The massive increase in immigrant labor requires deep pockets and an intensive search to secure workers — accelerating the need for new solutions. Robotics Right the Selecting
by STEVE MAXWELL
R epetitive, physically demanding, and, in many cases, exhausting — it’s unsurprising that crop picking is unattractive to many workers in North America. Imported seasonal labor has long been the solution to the shortage, but with labor costs skyrocketing, many growers are now looking to automa- tion and robotics for an answer. For Walt Duflock, senior vice president for innovation at Irvine, CA-headquartered Western Growers, a large industry association, the driving force behind this phe- nomenon can be easily identified by looking at the United States’ H-2A program first established in 1986 for seasonal agricultural workers. In 2005, there were 48,000 workers documented using the program. By 2022, that number had increased to more than 371,000. “It’s a massive lift,” says Duflock. “But the crazy part people forget is if you bring in immigrant labor, you’ve got two big expenses that occur all of a sudden — you’ve got to house these folks in complexes costing millions of dollars, and then you have to transport them from the H-2A hous- ing location to and from the work site.” Representing more than 2,400 grower members who
account for over half of all conventional and organic production of specialty crops (fruits, nuts and vegetables) in the U.S., Western Growers’ innovation arm works with robotics start-ups, helping them understand the problems and needs of growers. “My team’s job is to sit between the grower and the start-up and help them scale without Western Growers making an investment,” explains Duflock. “It’s expensive to make ag-robots, so we’ve built some standard com- ponents and open-source tools to allow startups to build robots faster.” To enable this process, Western Growers supplies image libraries to developers of specific crops, allowing them to save initial research time and costs, as well as a “Startup Toolkit.” The association has also produced two editions of its Specialty Crop Automation Report, which Duflock says focuses on robotics start-ups that are “really hitting the mark” to help give venture capital firms the context and confidence to make investments. But for Duflock the reason behind the growing interest in robotic solutions is simple: labor. “It’s always getting more expensive, it’s always getting harder to find,” he explains.
38 Vision Magazine
October/November 2023
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