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> "Over three billion dollars were lost in California alone [in 2017], because there's not enough people to actually do the operations in seeding or harvesting,

> "Over three billion dollars were lost in California alone [in 2017], because there's not enough people to actually do the operations in seeding or harvesting," Brandon Alexander, co-founder of Iron Ox Robotic Farms, told Engadget. "The average age of the farmer now is 58. And so one of the big issues just plaguing farming is that there's just not enough labor to go around. The problem is getting worse every year."[1] I call BS. There is almost always enough labor at the correct price. That means the juice wasn't worth the squeeze (or the employers are making bad choices...) . If farm hands were making $100 an hour I'm sure you'd see a lot more farm hands. Of course they'd also probably be losing money, so that's why we dont see that. [1]: https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/03/future-indoor-agriculture-vertical-farms-robots/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/03/future-indoor-agricultur... Edit: this quote was actually from an engadget article linked elsewhere in this post's comments

SilasX 8y ago
Weird. I distinctly remember reading an article 20 years ago that said the average age of a farmer is 58.
howard941 8y ago
Yeah why did Alexander even toss in that bit about average farmer age and in the next sentence point out that there's not enough generic labor to go around at the price the average 58 year old farmer is willing to pay? Well-called BS it is.
ijpoijpoihpiuoh 8y ago
That goes without saying. Anyone who thinks about it for even the least amount of time understands that you can get more labor if you pay a lot for it. "There is not enough labor to go around," means, "There is not enough labor to go around at prices such that we could competitively produce our goods and retain a desirable amount of profit," in essentially one hundred percent of cases. Your objection doesn't take anything away from the thesis that automation may be a way to become more competitive by cutting labor costs.
- maerF0x0 8y ago
  I actually agree that automation is a great way to become profitable. I would suggest your modified statement (not enough labor at profitable prices) is true for every extinct industry. We probably could have produced an extra $1B of hand produced typewriters this year, but no one wants to make them by hand for $1 an hour and no one wants to buy them. Saying there is $3B of produce that could have been produced, ignores the fact that it would have been produced at a loss (after labor costs sufficient to incentivize workers) and there may not of even been a market for the over supply. If there is an actual unmet market need the price curve will move upward meaning employers can pay workers more to fulfill the unmet need. To me this looks like a lack of a market for $3B of produce...
  - ijpoijpoihpiuoh 8y ago
    I don't really understand your reply. "A lack of a market for $3B of produce" is also equivalent to saying, "A lack of market for $3B of produce at the prices required to make production profitable." The claim about automation allowing the meeting of that need simply means that the speaker believes automation will reduce prices enough to make targeting this need profitable.
wpietri 8y ago
That's not BS. That's you stating explicitly something people familiar with the issues see as implicit. Both CEOs and journalists, as well as most readers of MIT's Technology Review, understand that you can get more labor by raising the price. The implicit understanding is that a) most Americans don't want to do back-breaking manual labor for a living, and b) most Americans also want food to be cheap. This is an ongoing problem in agriculture and has been for decades.
- cptaj 8y ago
  >Americans don't want to do back-breaking manual labor for a living This makes me wonder... Autonomy is the biggest hurdle for these technologies and manual labor is the reason they are needed. Why aren't we meeting halfway and using remote controlled robots instead of autonomous ones? That way workers could do the job from anywhere in the world without having to break a sweat and you'd only need a fraction of the investment to get it running.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    I assume the tech isn't there, but mechanical turk for manual labour sounds like a fun concept, in a black mirror sort of way. Can't wait for Uber to try to solve its self driving cars with this.
  - abrichr 8y ago
    See: Kindred.ai
  - emiliobumachar 8y ago
    I'm not in either field, but I imagine that the issues with remote control are the same issues with full automation. Mostly gripping and locomotion. I assume it's not very hard (for experts) to build an AI that would push the right buttons at the right times.
  - thrower123 8y ago
    Have you ever watched any streams of somebody trying to play Job Simulator or other similar VR games? We have a long, long way to go with input tracking and control to get anything close to human dexterity over telepresence.
captain_perl 8y ago
I grew up in a farming area. Farm workers at harvest time are almost Olympic-level endurance athletes. Most Americans who show up don't last a day in the fields. So no, $100/hour won't inspire more than a few workers who have alternatives.
- maerF0x0 8y ago
  If farm workers were making $100 an hour and there was billions to be earned nation wide, we'd see "Farmer" be a valid H1B Visa job. More income means more taxes and the government, businesses involved and workers (foreign ones if US ones are too lazy) are all incentivized to make this production happen.
- SubiculumCode 8y ago
  You are correct in that experienced pickers are amazing to behold..really amazing productivity. But at $100/hour you'd soon find plenty of Americans ready to get that experienced and efficient.
hinkley 8y ago
This 58 number has been debunked repeatedly. There is very little incentive to transfer ownership to your children while you still have your faculties. When you are too old or infirm to farm at all you sell it to your kid or they get power of attorney and take it. The average age of the oldest member of farming families is 58.
- wang_li 8y ago
  I also wonder how they define a farmer. Is a Mexican laborer who arrives in the spring and works through harvest time a farmer? Or is it only the people who own the farm? >When you are too old or infirm to farm at all you sell it to your kid or they get power of attorney and take it. When my grandfather retired from farming, he simply leased the land to the guy who owned the adjacent farm. After my grandfather passed away ownership transferred to my grandmother until her death at 101. The same lease arrangement continued for a nearly thirty years. What was the age of the farmers of those farms?
- howard941 8y ago
  You're not being fair to the OP The ERS data pertain to "principal farm operator". See https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/beginning-disadvantaged-farmers/beginning-farmers-and-age-distribution-of-farmers/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/beginning-disad...
  - PeterisP 8y ago
    That's kind of the parent poster's point - if a father and son are both working on a farm, they're both farmers, but the father is "principal farm operator"; the father's age is not representative of the age of those working there.
    - howard941 8y ago
      Kinda getting into the weeds here (a case for Roundup?) but I gently disagree. Son may qualify as the Principal Farm Operator. It depends. For better or worse "Principal Farm Operator" is defined term (please see https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-household-well-being/glossary.aspx#farmoperator https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-household-...) and just to make things more confusing the moniker is self-applied. In a perfect world the principal would be the most important or the most active Operator in a multiple Operator farm but perfection is going to elude us w/r/t the USDA. Edited to note the upvote for your reasonable demeanor while disagreeing. An example I strive to follow.
thrower123 8y ago
> The average age of the farmer now is 58. And so one of the big issues just plaguing farming is that there's just not enough labor to go around. The problem is getting worse every year. If you keep making teen-aged labor more and more impractical, then you're going to have problems. A lot of the really labor intensive work in farming requires almost no skill, just a whole bunch of hands and bodies. The cycles of farming naturally have highs and lows; when it's time to plant or time to reap, it's all hands on deck to get it done before time and weather runs out, and the rest of the season you need considerably less labor. I think they still take two weeks off school in the middle of the fall in Aroostook County, Maine, so the potato farmers can get their harvest in.
- mrguyorama 8y ago
  Most of the schools there voted to stop it because it was stupidly poor value. Incredibly few kids were needed to actually work the fields. Potatoes have not been a labor intensive crop since the sixties.
randomdata 8y ago
It's funny. They can't find enough labour and I, as a farmer, can't find enough ground to expand my operation to utilize the full capacity of my labour and equipment. Seems like the obvious solution is to downsize their operation and let someone else fill the void. In my experience, people interested in farming would rather own their own business than work for someone else.

SilasX 8y ago

Weird. I distinctly remember reading an article 20 years ago that said the average age of a farmer is 58.

howard941 8y ago

Yeah why did Alexander even toss in that bit about average farmer age and in the next sentence point out that there's not enough generic labor to go around at the price the average 58 year old farmer is willing to pay? Well-called BS it is.

ijpoijpoihpiuoh 8y ago

That goes without saying. Anyone who thinks about it for even the least amount of time understands that you can get more labor if you pay a lot for it. "There is not enough labor to go around," means, "There is not enough labor to go around at prices such that we could competitively produce our goods and retain a desirable amount of profit," in essentially one hundred percent of cases. Your objection doesn't take anything away from the thesis that automation may be a way to become more competitive by cutting labor costs.

maerF0x0 8y ago
I actually agree that automation is a great way to become profitable. I would suggest your modified statement (not enough labor at profitable prices) is true for every extinct industry. We probably could have produced an extra $1B of hand produced typewriters this year, but no one wants to make them by hand for $1 an hour and no one wants to buy them. Saying there is $3B of produce that could have been produced, ignores the fact that it would have been produced at a loss (after labor costs sufficient to incentivize workers) and there may not of even been a market for the over supply. If there is an actual unmet market need the price curve will move upward meaning employers can pay workers more to fulfill the unmet need. To me this looks like a lack of a market for $3B of produce...
- ijpoijpoihpiuoh 8y ago
  I don't really understand your reply. "A lack of a market for $3B of produce" is also equivalent to saying, "A lack of market for $3B of produce at the prices required to make production profitable." The claim about automation allowing the meeting of that need simply means that the speaker believes automation will reduce prices enough to make targeting this need profitable.

wpietri 8y ago

That's not BS. That's you stating explicitly something people familiar with the issues see as implicit. Both CEOs and journalists, as well as most readers of MIT's Technology Review, understand that you can get more labor by raising the price. The implicit understanding is that a) most Americans don't want to do back-breaking manual labor for a living, and b) most Americans also want food to be cheap. This is an ongoing problem in agriculture and has been for decades.

cptaj 8y ago
>Americans don't want to do back-breaking manual labor for a living This makes me wonder... Autonomy is the biggest hurdle for these technologies and manual labor is the reason they are needed. Why aren't we meeting halfway and using remote controlled robots instead of autonomous ones? That way workers could do the job from anywhere in the world without having to break a sweat and you'd only need a fraction of the investment to get it running.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  I assume the tech isn't there, but mechanical turk for manual labour sounds like a fun concept, in a black mirror sort of way. Can't wait for Uber to try to solve its self driving cars with this.
- abrichr 8y ago
  See: Kindred.ai
- emiliobumachar 8y ago
  I'm not in either field, but I imagine that the issues with remote control are the same issues with full automation. Mostly gripping and locomotion. I assume it's not very hard (for experts) to build an AI that would push the right buttons at the right times.
- thrower123 8y ago
  Have you ever watched any streams of somebody trying to play Job Simulator or other similar VR games? We have a long, long way to go with input tracking and control to get anything close to human dexterity over telepresence.

captain_perl 8y ago

I grew up in a farming area. Farm workers at harvest time are almost Olympic-level endurance athletes. Most Americans who show up don't last a day in the fields. So no, $100/hour won't inspire more than a few workers who have alternatives.

maerF0x0 8y ago
If farm workers were making $100 an hour and there was billions to be earned nation wide, we'd see "Farmer" be a valid H1B Visa job. More income means more taxes and the government, businesses involved and workers (foreign ones if US ones are too lazy) are all incentivized to make this production happen.
SubiculumCode 8y ago
You are correct in that experienced pickers are amazing to behold..really amazing productivity. But at $100/hour you'd soon find plenty of Americans ready to get that experienced and efficient.

hinkley 8y ago

This 58 number has been debunked repeatedly. There is very little incentive to transfer ownership to your children while you still have your faculties. When you are too old or infirm to farm at all you sell it to your kid or they get power of attorney and take it. The average age of the oldest member of farming families is 58.

wang_li 8y ago
I also wonder how they define a farmer. Is a Mexican laborer who arrives in the spring and works through harvest time a farmer? Or is it only the people who own the farm? >When you are too old or infirm to farm at all you sell it to your kid or they get power of attorney and take it. When my grandfather retired from farming, he simply leased the land to the guy who owned the adjacent farm. After my grandfather passed away ownership transferred to my grandmother until her death at 101. The same lease arrangement continued for a nearly thirty years. What was the age of the farmers of those farms?
howard941 8y ago
You're not being fair to the OP The ERS data pertain to "principal farm operator". See https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/beginning-disadvantaged-farmers/beginning-farmers-and-age-distribution-of-farmers/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/beginning-disad...
- PeterisP 8y ago
  That's kind of the parent poster's point - if a father and son are both working on a farm, they're both farmers, but the father is "principal farm operator"; the father's age is not representative of the age of those working there.
  - howard941 8y ago
    Kinda getting into the weeds here (a case for Roundup?) but I gently disagree. Son may qualify as the Principal Farm Operator. It depends. For better or worse "Principal Farm Operator" is defined term (please see https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-household-well-being/glossary.aspx#farmoperator https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-household-...) and just to make things more confusing the moniker is self-applied. In a perfect world the principal would be the most important or the most active Operator in a multiple Operator farm but perfection is going to elude us w/r/t the USDA. Edited to note the upvote for your reasonable demeanor while disagreeing. An example I strive to follow.

thrower123 8y ago

> The average age of the farmer now is 58. And so one of the big issues just plaguing farming is that there's just not enough labor to go around. The problem is getting worse every year. If you keep making teen-aged labor more and more impractical, then you're going to have problems. A lot of the really labor intensive work in farming requires almost no skill, just a whole bunch of hands and bodies. The cycles of farming naturally have highs and lows; when it's time to plant or time to reap, it's all hands on deck to get it done before time and weather runs out, and the rest of the season you need considerably less labor. I think they still take two weeks off school in the middle of the fall in Aroostook County, Maine, so the potato farmers can get their harvest in.

mrguyorama 8y ago
Most of the schools there voted to stop it because it was stupidly poor value. Incredibly few kids were needed to actually work the fields. Potatoes have not been a labor intensive crop since the sixties.

randomdata 8y ago

It's funny. They can't find enough labour and I, as a farmer, can't find enough ground to expand my operation to utilize the full capacity of my labour and equipment. Seems like the obvious solution is to downsize their operation and let someone else fill the void. In my experience, people interested in farming would rather own their own business than work for someone else.