4 ms·
This is awesome, I love that it will reduce the need for pesticides. When I read people talk about how hard it is to find labor I think to myself "Well, maybe
by fractal618 5y ago
This is awesome, I love that it will reduce the need for pesticides.
When I read people talk about how hard it is to find labor I think to myself "Well, maybe if you paid them more it would be easier to find laborers". I worked in manufacturing for a few years and plant managers were often stating the difficulty in finding laborers. I imagine offering higher wages would make it easier to find workers. No?
> "It's harder to find people to do that work every single year," vegetable farmer Shay Myers told the Seattle Times.
- maelito 5y agoPaying workers more is difficult when the price of food is supposed to go or stay down.
- giantrobot 5y agoThe labor cost per unit of produce is pretty small. Even doubling wages for harvest and weeding labor wouldn't add significantly to the retail cost of produce. Additionally farming is heavily subsidized in the US. Modest wage increases could and would end up being covered by subsidies by getting them rolled into a Farm Bill. You can bet that a farm that saved money weeding with robots wouldn't drop the price of produce reflecting their lower costs. Like prices if everything, it's more what the market will bear rather than some geometric relationship to labor/production costs.
- drited 5y agoFrom the perspective of a farm /plant owner with a commodity product who is trying to compete internationally that's kind of a 'let them eat cake' solution though isn't it (not robotics - a wage hike)? Margins can't be much above the minimum to earn an OK-ish return on capital in such an industry. If that move makes them unprofitable then it's not a viable solution.
- kickout 5y agoPesticides highly unlikely, herbicides maybe.