As Immigrant Farmworkers Become More Scarce, Robots Replace Humans

Really great writing by Miriam Jordan. It is a combined and revealing report on immigration, robotics, labor and the agriculture industry. You can see how robotics becomes an essential part of running a business, the difficult path to installing robots, and also the important role of immigration labor, a labor that evidently will develop higher skills to operate robots. And robots are not omnipresent, as some picking activities are better handled by humans. I can just imagine a robot grabbing a peach and crushing it. But we wonder if these problems will be solved in a totally robotic future. And as for congress, it seems to be a no-brainer to establish an effective immigration policy to get these industries the labor that they need. But, then, it's congress. Yes, we on the East Coast consume those packaged vegetables, both salads and cooking vegetables. The East Coast lettuce isn't quite as fresh as that great salad that you'd get in Salinas (it's worth the trip!), but it's serviceable. So the work that all these people do is important. Their labor shortage is a curious phenomenon that is exacerbated by a recalcitrant immigration "policy". Again, congress needs to act to improve the lives of people and the operation of industries. It shows that we need *intelligent* leadership to move this nation forward. It benefits all of us.

I am happy to say that as a software engineer and developer of agricultural robots, we are making a positive difference and I love my job Yes, being in this position is a bit of a sword of Damocles. If you aren't always learning the latest technology , you can end up as roadkill in this economy (and I have). And I get to live in NYC, which I love. There are.so many warehouses in NYC that bring the finest food to the best restaurants. Bowery Farms is one example. This wouldn't be possible without my work.

The Jetsons is becoming more true each year

Robots do jobs with 3Ds; Dirty, Dull, & Dangerous.

Kentucky Female Doc with all due respect, your comment is ignorant of economics, ignorant of facts, and bigoted to boot by implying the men and women working the fields are chattel to be imported & exported. The “American worker” by which you mean people of legal residence simply don’t want to work in the fields, period. The United States is largely a knowledge driven service economy and growing food is a low margin, labor intensive, capital intensive, with low barrier to entry thanks to ample land, strong private property laws, and efficiently engineered seeds. How much do you think people should be paid to pick stuff off trees and pick things up off the ground in the unrelenting sun all day? You won’t like the answer but the answer is there is 0 price point that Americans are willing to accept to pick crops in the sun all day because low-skill labor can work in low-skill job elsewhere with much better conditions at only slightly less pay. The men toiling the fields of this great nation are certainly being exploited, but they aren’t being “imported”, they come here seeking what every generation of immigrants before them have sought. A shot at the American dream and a more secure future for their children. The “American worker” is probably taking the subway, bus, or stuck in gridlock while the “imports” as you call them are literally putting food on your table.

This article goes right along with the recent E. coli scare in romaine lettuce. More machines, less humans, less quality control, more E. coli. Sustainable Human scale agriculture is our only hope to solve to problems (e coli, poor labor conditions, poor quality tasteless produce) that the industrial agriculture system has created. Sad that some farmers have yet to realize the machines they’ve invested hundreds of thousand of dollars in will soon be obsolete, they’ll go bankrupt trying to pay loans and more farmland will fall out of family hands and into corporate hands. We’ve seen all this happen before in the corn and soy farms of the Midwest during the 80s and 90s

“Ideally, growers say, Congress would pass a bill to legalize undocumented farmworkers ...” Spayed and neutered? Okay, that’s okay. Here’s the problem: a Hispanic face, for purpose of marketing as “diversity”, will automatically be more desirable than the white worker. If the offspring are pale as snow, that’s okay too.

And robots can speak english.

I believe we will see the end of human labor in this century. We need to be thinking about how people will function in a society where there is no essential work left to be done by humans.

Replace all humans with AI aided robotic machine and doom the civilization. Only 0.1% of the rich will be happy and prevail! Is this wisdom ?

Haven't these people heard of tractors, cotton gins, hay balers and combines? "Robots" have always been big in farming just like in construction. Big deal.

“. . . some of those jobs of the past are just not going to come back.” President Obama Up until now, the presence of illegal aliens has kept the state of agriculture technology at the point where it began 10,000 years ago: harvesting crops by hand. Eliminating the artificially-infinite supply of low-cost manual labor is yielding concrete, irreversible results. Law enforcement should now crack down on the farmers still using illegal aliens and we will be blessed with even more fantastic productivity gains.

So we should continue to let into our country millions of uneducated, non-English speaking, unskilled, poor migrants. Right?

How can it be that California's agriculture industry is only $54 million. That less than $0.25 per US resident a year on average. David R

I wonder how many of those Robots go shopping at Walmart, or for that matter at the grocery store to buy lettuce for supper.

And there goes the notion on the political right, the voters not the politicians, that reducing illegal immigration would open opportunities for citizens at better wages.

I note the anti immigrant comments. It is not as if machines can't do what these commenters do. Machines can do nearly anything a human does and will. All agriculture and manufacturing jobs will be highly automated. I don't know if you noticed that they are training machines to do most phone work. It's called AI. Most sales jobs will be done by AI. Trucking and transportation will all be done by driverless vehicles. Much of construction will be factory prefab done by automation. Many humans will have no purpose including most Americans. Although, it will depend on whether we last that long. However, over the next 100 years humans will become unemployed. Why do you think employers are not raising wages? If they have to they will build a machine to do your jobs.

"Ideally, growers say, Congress would pass a bill to legalize undocumented farmworkers who are already here and encourage them to stay in the fields, as well as include provisions to ensure a steady flow of seasonal workers who could come and go with relative ease.” If we had not had large numbers of undocumented workers, farmers would have been forced to invest in robotic research long ago. That research would have been further along than it is by now. Growers prefer being able to hire the undocumented to investing in robots. Growers pass on the costs of their employees medical care and other needs on to the general public. Physical field labor is hard on the body. What will happen to these farm laborers when their bodies wear out? Will they be eligible for disability or SSI, and, if so, would that bankrupt our social security system? Growers have been exploiting the immigration system. They should have begun investing in robotic research long ago.

This article proves that companies would happily invest millions in future technologies rather than increase the minimum wage for (legal) Americans. Robot technology will solve the immigrant labor shortage but will not offer many jobs for Americans laid off from their old technology (assembly line) jobs.

The 2nd or 3rd generation doesn't stay with the low paying jobs, so having immigrants come to do the work isn't the answer. I think the Chamber of Commerce and Big Ag and Big Tech want " guest workers." These, mainly single men, are wedded to one job with a specific employer. This is like the indentured servitude of our Colonia era and later. But I think indentured servitude only lasted 7 years in those days. Still it was servitude and kept the worker in a vulnerable position vis a vis their employer. If a society needs certain work to be done the people doing it should earn a living wage.

This is the beginning of a future where there is much less work to do, and a much smaller workforce is needed. Much of our moral value is still based upon the work we do. How will society adapt to the change in attitudes toward work? Now, wealth or compensation is based upon work hours and production. How will wealth and basic goods be distributed when distribution is no longer based upon work? We need to remember that robots doing the work that humans used to do, is a good thing. Now, we look down on those who refuse to work as freeloaders. That won't be true in the future. How will we adapt?

What are there - 20 million illegals in the country? Whatever the number, the agriculture industry isn't suffering from a shortage of illegal aliens. Maybe they can't get enough illegals or US citizens to do a certain job with certain work conditions for a certain pay, but that doesn't automatically mean we need to open the floodgates to even poorer and less educated and less skilled illegals who are willing to work for nearly no pay. And the reason the visa system is broken is because the open borders crowd wants it to be broken. They don't want a functioning immigration system. Our government has failed us big time on this issue, which is ironic because it's one of the areas our federal government is actually responsible for. 90% of what our government does it has no constitutional duty to do.

Robots only take the jobs we don't want.

With labor saving technology (using lots of water in drought years another whole issue)-only a few workers are needed in short spurts of time. Those still are undocumented as natives of US do not want to work that hard. Will we always need a pool of laborers who are just cogs in our wheel of money making? Must they come alone without families to do the work and send just money home? Would we prefer our native children to work out of country on oil rigs earning high salaries which they send home to stay at home wife and children, so that the homes they live in when the wage earner returns, are better than the older generations-ourselves? Just asking. Is the pension income to compensate for all the time spent apart. Not me!

Can produce be organic if it is harvested by a robot?

Lot of Jobs are physically taxing and mind-numbing. What's your point?

Creative destruction. Funny Americans don't say much when automation results in cheaper food.

. . . pushing us further toward the day when people with a below-average IQ may simply be unemployable.

Ah, yet another example against the "we need illegals or our economy will collapse" fallacy. Time to focus on the American worker!

How long can California farmers continue to waste water to harvest lettuce and other crops when the state is in a 7 year drought?

Funny how all the commenters piling on for article re: judge blocking Trump's attempts to change to Congressional law for asylum are nowhere to be found here.... Guess the facts re: population numbers and industry realities (not to mention our national identity) would get in the way of hatin' on "illegals." That NYT of all places is rife with invective, alogical/ ahistorical comments anytime there's an article on immigration (or transgender, for some reason) is beyond depressing. A destabilizing climate is what threatens-- not demographics-- and we will absolutely need immigrants to cope with coming demands.

"Undocumented immigrants" = Illegal aliens. And there are more of them than ever before. So let's build that wall before the country is turned into North Mexico.

Finally, an answer to low birthrates and the aging populations.

Need is the Mother of Invention. Keep up the good works.

The most interesting part of the story was the robots..... And no detail at all. Who makes them? How do they work? A video maybe? Who is this "innovation firm"? Are they designed and made in the US? How complex are they to operate? The rest of the story could've been told in quarter the space.

Great news. An excellent application for AI and robotics.

So, nothing mentioned about sanitary conditions? Will these machines reduce the incidence of contamination of food crops with pathogens like E.coli or salmonella.

Yes, this is the future. Automation is going to replace a lot of low skilled jobs, so WHY are we importing more low skilled people?? We need to be thinking of how to protect the American citizen worker.

Indeed, this is hardly an advertisement for bringing more immigrants into the US. Surely this should have been an article in the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times is hardly the place for propaganda. Why, if automation takes away jobs from immigrants, why would we fight so hard to allow so many to come here?

From sci-fi to reality. HALO: Contact Harvest

...and robots don't contribute to the economy by spending. Hope the xenophobes are drafting a Basic Income plan.

Crop workers are "overwhelmingly undocumented" according to the article. That is a problem. Labor-saving innovation might cut down on the number of illegal aliens here. The ones that are still needed should come (without their families) on work visas.

So American workers who claim migrants take their jobs are not going to work on the farms. Amazing. Automation is the thing of the future in farming & manufacturing. More unemployment in the future with the rise of machines & computers & GPS.