America's farm workers are aging, not being replaced

[Remarkableriots]

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2019/05/08/Americas-farm-workers-are-aging-not-being-replaced/7711557177342/

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The average age of America's hired farm laborers is steadily increasing, threatening the future of the nation's farming industry, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The reason is the foreign-born workers, who comprise more than half the workforce, are getting older. At least half those workers are unauthorized. And because America is cracking down on illegal immigration, younger immigrants are not arriving to replace them.

Between 2007 and 2016, the estimated number of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico dropped about 22 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. During roughly that same time period, the average age of migrant and immigrant farm workers in the United States rose from just under 36 in 2006 to nearly 42 in 2017, according to the report, released last week by the USDA Economic Research Service.

"This is a pretty big concern," said Michael Langemeier, an agricultural economics professor at Purdue University. "If that group is aging, farmers are going to have more problems finding workers. Their bottom lines will be under pressure."

 

[elbobo]

robo-farmer to the rescue 

[Remarkableriots]

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/15/the-age-of-robot-farmers

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ishnatzki’s is only one of a number of startups that are trying to build a strawberry-picking robot. Among them are a machine that has been developed at Utsunomiya University, in Japan, another by Dogtooth, in the U.K., and a third by Octinion, in Belgium. The Spanish company Agrobot is also testing one. There are prototypes of high-tech orange, grape, and apple harvesters in development as well. A Silicon Valley startup called Blue River Technology created a robotic lettuce-thinner that has been getting a lot of attention from California specialty-crop farmers. (John Deere bought the company in 2017.)

All these prototypes rely on a handful of converging technologies—artificial intelligence, robotics, big data, G.P.S., machine vision, drones, and material science—that have been slowly finding their way onto the farm. Many row-crop farmers in the U.S. employ G.P.S.-guided tractors to lay out their fields. John Deere has been offering G.P.S. for its tractors since 1997. At first, satellite-assisted steering was simply a way for a farmer to keeps his rows straight, rather than rely on a tractor driver’s dead-reckoning skills. But for forward-thinking farmers G.P.S. offers much more than straight lines. A G.P.S.-planted farm provides a foundation on which to build a whole new class of automated farm tools that can use artificial intelligence to solve the hard problems that twentieth-century agricultural automation could not.

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 farms most amenable to automation are indoor ones—both greenhouses and the newer vertical farms that have begun to appear in urban areas in recent years. (Dairy barns also lend themselves to automated systems, because of the factorylike regularity of the setting.) The Netherlands is a global leader in indoor farming. Although it is a densely populated country less than a third of the size of New York State, the Netherlands is the world’s second-largest exporter of food, in terms of value, after the U.S., and it leads the world in exports of potatoes, onions, and tomatoes. By using precision-agriculture techniques, Dutch indoor farmers have dramatically cut the use of water and pesticides, while also avoiding consolidation and allowing individual farmers to flourish. “The Netherlands is probably the most technologically sophisticated country in terms of agriculture production,” Erik Nicholson, of the United Farm Workers, told me. “But the Netherlands model is not predicated on a large concentration of growers. You have active government and labor intervention and coördination to make sure these technologies are enhancing the ability of Dutch nationals to grow rather than wiping them out.”

Hopefully soon almost all farm work will be automated.

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Irving Fain is a co-founder of Bowery, a vertical farm situated in two warehouses in Kearny, New Jersey. So far, he has raised about a hundred and twenty million dollars from more than a dozen investors, including the chef Tom Colicchio and Uber’s C.E.O., Dara Khosrowshahi. Fain has a persuasive pitch for why farms like Bowery are necessary. “By 2050, the U.N. predicts that the world will need seventy per cent more food than it currently produces, on less arable land, in a changing climate,” he told me when I met him in the industrial park that is the vertical farm’s asphalt heartland. “We need to waste less food and we need to increase yields in the developing world. How do you do it more efficiently and in a more sustainable way?” Bowery currently sells eight products—mixes of leafy greens and herbs—to Whole Foods, Foragers, and Sweetgreen.

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Another argument for vertical farms is that the majority of the nation’s produce is grown in California, Arizona, and Florida, sometimes thousands of miles from the people who will eventually eat it. The lettuce in a produce aisle in New York could have been picked two or three weeks before you buy it; in terms of nutrients, you may be better off with frozen vegetables. An indoor farm’s proximity to population centers is supposed to make it greener.

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The day I was there, Wish Farms was holding a demonstration of its picking machine. Three busloads of growers, who had been attending a conference in Orlando, about an hour and a half away, were expected to turn up. While we were waiting for them to arrive, I met a British grower named Richard Harnden. He described the labor situation in the U.K. as a crisis. The strawberry pickers are mostly from Bulgaria and Romania, two of the poorest countries in the European Union. “And now we’ve got the situation where we’re trying to leave the E.U. but we haven’t done it yet, and that’s made it even more difficult to recruit workers,” he said. He wasn’t sure how growers were going to get the berries picked this season.

“The British don’t work in the fields?” I asked.

Harnden laughed. “Not any longer.”

Wishnatzki, who had been listening, said, “Every developed country in the world, it’s the immigrants doing the hard work.”

“Absolutely,” Harnden agreed. “Wherever you go, it’s somebody else’s population that’s doing the agricultural work.” In Costa Rica, Nicaraguans work on the coffee farms. In Malaysia, Indonesians harvest bananas.

Like all growers who use H-2A workers, Wish Farms must advertise its jobs to American workers first. Mike Carlton, the labor-relations director of the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association, told me that he did not know of any growers in the state of Florida who got a response to their ads this past season.

 

[Mr.Vic20]

Super hard work that never stops, isn't a way to get rich, and most people hardly understand and also look down on? Its tough to understand why its not more popular! 

[Remarkableriots]

http://www.verticalfarms.com.au/warehouse-systems

These are great for reducing waste and bringing fresher food to cities.

[Remarkableriots]

32 minutes ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

Super hard work that never stops, isn't a way to get rich, and most people hardly understand and also look down on? Its tough to understand why its not more popular! 

Which is why they need to replace most of that work force with machines. 

[Mr.Vic20]

10 minutes ago, Remarkableriots said:

Which is why they need to replace most of that work force with machines. 

100% whenever possible! 

[marioandsonic]

Just another industry being slowly killed by lazy and entitled millennials!

[Remarkableriots]

16 minutes ago, marioandsonic said:

Just another industry being slowly killed by lazy and entitled millennials!

RIP Avocado toast!

[SuperSpreader]

1 hour ago, Remarkableriots said:

RIP Avocado toast!

No!!!

[Remarkableriots]

6 minutes ago, 2user1cup said:

No!!!

 

[Remarkableriots]

https://www.fastcompany.com/90345915/fish-farming-could-be-the-center-of-a-future-food-system?position=1&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=05082019

[TheGreatGamble]

3 hours ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

Super hard work that never stops, isn't a way to get rich, and most people hardly understand and also look down on? Its tough to understand why its not more popular! 

Done it my whole life. I have a regular job, and only have a hobby farm (400 head of beef), until my dad passes on the ranch to my brother and I. Then I’ll farm full time. But it’ll never make me rich, just happy.

[Mr.Vic20]

4 minutes ago, TheGreatGamble said:

Done it my whole life. I have a regular job, and only have a hobby farm (400 head of beef), until my dad passes on the ranch to my brother and I. Then I’ll farm full time. But it’ll never make me rich, just happy.

More power to you sir! I'd assisted in farm work and while some days I'd love to shed the office life for some solid labor, I do not envy anyone who has to make the financials work. I'm not saying its impossible, just harder than most folks think. 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

11 minutes ago, TheGreatGamble said:

Done it my whole life. I have a regular job, and only have a hobby farm (400 head of beef), until my dad passes on the ranch to my brother and I. Then I’ll farm full time. But it’ll never make me rich, just happy.

I spent a few weeks when I was younger literally shoveling shit on a dairy farm (and helping milk the cows too) so hats off to you here. That stuff isn't easy