Robots To Replace Migrant Fruit Pickers 409
Vicissidude sends us to Wired for a look at a fruit-harvesting robot being developed in California. Its development has been funded entirely by agricultural associations, concerned by the uncertainty surrounding migrant immigrant labor. Quoting: "As if the debate over immigration and guest worker programs wasn't complicated enough, now a couple of robots are rolling into the middle of it. Vision Robotics, a San Diego company, is working on a pair of robots that would trundle through orchards plucking oranges, apples or other fruit from the trees. In a few years, troops of these machines could perform the tedious and labor-intensive task of fruit picking that currently employs thousands of migrant workers each season."
Long overdue (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been wondering why this hasn't happened yet for years. The answer, of course, is that the ag industry could rely on incredibly cheap labor, so it wasn't worth developing a technological replacement. But if anything is proof that the debate about illegal immigration has turned a corner, this is it.
Once you've seen the back-breaking labor involved in the California agriculture industry, it's impossible not to applaud the development of technology that will make it obsolete. Nobody says after years of work in the strawberry fields, "Gee, I'm sure glad I got the opportunity to explore my full human potential in that career!"
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the $3/hr is available, then of course machinery can't compete with that (at least not until it's rolled out on a large scale and parts for maintenance become dirt-cheap)
Re:Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
This changes the immigration debate! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not unlike the H1B scandal. If you pay enough, you'll find people to do almost any job. The "need" isn't for workers per se, but people who will work a brief job for roughly minimum wage and then move on as a rootless nomad.
We should view this as cruel. We shouldn't maintain an underclass which picks fruit or maintains gardens. Machines can do this work without becoming tired, bored, getting disabling injuries, suffering reactions to ag chemicals, or any of the other hazards of human labor in orchards and fields. Machines can be built as needed and scrapped when they become unusable or obsolete.
If a machine is stored in a leaky barn, it's the farmer's problem. It's not cruel to ask a machine to work in high temperatures or without toilet breaks. A machine doesn't need compensation if drought or frost or fungus ruins the crop and there's nothing for it to do one year.
The taxpayer ought to have a say too. A machine isn't going to bring in a family which immediately qualifies for food stamps and Medicaid. A machine isn't going to overwhelm schools with ESL students. A machine isn't going to add to traffic congestion or law-enforcement expenses.
People who build and maintain machines have pretty good lives. People who do the sort of jobs replaced by machines often don't. Designing and debugging and improving machines means paychecks for geeks like us.
Instead of asking anyone to do jobs we won't do ourselves, or pay enough to attract folks like us, let's make machines to do them. Anything less is hypocritical.
Mechanization is the future (Score:5, Insightful)
This argument was what Southern Slave owners used with Cotton.
Funny, how that chore of cotton picking got automated.
Machines don't get tired. They don't die. They don't need medical care or costly medical plans. They can be made over and over again, and always get cheaper when you make enough of them. The whole advance of human existence has been to make more and better machines, that do more to leverage people's labor.
Hello that is WHY you are reading Slashdot.
Machines replaced slave and later tenant farmer/serf labor in the South. Machines replaced lots of deadly hand labor in coal mines (not entirely but a lot). Machines replaced a line full of low skilled labor on the auto assembly lines with a few high skilled positions.
But hey, for some people having a subservient near-slave class is a plus. Not the kind of society I'd want to live in, but some folks only feel better when they have helots to lord it over I guess.
Re:Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
These robots aren't *dirty mexicans*
Face it, some xenophobes would rather burn their money on robot's that comes with an English manual than a spanish speaking migrant.
Funny. The people I know that hire "dirty Mexicans" usually end up hiring them for life. They treat their employees as family and their kids as their own. For that matter, I haven't seen a farmer or rancher yet that didn't put his "hired hand's" kids through college. Granted, these weren't migrant workers, but illegals with "anchor babies", but dirty Mexicans (your words, not mine) nonetheless.
I'm afraid you have no idea as to what you are talking about. Spouting negative stereotypes won't make you look any smarter.
This changes nothing. (Score:4, Insightful)
2. What will you say when automation renders YOUR occupation redundant?
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt it. I read it as a stereotype parody of anyone who is against illegal immigration. See, if you are not for completely open borders, you are automatically a racist, xenophobe, bigot, red-neck...whatever. He refuses to consider that maybe illegals have no rights, no protection under the law (as far as they know), and they are taken advantage of and abused on a regular basis because they are illegal and are afraid to seek their rights. It makes his side a clear winner when he doesn't mention that people who want a secure border aren't against immigration. We just want a name and simple background check. We are not bigots. Hell, for that matter, I feel the immigration quota should be raised to the number of estimated illegals in the country. What is it, 12,000,000. The number of legal immigrants is capped at 250,000. That's a joke! NO wonder there are so many illegals!
Anyway, this machinery is the modern day equivalent of the cotton gin. Only, instead of helping to end the oppression of blacks, it will end the oppression of Hispanics.
Luddism (Score:3, Insightful)
This wont be pretty. Perhaps we should ask England is advice concerning textile machines?
Re:This changes the immigration debate! (Score:2, Insightful)
About time... (Score:4, Insightful)
It took more than one gas crisis for the American car manufacturers to design fuel efficient engines. Because while gas was cheap, there were no incentives to invest in technology. And while labour was (and still is) cheap, robotics cannot compete. I am sure that the technology for those robots has been available for at least a decade, but it wasn't cost effective in comparison to migrant workers.
But this is the way our society SHOULD have developed. So many manufacturing processes could be automated, if not for the initial investment.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm afraid you missed it. You are correct that he said SOME xenophobes would rather burn their money or robots than hire dirty Mexicans. However, you missed the understood portion that says, "the rest are too cheap to let their xenophobia overrule their wallets so they go ahead hire the "dirty Mexicans" anyway."
Besides, xenophobia is a bad term to use anyway. Intolerance of the unfamiliar is not an accurate description of farmers who hire migrant workers to pick fruit. These people speak Spanish and know how to get along with their workers. You don't get far in that business without a broad understanding and respect for the people you are hiring.
Re:This changes nothing. (Score:3, Insightful)
2.) Automation overseas is making our jobs obsolete.
Yet no one cares so why should I care about them?
Not to sound cruel but I am competing with these people now for minimum wage jobs and these farm workers pay them for less for minium wage and I can not even work the fields myself as an American.
Basically they can complain all they want but no one will care and I will be angry if they do. As its viewed Indians are good but during the illegal immigration debate somehow these poor illegal immigrants need work and the mean old Americans wont let them and both parties need to act as one to save them... cry me a river.
From bad to worse. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You sure? (Score:4, Insightful)
they come here because economic conditions are better,
and there are jobs that pay more. So, if the
ag jobs go away, I would not expect immigration
to stop or reverse. It might find a new equilibrium,
and slow a bit.
"Think of it as evolution in action". A reader of
"Oath of Fealty", perhaps?
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think a Xenophile will go out of their way to hire minorities they think less of because they can feel snooty in being "above" their employee.
Re:From bad to worse. (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:From bad to worse. (Score:4, Insightful)
DEAD on the MONEY (Score:3, Insightful)
Their will be an outcry.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact is immigration reform that removes illegal migrants and eliminates even agricultural migrant's will be good for America in every way. The US economy has moved to a very strong dependence on what can only be called slave labor. Illegal migrants are frequently put in job's that pay less than US minimum wage standards and don't meet US minimum safety standards. There can be no argument that the continual immigration of people to the US helps the American economy, even illegal migration helps, the question is does it help more than controlled immigration does. But the fact is, how illegal workers are treated in this country is akin to the sharecrop system of virtual slavery that developed in the south after the civil war. It's also a fact that eliminating the cheap slave labor will force technological solutions that in the end will generate a significant number of high paying tech jobs.
As citizens we have to decide if we believe in the values we enshrine. If the wholesale exploitation of people to keep fruit and veggy prices low fits with our values. Sure, the migrants will tell you that they love living in America and that they do the hard work so their children have a chance that they wouldn't have in their home countries. Again, we have to ask ourselves, wouldn't it be better to allow REAL immigration instead of speaking out about illegal migration while we turn a blind eye to the illegal migration (US policy for the last 20 years).
How many people do you know that have turned in the local small businesses that are employing illegal migrants and in the process pricing out everyone else that is playing by the rules ?(Construction is by far the worst for this)? Illegal migration artificially deflates labor prices, it's the reason the republican's have used to keep the minimum wage from changing and it's also the reason that some jobs have such low labor rates that no one but illegal migrants can afford the job, thereby providing an excuse to right wing policy makers that the migrants are only taking jobs that American's won't. Without illegal migrants in the equation labor rates would be forced by supply and demand to provide a real living wage.
Jumping the gun (Score:3, Insightful)
Not saying it won't happen, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Until then, this kind of looks like an R&D firm "picking the low hanging fruits" of funding from the immigration debate...
immigration vs. tech (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm a bit surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
But when you wish to produce more crops with lower labor costs, in a world with rising labor costs, you end up having to invest in technology to take on the role of human beings. This is the wonder of agriculture in the industrialized world. Even something as simple as a combine harvester has had a dramatic impact on our society. It is inventions like that that enabled an industrial revolution to occur. As you no longer need as many people on the farm, that provides more people to work in industry and dramatically increases the number of people who become professional workers or skilled tradesmen.
A poor third-world nation suffers greatly because it cannot scale its agriculture the same way as the industrialized nations. Everyone is working their tail off trying to do subsistence farming. they have no time to work at a trade that adds to their nations GDP/GNP. If a poor nation could increase agricultural output while decreasing the labor involved, you can reassign those people to producing things. the don't even have to be costly goods, it could be sewing clothing and footballs. But it's hard to industrialize when people are starving(a leading cause of disease in the third world) or working constantly to produce food (an insufficient amount of food).
You should either treat people as equals and protect them from exploitation, or you do not let them in. And guess who the primary victims of Latino gangs are? new illegal immigrants. Without control of the borders the ex-cons and thugs spill into the country and take over the Hispanic ghettos, victimizing the illegal immigrants. I don't know about you, but I think knowing who comes into your country and not letting in people without proper document is the opposite of racist/bigot, I think it's the compassionate choice.
Re:Mechanization is the future (Score:2, Insightful)
True. But I've seen very excellent software solutions just die because the people who were supposed to operate them fail. Why? Because people have an inherent dislike/aversion to functioning like machines, and a lot of software forces them to do so.
My examples are from the engineering world, so we're not talking about data entry-level work.
It also doesn't help that software changes ("improves") so frequently in order to maximize the monetization and further confuse the users.
Sometimes I think that computerization's real goal is employment creation and that that death phenomenon thing will eventually take care of those pesky individuals that claim to know how to do things more effectively and efficiently without software.
http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm [marshallbrain.com]
Re:What to do... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, to address the issue of would everybody let their robot earn them a paycheck... If robots are cheap enough to be owned by an individual, why the heck would any sane corporation hire individual robots from many small contractors instead of either leasing from another large company or buying their own? I've heard other people ponder the notion of each individual owning a robot and letting it do their work, but this seems like a really silly idea, and nobody has ever explained to me how it could actually work in practice...
As for how somebody who isn't in knowledge work makes a living... Land speculation. Ultimately, location is the only scarce tangible. There is a lot of space, but people want to be in particular places, so a particular location will always have some intrinsic value, even after robotic exploitation of asteroids and the like makes the mineral value of land for raw resources negligible.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have used a similar approach to picking for a completely different crop 20+ years ago. We picked carrots that way. One-two people go and pull and pile in the middle of the row, doing nothing else. Two more people sort leaving them on the ground and two-three pack the sorted crop. The efficiency was around 6 times higher than the standard picking by hand where a single person picks them, sorts them and carries the lot the collection point for packing. In fact the efficiency was so high that we ended up having a serious pay dispute regarding pay and bonuses.
So a robot which determines an optimal sequence for an entire tree and picks out of it may as well outpick a human team. Though, oranges will probably be the wrong crop to try this first. They are not that labour intensive. The income per square mile and margins are also not that great. Though the most labour intensive crops like bananas do not grow in places like California which can afford a pilot robot deployment.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this goes in 3-4 years from now
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
And again I need to emphasize that this has nothing to do with race. This is one reason I don't like George W. Bush, and most of the left, is because if you say you are anti-illegal immigrant then they try to label you as a racist when that is quite simply not the case. I am not racist, but I hate illegal immigrants, and I am really not afraid to say so. FWIW there are many Mexicans who just by looking at them, you can't even tell they are from Mexico. You have to remember that many of them are of European descent.
If it were up to me, I would make it so that people who cross the border illegally must forfeit all property they own when they are found out, and their employer may sue them for all money that they have earned while working for them due to fraudulent employment (employers can already do this to legal citizens who e.g. provide false credentials or fake degree certificates when they apply for a job.) America would NOT be the only first world country to do these things. Then also remove birthright citizenship, which the US is the only first world country to have. If we made those three changes, just you watch how fast the illegals move south of the border. The "12 million here" problem will be solved so fast it'll make your head spin because it would be damn near impossible for them to make any kind of living here. The problem is that our politicians (left and right) really don't give a crap about what most Americans want. Like Osama once said; we have a soft underbelly.
Also FWIW, a xenophile would of course hire an illegal immigrant. Note the differences between the two suffixes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-phob- [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-phil- [wikipedia.org]
Xenophile technically isn't a word in that it isn't in any official English dictionary, but it would mean the exact opposite of xenophobe.
Disclaimer: Yeah I used wikipedia, and under normal circumstances I never would use it as a source, but I couldn't be assed to find another one right now.
Why They Come?... (Score:2, Insightful)
A Mexican and a Cowboy are drinking in a bar right on the border. The cowboy says "Why are you Mexican people always so mad at us? What'd we wever do to you?"
The Mexican turns to him and says "You stole half our country! And worse than that, you took the half with all the paved roads!"
Then the cowboy says "Yea but when we took that land, nobody lived there, and the roads weren't paved."
---------
First off.... the US does not at all need illegal immigrants, particularly those from central and S. American countries.
These people tend to leave their own countries because of lousy economic conditions--but it never seems to sink in that the governments in those countries plays a big part in the lousy economic conditions. Mexico's gov't has a few people who seem to be earnestly trying to do the decent thing, but fact is most of it sucks for corruption, and has for a long time. The Mexican electorate can't seem to figure out how NOT to vote brutes and grifters into office.
Mexican people are not dumb, and are not lazy. Mexico has decent amounts of natural resources, industry (other than the border maquiladoras) and educational institutions. There is nothing wrong with the country except for the people who tend to get elected to run it--and Mexicans need to stay home and figure out how to fix that themselves.
Second of all--the reason that immigrants come to the US is that they know they can get jobs, and the reason for that is that the agricultural business lobby has always tried to minimize the EMPLOYER's penalties for hiring illegals. The key to not attracting so many illegals is not to try to fine the illegals, they wired all their extra money home. The key here is making the BUSINESSES caught employing them pay--dearly. Like, say,,, $1000 per day of known employment. When the farm lobby sees that it's cheaper to hire legal citizens, they'll raise wages and probably be able to hire legals. They won't LIKE that, because those legals will have full job rights under US law--something that illegals do not have now. But if McDonald's and Wal-Mart knew they could get away with hiring near-100% illegals and pay them $3 an hour, do you think they'd do it too? And do you think they'd be happy to see an end put to it?
US companies that hire illegals need to pay through the nose, and that money needs to be spent on deporting the illegals caught. It's for their own good. (while we're at it, we need to rescind "birthright citizenship". All the blacks who were slaves are already citizens now, and that was the entire point of the law)
Thirdly--Whatever Mexico thinks of US immigrant policy is meaningless; the trite US police abuse that Mexico calls "an outrage" is mild compared to what Mexican police do regularly to people entering their own country illegally at the southern border.
~
Re:Long overdue (Score:3, Insightful)
The same could be said about any "Career" what makes you think picking strawberries is any different from any other career that one can enjoy? If picking strawberries paid 60K a year and software programming paid $3 an hour you can bet your boot the only reason people "feel satisfied" with their careers half the time is the money it brings in and the working conditions and renumerations associated with the task. Any career or job can lose status, in fact that is the whole purpose of progress: To replicate and replace human labour as much as possible. The problem is technology and capitalism (wage markets) as they are now are on a head on collision course, just what happens when or geneticially enhanced human beings come around? At some point the social order we know today will have to go the way of the dodo.
Many smarter economists realized that a national income whether or not someone worked, simply because technology keeps displacing jobs and makes full employment impossible.
Let them in! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm 50 years old and my Social Security depends on them.
Unbiased Reporting.....Not Here..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Regardless of immigration status, the robots are replacing workers. Period. The robots don't decide who they want to replace, The farmers that grow the fruit just want to replace all of the workers so they can minimize costs (the whole point of robotics in the first place), and the companies that develop the robots could give a damn about the immigration status of the workers they are replacing because it has no influence on robotics in the first place.
What the heel is this article about? Is it about robots becoming more widespread in industry, or is it an "Immigration Politics/Policies" op-ed?
Robotics has nothing to do with immigration status, and immigration status has nothing to do with robotics.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
The United States does not have, and has never had, any responsibility to be an employment agency for the poor of the rest of the world. The government of the United States has one mandate, and that is to act in the best interest of its citizens. In some cases, historically, it was in the best interest of the existing citizens to let lots of people immigrate and become new citizens. This is fine, and it contributed immensely towards making our country the place it is today.
However, I don't think this is true today; or at least, I've seen scant evidence that this is the case. Legalizing the currently-illegal workers in this country would be in the best interests of a few big agricultural and business concerns, and perhaps some of the unions; I don't think it would benefit the majority of U.S. citizens. Whether it's good for the illegal workers themselves, or for Mexico, or for Sweden, or for anyone else but bona fide U.S. Citizens who the U.S. government represents, is irrelevant.
I don't know who wrote the "give us your poor, your hungry..." etc. line, but it's not true and never has been. The U.S. doesn't want the huddled masses, the poor, sick, and tired (and we routinely turned them away); we need the best and brightest, the most driven, the smartest, and the most ambitious. I have no problem with immigration per se. I too, like virtually everyone in this country, am descended from immigrants. But the amount of, and type, and criteria for immigration, should be decided with one goal in mind, and that is what is good for America as a nation and its people, at any given time.
Re:Liberal students were one reason (Score:3, Insightful)
The GP didn't say anything that would warrant that. He said that at one point, farm workers made enough money so that they could be considered "middle class." Overall, illegal immigration didn't, therefore, seem to be a big problem.
However, since then, the amount of illegal immigration has increased (or continued) to the point where there's now such a surplus of cheap labor, that we've created what's effectively a slave class. (Actually, I've seen some analyses around that say the cost of hiring illegal immigrants today is less than the cost of maintaining a similar number of slaves on a cotton plantation in the 1840s; I suspect you can manipulate the numbers to go either way because of the difficulty in comparing relative costs, but the fact that it's even close says something.) It's become pretty clear that illegal immigration is harmful, and as a result, people aren't falling over themselves to protect it anymore.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
the prison population in southern California, and that their free medical
care isn't paid for by taxpayers.
When they reproduce for free, and you wonder why your taxes went up 100%
on you house, it is because your paying to educate their kids.
If they want to pay their fair share, and become law abiding citizens then so be it.
It will make jobs damn scarce for awhile as anyone all over earth can come here,
but it beats what we have now.
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:2, Insightful)
Many immigrants have honorable intents and are not inherently bad. But this is NOT a 'nation of immigrants' and people who sneak in to squirt out an anchor baby so they can stay are a far cry from the settlers of this country and the earlier immigrants.
Re:Mechanization is the future (Score:2, Insightful)
It's odd: we're on the edge to a century-old human dream but can't change our work-centric life.
I, for one... (Score:4, Insightful)
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ [digitalelite.com]
Umm. (Score:3, Insightful)
And as for the comment that many immigrants have honorable intents and are not inherently bad, well, that could be said of the entire population. Yes, some immigrants suck. Because they are _people_, not because they're immigrants. Some people suck, but then again many of them have honorable intent and are not inherently bad. I'm sure that some of the early settlers were pretty horrible, too, so lets not wax all nostalgic about heroic forbears.
My family lines came from Germany in the 1800s and Norway in the early 1900s. Relatively recent, as it goes, but still immigrants. We're all naturalized now, but that doesn't change the fact that we immigrated here.
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:2, Insightful)
"Mexifornia" as you said, is the first time i've ever heard that word. Unlike any canadian territory where french nor english was the native language, "Spanish" - the american variation of Spain's official language, was already present in California and many other "western states" long before the US moved west.
The reason why there are so many "latin americans" in the southwest of the us is not because of the millions and millions of illegal immigrants, it's because of the millions of people who lived/settled on the lands before it became US territory. Although i will agree that the millions who keep coming in illegally help increase/sustain the number of latin americans. (Hey, someone said there's a difference between immigrants and settlers, right?)
What are people so afraid of? Surely no one on
You know, i've personally never have heard of an illegal alien getting welfare, foodstamps or some other sort of non-humane benefit. I've never heard of one apply for a tax refund either. I'm sure they've gotten emergency room treatment for free at the expense of legal aliens, but standing in line to get money? They must have paid a lot of $ to get a good SSN and ID.
What I have seen is a LOT of unfortunate people living together in amounts/places that locals would not tolerate themselves. If illegals have nice houses in Wisconsin, or Michigan, it's probably because the standard of living is a lot less there than in California. I worked at a site recently where one of the Mexican workers (born in the US) said, "... and i told them i'm mexican mexican" so i asked, "what is a 'Mexican 'Mexican'" and she answered, "you know, mexicans who live in a 1 room apartment with 2-3 families." She wasn't ghetto, and had no accent. But this is what she joked about being mexican.
While i'm sure that many miss the real point of what's going on here, the US always has been a point of inspiration and hope for the entire world. Maybe a little less now since about 2000, but still maintains that appeal. People from all over the world believe that there are streets "paved with gold." They think what they see in the movies is how it is. They want to be able to come here, and live like they "imagine" they can. So when everyone who thinks "they MUST assimilate but don't..." they are wrong. No one who comes here sets up show like vietnam, thailan, japan, russia, pakistan or any other place. They can try to "live like they did at home" but that doesn't mean buying a property, tearing it down, and the building the same crappy structure they had back home.
You don't see Los Angeles being a copy of Mexico. And besides, like i've told everyone after having worked in TJ for a little bit, "the only difference i saw between TJ and California is that California has Cal Trans."
Anyhow, it's time for leftovers from "Beto's." Man those dudes can make some mean fajitas. I sure am glad the illegals haven't integrated into our society as some wish they had... because we wouldn't have fajitas, tacos, tostadas, flautas or even nachos! Even though nachos was a mexican-american invention.
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think the first generation of any wave of immigrants is ever particularly successful at assimilating into a foreign culture, nor should it be expected to (within reason). Go to Brooklyn, NY and take a look at the various neighborhoods there -- up until only a few years ago, the city was divided into very distinct sections often based off of ethnicity. As time went on, and new generations were born, assimilation gradually took place. (As a byproduct, it also became (and has remained) the pizza capitol of the world, proving that assimilation can be mutually beneficial, but I digress...)
Of course, if the country's economy is structured in such a way that there is little social mobility or class-to-class interaction, then, no -- there won't be any assimilation, and we'll have numerous huge problems on our hands. Fortunately, I'm told that America is the land of opportunity. Right?