Robots can now harvest ripe strawberries

Florida-based Harvest CROO has developed technology that can pick ripe strawberries without damaging the delicate fruit. A primary goal of the company is to help reduce US obesity by keeping the supply of “super foods” like strawberries readily available and reasonably priced. A related benefit is that growers who opt for Harvest CROO’s technology won’t have to worry about labor shortages and will no longer have to rely on tedious back-breaking stoop labor.

In California’s Salinas Valley, Taylor Farms manager David Offerdahl demonstrated his Automatic Romaine Lettuce Harvester to CBS News. The harvester uses a high-pressure water stream to cut five heads of lettuce at a time. Workers then pack the lettuce into boxes while standing under a shaded canopy, thus ending stoop labor. Offerdahl said that the robot can harvest twice the lettuce in half the time. As well, for every two low-paying jobs mechanization eliminates, one higher paying job is created.

The term to describe the increasingly popular transition to robotics is “precision agriculture,” which means applying new technology to increase crop production while reducing waste. The market for advanced farming tools was estimated to be about $7 billion in 2020, but projected to reach $12.8 billion over the next four years.

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