Exoskeletons could help farm work efficiency and safety, but many farmers don't know about the benefits.

Exoskeletons could help farmers with demanding tasks.
(Graphic by Adam Dixon, Ambrook Research)

Despite the protection exoskeletons could offer farmers, the shelled apparatuses aren't widely used in agriculture. Farmer education and reduced costs could increase exoskeleton integration into farm-labor practices, reports Alfred Poor for Ambrook Research.

Simply put, exoskeletons are mechanical "devices worn on the body to augment the natural capabilities of a human worker," Poor explains. Some exoskeletons are powered, which means they help increase the force a worker has to do a task, such as overhead lifting. Others have passive power that can energize opposing movements like repetitive bending.

From chucking hay bales to checking calf underbellies for ticks, farmers have a massive amount of physical tasks, which an exoskeleton might help with. The problem is, many farmers don't know about it. Poor explains, "Education may be the biggest barrier to more widespread adoption of exos in agriculture; many farmers simply aren’t aware of the products and their potential benefits."

Cost can be another obstacle. "Even passive exos can be costly, and unlike heavy farm equipment, the manufacturers are not set up to provide payment plans or other terms to ease the financial strain," Poor adds.

Some farmers have discovered exos and use them for a range of tasks. Sarah Ballini-Ross, co-owner of Rossallini Farm in Oregon, told Poor, "A lot of the farm work really involves that repetitive lifting from ground to waist level, so my exo is the first thing I grab when it comes to doing hay. . . . I use my exo when trimming the hooves of our sheep."

Poor reports, "As farmers become more aware of the benefits, as the costs continue to come down, and as manufacturers respond more to the specific needs of agricultural tasks, we can likely expect to see more exos down on the farm."

The U.S. is looking at producing its own rubber; the industry could offer a hardy crop, jobs and less foreign reliance

The U.S. uses 1.5 million metric tons of rubber each year.
(Graphic by Adam Dixon, Ambrook Research)

Made-in-America rubber may become a new crop for farmers and a new manufacturing industry for the United States. "Scientists, farmers and major corporations are working together to lay the groundwork for domestic rubber production," reports Kate Morgan of Ambrook Research. Even though rubber is in "roughly 50,000 different products across U.S. manufacturing sectors, almost all of the 1.5 million metric tons or more, worth $2 billion — is imported, mostly from Southeast Asian rubber plantations." However, considering how much rubber the nation uses, reliance on a single foreign regional supplier may leave U.S. manufacturing vulnerable.

American rubber production begins with growing rubber plants, such as guayule (pronounced "why-you-lee"), which "grows wild in parts of Texas and Mexico, but it's also easy to cultivate and grow on farms throughout the region. Drought-tolerant and disinclined to disease, there's not much that bothers it," Morgan explains. When Guayuule stems are ground up and put "through a process of distillation and filtration, the result is a high-quality natural latex" for producing "everything from surgical gloves to car parts. . . . Many believe this shrub is the best candidate for developing a domestic rubber market."

Guayule is fairly impervious to conditions.
(Wikipedia photo)

The U.S. has put off rubber plant production partly because of the extreme labor used in hand-tapping Hevea, the most commonly used rubber plant. Research shows that other types of plants work better with less work. "Rubber-producing plants could be grown in the U.S. — not to mention planted and harvested mechanically, rather than with the arduous manpower required for Hevea — on a massive scale," Morgan reports. "Guayule offers many opportunities for farmers, especially in parts of the U.S. that are growing more difficult to irrigate and cultivate."

The next hurdle for American rubber production is finding a manufacturer. Katrina Cornish, professor of horticulture and biological engineering at Ohio State University, told Morgan, "It's all there, there's just no processing infrastructure. We've got farmers who are willing to grow these crops and lots of companies wanting to buy the latex. We need a full-scale processing plant, and we're looking at somewhere around a $70 million price tag." Morgan reports, "Once it's refined, Cornish added, rubber made from guayule or any other plant could be used — it could upend our entire rubber supply chain."

Inspired, cooperative leadership is key to pulling rural places out of economic funk, writer says

The paper mill and harbor in Newport, Oregon, have
benefited from recent investment. (David Kidd photo)

What can help pull rural America out of the recession that lingers in many places, six years after the Great Recession bottomed out nationally?

"Experts in the rural economy say what separates the winners from the many losers is inspired leadership on the ground, whether that’s a plant owner who figures out a way to modernize and stay profitable, or economic development officials able to find a niche by building on successful enterprises or attractions that are already in place," Alan Greenblatt writes for Governing magazine, published mainly for those who govern or lobby the states and localities.

For his readers who may not be familiar with rural problems, Greenblatt writes: "While some metro areas are thriving, two out of three rural counties have experienced a net loss in their total number of businesses since 2010, after the recession had technically ended. According to a recent report by the Economic Innovation Group, half the new businesses started throughout the nation since 2010 were created in just 20 counties, out of more than 3,000 nationwide. Urban America recovers from recessions, but rural America no longer seems able to."

He adds, "It’s no longer far-fetched to talk about permanent, Appalachian-style poverty spreading across rural America. There just aren’t enough jobs. . . . The prevailing fear of the moment -- that robots are going to take over all the work -- has already happened in agriculture. A machine knows more about the exact fat and protein content of the milk from every cow it touches than a human hand ever would. Farmers are becoming almost as likely to plant sensors as seeds, helping them map out where their drones should apply fertilizer. Already, farms account for less than 1 percent of employment, but the number of agriculture jobs is projected to decline another 6 percent by 2024. The old notion that jobs in timber, farming and small-town manufacturing are secure and will last for life is not just outdated but antique."

And here's a current news peg: "The anxiety caused by diminished prospects is starting to play out politically. People wondering what happened to their good-paying jobs have been drawn to Donald Trump’s message that bad trade deals are to blame for their struggles, or to Bernie Sanders’ complaint that the economic system is rigged. . . . The decline in rural prospects is not only feeding political resentment, but causing serious social problems. Nationwide, the number of deaths among working-class whites at most age levels has been increasing, the sad result of a combination of preventable causes such as suicide and abuse of illegal or prescription drugs."

Newport and Lincoln County in Oregon

After that litany of woe, Greenblatt gives an example of local cooperation with inspired leadership: Newport and Lincoln County, Oregon, on the coast about 100 miles southwest of Portland (Wikipedia map). It has an aquarium, a marine science center that's developed a highly edible and processable seaweed, a base for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fleet, and the Oregon coast's last paper mill, which has benefited from recent investment.

"The Newport area has managed to build a collaborative culture, with city, county, port and state officials pulling together with private-sector actors to make things happen," he writes. "All the players in town seem to belong to one another’s boards -- which is not unusual -- but everyone, from Georgia-Pacific executives to county commissioners, also meets routinely through the Yaquina Foundation and the Lincoln County Economic Development Alliance. In many struggling communities, various jurisdictions will jealously fight over every scrap. In Lincoln County, a couple of calls is enough to start people working on ways of lining up financing to get a project going. The different local entities have learned that scratching each other’s backs and putting up money for projects of shared interest can end up benefiting everyone."

The lesson from Lincoln? Greenblatt writes, "There’s no magic formula, nothing you can bottle, when it comes to turning around a rural area. Rural economies once ran on commodities -- timber, corn, cattle, coal -- that by their nature were essentially the same regardless of where they came from. In today’s economy, though, places have to find a way to offer something that other similar places can’t." There's a lot more in his 3,200-word story; read it here.

Europeans designing robots to harvest delicate fruits; Japan already has a strawberry picker

What would happen if human weren't in the field any more to pick the most delicate of crops -- fruits in orchards or the grapes for premium wine? You know, the high-value stuff. And, let's go one more, what if humans were removed one more step: What if something could target the protective pesticide spray so it only touched the foliage and never once touched the fruit? That's be kind of amazing. No, that'd be a robot. And it's a new project that’s part of the European Union Seventh Framework Program (FP7) called Clever Robots for Crops, or "cRops."

According to Forbes magazine contributing writer Jennifer Hicks, these robots will be able to detect the fruit's ripeness, then grasp and softly detach only ripe fruit. The robots would also be able to reliably detect and classify obstacles and other objects to enable successful navigation and operation in plantations and forests. "Projects like cRrops are significant because they can accelerate sustainable development of agriculture," said Catherine Simon, founder and organizer of Innorobo, a robotics conference set for 2013.

Hicks' sources say it will take at least five more years before the whole thing could be commercialized. So why is Europe moving so slowly? “One of the main reasons is simply because robotics is still in an early stage of maturity and we continue to see projects coming out of academia, government or EU commissions,” said Simon,“Europe needs to make the shift from projects to product faster like the United States if we want to remain a leader in the the field of robotics."

There are fruit-picking robots already. In Japan in 2010, the Institute of Agricultural Machinery’s Bio-oriented Technology Research Advancement Institution created a strawberry picking robot with a stereo camera system that images the strawberries in 3D and, with fancy math, determines their ripeness. "If a strawberry is at least 80 percent red, the machine snips it at the stem and puts it in a padded bin. It can harvest 60 percent of the strawberry crop, taking only nine seconds to pick a strawberry," writes Hicks. Used to be this was all academic -- funding, that is, but "times are changing," she reports, and things could go a lot faster. "We are starting to see a true shift in the ecosystem surrounding robotics." Think Google money. Think big. (Read more)