli, political
and legislative director for the United Farm Workers of America, which
represents about 20,000 farm workers across the country.
Unions don't oppose technological advances, though,
Kashkooli added.
"Robotics can play a role in making the job less
backbreaking and play a role in helping people earn more money," he said.
Out West, engineers at Washington State University are
working with local farmers to test an apple-picking machine that has 12 mechanical
arms.
It drives down orchard rows, snapping pictures of trees.
A computer brain scans the images and finds the fruit. The arms grab and lower
apples onto a conveyor belt.
Expect to see this technology on the market in the next
three years, said Manoj Karkee, associate professor at the school's Center for
Precision & Automated Agricultural Systems.
Farmers who struggle to hire workers wanted it
"yesterday," he said.
"We all know we need to go in this direction,"
Karkee said. "The last advancement in apple picking was the invention of
the ladder."
The robot rarely hurts the produce. But as of today, one
robotic apple-picker costs at least $300,000 - too much for most budgets.
On the day Harv is put to the test, farmers and
researchers arrive in three buses to Wishnatzki's farm. They've come from
Canada, Australia, Germany, Switzerland and across the United States. Curiosity
hangs in the air like the hawks circling overhead.
Blaine Staples, a strawberry grower from Alberta, steps
through the dirt toward the machine, which hisses as it claws up fruit. Dozens
of people around him crouch to the ground. The machine's arms go to work amid
exclamations of awe and disbelief from onlookers.
"This is pretty much the new industrial
revolution," Staples said.
His Canadian farm is tiny compared with Wishnatzki's 600
acres. But he could see himself renting Harv for a season - as long as it's
comparable to his current labor costs.
Under Harv's proposed business model, farmers would pay
only for the fruit the machine picks at the same rate they pay seasonal work
crews.
A few strawberry rows over, Doug Carrigan, a North
Carolina farmer, stands in the group with his eyes locked on Harv.
"It doesn't care if it's a Sunday or a
holiday," Carrigan said. "The machine will work regardless."
He pays his workers between $10 and $14 hourly. They're
mostly local folks.
"A lot of Americans have become lazy," Carrigan
said. "They want a paycheck. They don't want a job."
Any time you can automate work without sacrificing
quality, "that's a win," he said.
Behind the crowd of farmers, a team of engineers watch
the spectacle on a flat-screen TV in a white trailer, their makeshift command
center. Cameras in Harv give them a close-up.
Lights flash. The 16 smaller robots spin, clawing up
strawberries. Engineers compare them to duck feet, paddling furiously.
"The best view in the house," said Alex
Figueroa, 24, director of machine vision.
Everything looks to be running smoothly. Nobody's
stress-eating the oatmeal raisin cookies they ordered.
"No errors!" Figueroa pleads aloud.
"Knock on wood," another engineer replies.
In another section of the field, far from the commotion,
the pickers work like they have always worked.
It's 80 degrees outside, but they wear long sleeves,
pants and scarves below their eyes to block the sun. They bend over, pluck the
strawberries and slip them into plastic cases.
Then, they sprint through the plant rows to a supervisor,
who scans in each package. They are paid by the package. Slowing down means
losing money.
Parked nearby is an old school bus, which shuttles them
free to work. Most of the pickers live in housing Wishnatzki provides.
Santiago Velasco, 65, has worked here for 35 years and
has done practically every job: picking, digging, irrigating.
Harv is a newcomer that doesn't concern him.
"I don't think it'll work, because the people know
how to pick," he said, "and they go faster."
His prediction held up on demo day.
The robot found more than half the strawberries on each
plant, but the fruit this season was bigger than anticipated. A bunch tumbled
from Harv's claws - red and juicy and now gone.
Engineers aren’t sure how many - they’ve got to review
hours of video. They can’t be sure Harv hit this year’s target. But they’re
confident the machine can get it right next year.
Story by Danielle Paquette, The Washington Post
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