Mechanization Matters In Vegetable Production

While you’d think that problems in securing adequate labor would speed the mechanization of many on-farm tasks, the push for legislation such as AgJOBS to maintain an affordable supply of labor for agriculture is actually undercutting advances in mechanizing vegetable growing. At least that’s the position of Phil Martin, a University of California-Davis ag economist who specializes in labor and immigration. “Somebody has decided that it makes more sense to legalize the status quo rather than to move (to mechanization),” says Martin. “They could be right, I’m not a political scientist, but I do know there’s more pressure for AgJOBS than there is for mechanization.”

The reason is that a move to mechanization is very difficult to do piecemeal, says Martin. Unless you are a very large grower of a specific crop, it’s difficult to pay for the equipment. Currently, mechanization is only possible with crops that don’t need careful handling, such as baby spinach, which is harvested almost like a lawn being cut. Or the industry has to be set up for it, as in processed tomatoes. Actually, that crop provides a perfect example of how it can work, says Martin. When it became clear in the 1960s that processed tomatoes wouldn’t pencil out with hand labor, especially when, being a processed crop, it didn’t require gentle handling, the processors worked with growers. “Packers are set up for hand harvesting or machine harvesting, but not both,” he says. “You need to take a step back because it requires a systemic approach.”

Growers won’t mechanize unless it pencils out. But because most harvesting units are extremely expensive, it generally just doesn’t pencil out as long as there’s a supply of relatively cheap labor, says Martin. But the immigrant labor situation in the U.S. is so muddled that no one really knows what’s going on, so it’s difficult to plan. “The government is not sending out a clear picture on immigrant labor,” he says. “So, especially if you’re not a large grower, you’d be silly to invest in expensive machinery if there’s a good supply of immigrant labor.”

Chicken and Egg Problem

As it stands now, there is no consistent pressure across the country on growers to make the move to mechanization, says Martin. There are hot spots where Immigration and Naturalization Service agents have been active in rooting out illegal immigrants, such as western New York and California’s Imperial Valley, and some large growers in those areas who can mechanize harvesting are doing so. For example, Imperial Valley grower Jack Vessey told AVG earlier this year that 2007 would be the last year he’d be harvesting cabbage by hand after watching 900 acres of cabbage go to waste because he couldn’t find the workers to harvest it. “If, and it’s a big if, we do see consistent pressure, we will see more mechanization,” says Martin. “No one knows whether there will be continued pressure or not.”

Because of that uncertainty, most companies are not yet willing to make the investment in research and development that efficient mechanization requires, he says. Initial efforts at mechanizing such labor-intensive practices as harvest simply hasn’t worked for most crops. Although one thing has become clear. “Don’t try and imitate humans,” says Martin. “It doesn’t work.”

Without those investments, however, mechanization is not going to become as efficient, and as inexpensive, as it must be to pencil out for growers of most crops. “There is a chicken-and-egg problem with mechanization,” he says. “Not many are willing to put out the dollars for research when they don’t know if there will be a payoff.”

You can’t blame growers, say Martin, because they are simply opting for the system that pencils out for them. In other words, if a grower’s business plan isn’t broke, why fix it? “It’s always easier to do the concrete, which is to get the workers in, than what may be pie-in-the sky: mechanization,” he says.

In other words, most growers probably won’t see huge improvements in mechanization until there are widespread labor shortages. If and when that occurs, Martin says the vegetable growing business will likely undergo a sea change, with the bigger growers getting very big indeed. “When you get mechanization,” he says, “you get fewer and larger.”