By David Eddy, Editor, American Fruit Grower
Since American Fruit Grower began surveying growers nearly a decade ago, one constant in their responses has been when we asked them to identify their top problem. The answer? Labor. Other important challenges emerged from year to year in our State of the Industry survey, such as onerous government regulation, or, more recently, climate change, but year in and year out, labor is #1.
This news certainly comes as no surprise to anyone in the industry. I’ve been writing about and photographing fruit and vegetable growers now for a quarter of a century, and it seems like this has always been their top problem. Today there are simply fewer available workers than ever. Mexican birth rates used to be close to triple that of the U.S. so they would come here to work, but now their birthrate is similar to that of the U.S. (And we all know “Americans” don’t do farm work.)
With fewer workers available than ever, large growers have resorted to importing workers from other countries via the federal H-2A program. It’s become clear for the past several years that mechanization is the only answer if we want to keep growing fruits and vegetables in the U.S. No less than former Defense Director Leon Panetta forcefully stated at a Salinas, CA (“America’s Salad Bowl”), conference this past summer that growing our own food is matter of national security, and growers should be making that clear to all Americans.
The problem is that those of us who have come to believe that mechanization is the only way for many growers to maintain their operations were perhaps too optimistic about the timeline. I’m as guilty of this as the next advocate, and I should know better. I can’t say how many times I’ve written about preliminary research regarding something, only to be contacted by a grower asking where they can buy one. I can’t blame them, it’s the society we live in, we want everything right now.
Few technological developments, including major scientific breakthroughs, occur with a “Eureka” moment.
It might seem contrary, but people also have a distrust, or at least a suspicion, of what’s new. It’s natural, but what’s not natural is the clear anti-science sentiment in this country. Obviously, nearly all growers believe in science, but being people, perhaps they can’t help but be somewhat affected by this pernicious movement.
However, far more of this disappointment is due to the nature of technological development. It is painfully slow. Few technological developments, including major scientific breakthroughs, occur with a “Eureka” moment. It’s more like building a skyscraper, with one story laid on top of another. It’s not like one scientist walks into a lab and walks out years later with an answer. For every Edison there is a Tesla.
But actually, saying technological development is like construction isn’t 100-percent accurate either, and that’s another factor in this disappointment in robotic development. The experience is more like returning to the building site and finding the roof collapsed. The world of invention is littered with failure.
Unfortunately, too many of us regard failure as, well, failure. No surprise there, but fortunately some people regard failure as merely an option that’s been tried, discarded — and learned from.
At the recent international robotics conference, FIRA USA, also in Salinas, one grower said when he visits a counterpart and sees a “graveyard” of equipment that’s been discarded, he knows he’s in the right place. Any grower who isn’t failing isn’t trying hard enough.
That was just one of the nuggets I gleaned from the conference, which was organized by the Global Organization for Agricultural Robotics (GOFAR), a French nonprofit that promotes and develops agricultural robotics. There were also two co-organizers, THE VINE, an agriculture, food, and biotech innovation network based in Davis, CA, and Western Growers.
More than 1,700 specialty crop growers, start-up engineers, investors, and others affiliated with the industry attended the event to see the latest robots for fruit and vegetable production in action. Even at FIRA, though, I was struck by the doubters who wondered why robotics development wasn’t more successful. One man offered a counterargument, however, that left many in the crowd nodding.
“If we weren’t successful, we wouldn’t all be here today,” he said. “We would be somewhere talking about something else.”
There are already thousands of Burros, a robot that can follow a worker around or negotiate a designated route, in use in California.
The man’s statement was backed up by two days of demonstrations at FIRA. Unlike past conferences I’ve attended, however, these demonstrations weren’t indoors in a pristine environment, far from the elements and other factors that hampered the development of some robots, such as dust.
At FIRA, the robots negotiated model orchards and vineyards, as well as fields of vegetables. And unlike most demonstrations, the units weren’t just demos. There are already thousands of Burros, a robot that can follow a worker around or negotiate a designated route, in use in California.
Another unit being used by many Golden State growers is from Bluewhite. Knowing many growers favor their own tractors, the company retrofits growers’ equipment, turning an ordinary tractor into a fully functioning, driverless, robot.
One early entrant in the field was the French company, Naïo. They demonstrated several units in all sorts of surroundings. The Naïo spokesperson then said something that truly showed how far robots for specialty crop growers have come, that they have indeed arrived.
“These aren’t just demo units,” he said, pointing to a colleague. “See that man over there, he’ll be happy to sell you one today.”
