Farms Fund Robots to Replace Migrant Fruit Pickers
June 23rd, 2007What do you want to bet that “Robot Compatible” cultivars will be developed… After all, if it can’t be grown/harvested by a robot, is it really worth it?
I know! They can send smaller versions of these robots into the skyscraper farms to replace the idiots roaming around in lab coats.
Via: Wired:
Vision Robotics, a San Diego company, is working on a pair of robots that would trundle through orchards plucking oranges, apples or other fruit from the trees. In a few years, troops of these machines could perform the tedious and labor-intensive task of fruit picking that currently employs thousands of migrant workers each season.
The robotic work has been funded entirely by agricultural associations, and pushed forward by the uncertainty surrounding the migrant labor force. Farmers are “very, very nervous about the availability and cost of labor in the near future,” says Vision Robotics CEO Derek Morikawa.
The T-shaped grapevines in California are the only visible result of Cesar Chavez’s activity in the early ’70s. “Real” grapevines required human pickers, the ‘improved’ ones don’t.
MW
And then they can equip them with machine guns, too. Next, put all the farms on the borders and you’ll have machine gun tooting robots harvesting food and protecting the borders. Perfect.
When one thinks about it, this was inevitable as soon as the technology to make it a reality was sufficiently developed. Almost all other agricultural crops are already cultivated/harvested by machine, rather than by hand.