Page 35 - Farm and Food Policy Strategies for 2040 Series

In mid-January, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-CA, and Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member
Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, introduced bicameral immigration bills that work to provide farmers
with access to a legal workforce. A throwback to former President Ronald Reagan’s days, the

bill would provide a blue card to undocumented farmworkers. Once a blue card holder has
worked a specified number of days in agriculture, they could apply to become lawful residents
and obtain a green card, allowing them to work in other industries.

Critics to the concept say workers would use ag as a stepping stone, and thus the blue card does
little to supply a dedicated future ag workforce.

The race to develop machine workers

With immigration reform gridlocked, farms have started to adopt new mechanization
technologies to help fill the labor shortage gap. Technologies that reduce the need for workers or
make it easier for older workers to remain on the job by easing the physical demands of their
labor appear to be promising for some sectors, but they are not without problems.

“Research and development of new technologies is often expensive and slow to reach fruition,
and the costs of adopting a new technology—including costs of capital and of learning and
acquiring the appropriate skills—are usually substantial,” according to ERS. Mechanization
often requires changing to new crop varieties and adopting new cultural practices and harvesting
methods. Quality of the resulting product can also be reduced.

Slaughter says that U.S. agriculture is just starting the process of robotic mechanization.

“It’s spotty. In dairy, robotic milkers have been around for a while, especially in Europe, but it
has been a gradual change,” he said. “There is a need—a market—for robotic milkers. In other
areas, we are further away.”

Sometimes a market is too small to attract research and development investment, while in other
cases, technology lags. “A lot of progress is being made in fruit harvesting,” Slaughter added.

For example, in Washington’s Yakima Valley, some growers are using hedge-row pruning of
trees. Vision technology has difficulty recognizing trees, which are large-diameter, 3-D objects,
with open structures—unlike buildings, which are boxy and established.

“For a robot to get into the inner space of a tree and find fruit is more complex,” Slaughter
said. “If you make the orchard a hedge-like structure, still tall but narrow, the robot only needs to
reach in 6-12 inches instead of 2-4 feet. It can more easily see and reach the fruit, and it is more
likely the robots will be successful.”

However, changing the structure of an orchard requires a long-term commitment from growers in
order for manufacturers to be willing to invest.

Due to the size of some of the smaller labor-intensive crop sectors, many of the companies
working on new technologies that show promise for further mechanizing these industries are
being developed at universities or by technology firms, not large equipment manufacturers.
However, even large equipment manufacturers and agribusinesses are staking a claim in these
technologies through acquisition and collaboration.

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