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  1. #1
    Senior Member Captainron's Avatar
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    Hooray!! Robotic fruit pickers are coming!

    Federal funding for mechanization in agricultural harvesting has declined over the last thirty years, in large part from pressure from farmworker organizations like Cesar Chavez' UFW. But now there is more incentive to proceed with harvesting equipment, even for easily damaged items like berries, tomatoes. peaches or easily bruised produce.

    Here's an automated pair of devices: a scanner to devise a map program of the ripe fruit in an orchard ; and a picker following the computer program:
    http://www.wired.com/science/discoverie ... obo_picker
    Here's info on machine harvesting of berries and grapes;
    http://berrygrape.oregonstate.edu/viney ... d-america/

    So what kind of programs have been available to farmworker families?
    Check out this example from Washington state, home of amnesty Senators Murray and Cantwell.
    http://www.wa.gov/esd/farmworkers/

    Twenty years ago our harvest could have been nearly fully mechanized. Few migrant farmworkers want to stay in that role. They want to settle down and move up the economic ladder. While discussion of an AgJobs bill takes place in Congress we need to make its backers aware that mechanization of the majority of the work is already available, it just need the economic incentives to go ahead. The days of handpicking and much other handwork are history, if we choose to go that way.
    "Men of low degree are vanity, Men of high degree are a lie. " David
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  2. #2
    Senior Member Americanpatriot's Avatar
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    Good news...progress at last.
    <div>GOD - FAMILY - COUNTRY</div>

  3. #3
    JAK
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    Senior Member JAK's Avatar
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    ........and they don't need a green card!

    Should have been done a long time ago!!
    Please help save America for our children and grandchildren... they are counting on us. THEY DESERVE the goodness of AMERICA not to be given to those who are stealing our children's future! ... and a congress who works for THEM!
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  4. #4
    Senior Member fedupDeb's Avatar
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    Right on time!

  5. #5
    Senior Member Captainron's Avatar
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    I think this is a toehold at this point, but with some pressure for Congress to fund research and implementation in three or four years it will be making a big impact. There are a lot of crops that will all require their own system, but just how many mechanical engineering departments do we have in this country, particularly in agricultural states?? C'mon, cowboys! Get going thar with your computer programs!!

    This could be our generations equivalent of the Race to the Moon! (Won that one, too)

    This would be a good project for the House Immigration Reform Caucus, now headed by Rep. Bilbray. I bet it wouldn't take that much to kick start a new technology program. They will pay for themselves, and could be shared from farm to farm. Heck, it would sure be cheaper than building new prisons!
    "Men of low degree are vanity, Men of high degree are a lie. " David
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  6. #6
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    Progress is what takes you from a third world country to a better standard of living.

    If we continue to allow so many cheap laborers here, we will revert.
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  7. #7
    Senior Member WhatMattersMost's Avatar
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    This would be a good project for the House Immigration Reform Caucus, now headed by Rep. Bilbray. I bet it wouldn't take that much to kick start a new technology program. They will pay for themselves, and could be shared from farm to farm. Heck, it would sure be cheaper than building new prisons!
    or paying for the birth of anchor babies, or welfare, or WIC, or medical care or Section 8 housing or listening to a bunch of worthless, lazy corrupt third world whiners with a false bottom masquerading as contributors to our economy.
    It's Time to Rescind the 14th Amendment

  8. #8
    Senior Member buffalododger's Avatar
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    Mechanical pickers are still many years away. There already is grape pickers that cost a small fortune to buy. I use to deliver them to new customers for a firm back when they were first introduced.

    Spendy things. Cherries , peaches , apples , pears , oranges , grapefruit etc, any machines to harvest them are still just in the dream stage. I have seen a few attempts and proto's running about but they are still not effective from the dollar standpoint.

    This outfit put a million into it ? A single grape harvester use to run up around a half million. With inflation I suppose more these days. Then there is still the need to prune tree's , the grafting and other seemingly endless chores that go with operating an orchard.

    Mechanical harvesters would certainly be a big help but not the answer to the whole problem.

  9. #9
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    Of course it would be expensive for the farmer - but why can't they 'share' the equipment. Every farmer doesn't need one of his very own.

    Of course, it is much more expensive than for the American taxpayer to subsidize their workers.

    If I must 'subsidize' something, I would prefer it would be American ingenuity, American workers, and American knowhow - rather than foreign workers.

    I remember when people used to pick the cotton by hand, when they picked tomatoes by hand, when they 'thrashed' the pecan trees and picked up the pecans by hand.

    Surely the farmer years ago when children were working in his cotton field would have lamented, cried, and whined that he just couldnt' afford that mechanical cotton picker and if the government made him quit hiring children, he just wouldn't be able to farm. Guess what?
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  10. #10
    Senior Member Captainron's Avatar
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    The expense of the equipment should be one of the things that is dealt with in any congressional mandate. It does not take long for a popular item to rapidly fall in price. Four years ago a 42" LCD Screen would cost you several thousand. Now you can get them for less than a thou.

    I see it all the time in my line of work; Americans are locked into thinking that everything is going to cost a lot of money. So they surrender like sheep, without asking questions. Here in the NW builders are selling condominums for a million dollars that should go for a quarter of that. They didn't use to be relatively expensive; they were one of the cheapest types of real estate to buy.

    I can appreciate that if something is one of a kind, is relatively unused and designed to sophisticated standards it will be expensive. Besides a lot of farmers in the Northwest are sitting on very valuable real esate. I have noticed something about a lot of businesspeople: they whine about how much their overhead is, so they can charge you more money--all the while their assets are appreciating. THAT makes me sick.

    My dad always told stories of the wheat thrashing in his home state. How did poor Midwest farmers do it in those days? They shared! These days the government can step in:
    Why not wipe out those subsidies for wealthy gentleman farmers and spend the money on equipment?
    "Men of low degree are vanity, Men of high degree are a lie. " David
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