New technology may help fill labor needs on farms worried about immigration crackdown

Farmers in need of stable labor have long looked to technology for help in the fields, but especially now that a crackdown on illegal immigration could be coming soon, reports The Associated Press. Jacob Adelman writes that new machines are growing more adept at tasks still done by hand, namely the picking of fruits and vegetables. (At right, in AP photo, a machine harvests lettuce.)

Machines have been used in the past with crops such as tomatoes and low-grade wine grapes and nuts, but fresh produce demands more advanced machines than those in the fields today. But with imaging technology that allows farmers to map an orchard coupled with improvements in hydraulics, the newest machines are beginning to replicate the movements of a manual laborer.

"The technology is maturing just at the right time to allow us to do this kind of work economically," Derek Morikawa, whose Vision Robotics has been to develop a fruit picker, told Adelman. Still, the machines are not ready for consumer use, and when they are, they likely will cost $500,000 each.

About the half the nation's fruits, nuts and vegetables come from California, which relies on thousands of illegal immigrant workers each season, Adelman writes. With increased attention from law enforcement last year, "California's seasonal migration was marked by spot worker shortages, and some fruit was left to rot in the fields," he writes, quoting Robert Wample, viticulture and enology program director at California State University-Fresno: "There's a lot of very nervous people out there in agriculture in terms of what's going to be available in the labor force." (Read more)