May 2, 2008
Let’s Mechanize Our Way to a Better Future

The inscription on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty expresses well the ideals and, for some of us, the facts behind our citizenship in this country. They are the last words from the poem New Colossus, written by New York poet Emma Lazarus in 1883:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

But for the most part, the United States has been a haven for a more educated class of people. It was not for us but for the United Kingdom that the term “brain drain” was created in the 1950s – and, until recent years, we used it well.

While the United States was undoubtedly a place of refuge for many, for many more it was a place to get the most reward from the talents you gained through education. The United States sucked up the world’s brainiest resources. Our immigration laws were written that way: To enter here, bring talent. It is not coincidence that the names attached to some of the greatest “U.S.” inventions and discoveries are the names of immigrants.

It has only been in the last 20 years or so that the United States has rewarded the least talented, the most uneducated, the “huddled masses” and “wretched refuse,” with the rewards of entry and work in this country.

While I never thought it was very nice of us to drain away the best resources from other countries, and thus impede their progress, it seems a really bad idea to do the opposite. But today, we have a “reverse brain drain:” government policies drive away our best scientists, while an inferior education system for our citizens and a “broken” immigration system combine to dilute the nation’s collective pool of brilliance.

Agriculture, unfortunately, is participating in this process by insisting that it needs this pool of untalented and unskilled, and is shooting itself in the foot by failing to act the role of innovator. We are not a third-world country and should not aspire to be one.

I was in Mexico a year ago and I saw firsthand what happens when a country has a social system that places all capital into the hands of a landed aristocracy that has no incentive to create jobs for the “huddled masses.” The capital leaves, and so does the “wretched refuse.”

We have ourselves been in a process of decline for nearly 30 years. In fact, many date the decline in agricultural innovation to a press conference held by Secretary of Agriculture Bob Berglund in 1978. Goaded by pressure from farm workers in California, the Carter administration resolved to participate no longer in research projects that would mechanize agriculture and eliminate the jobs of farm workers.

At the time, it seemed like a good idea. The California farm workers, led by charismatic Cesar Chavez, saw a dream of dignity in farm work, achieved through collective action. But less than 10 years later, a wave of illegal immigrants undermined the workers’ ability to bargain for wages, and growers turned to farm labor contractors who rounded up illegal labor instead of relying on United Farm Workers, which offered legal workers.

The agricultural engineers, at universities and at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, found their funding gone. Moreover, some were ordered to take their machines to the shop and chop them up for scrap. Some disobeyed these orders and took their pet projects to private developers. Others mysteriously survived, which is why Don Peterson’s machines are now showing up, years after he started work on them and two years after he retired.

It is not clear where it all stands now. AgJOBS, the bill that would help growers get a greater supply of legal workers from foreign lands, can’t get passed. But neither can the Farm Bill, which contains a billion dollars over the next 10 years for research into the mechanization of specialty crops.

Horticulture really needs both bills. It is time to once again seriously focus on mechanizing the production and harvest of specialty crops. It is also important that growers have access to a pool of legal workers, some of whom they will always need and some of whom machines can replace.

Given that the size of the work force for agriculture is falling, it would be nice to think these two forces could proceed together in some harmony.

For our part, we intend to publish more articles about machines that replace labor in orchards, vineyards and fields. In the March issue, we published an article about machine harvest of sweet cherries. That technology is ready to go. If the industry does not adopt it, it has no cause to beg Congress for foreign workers.

In this issue, we have articles on a machine for pruning grapevines and two machines for thinning apples and peaches. This technology is being studied.

Interestingly, one machine resulted from a USDA project that somehow survived the purge of 1978. But the other comes from Europe, and perhaps we need to look more closely at that continent for mechanization innovation – at least until efforts here get back on track.

Hopefully, that will happen.

You can help. We’re looking for growers and companies that have found ways to mechanize. Horticulture has always been fruitful ground for guys in shops with cutting torches and welders. Help us find them and we’ll write about them.

On another note

Some of you may have noticed. Since last issue, I’ve had a new (better!) title: managing editor, The Fruit Growers News. I really like it. I hope you’ll benefit from it as well.

Another byline
The Fruit Growers News has hired Alan Kandel, a freelance writer from California, to serve as western editor and provide an article or two each month from the West Coast. He is based in Fresno. He writes about the fruit, vegetable and nut industry in California, as well as other topics.




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