Lancaster Farming, Saturday, January 8, 1972
20
Farm Labor Squeeze Means
Editor's Note; A workable
mechanical tobacco harvester
that would cut labor
requirements in half and double
output per hour? It's in the
works, one of dozens of new
mechanical labor savers to meet
the U.S. farmer’s dilemma of
scarcer and more costly labor,
according to the USDA. The
USDA projection is that the labor
situation is so acute that most
crops which aren’t mechanized
are doomed in the marketplace
by lower priced crops which are
made cheaper by mechanical
harvesting. The USDA report on
“Farm Machinery Reaches
Out”;
An experimental lettuce
harvester “feels” the head and if
it’s mature, triggers a cutting
blade It could cut labor use by
one-half
A hay cuber chops and presses
hay into animal bite-size pieces,
resulting in more economical
transport, less waste, and
reduced storage requirements (1-
3 to 1 i as much space as bales). It
makes possible the total
mechanization of hay handling
A second generation harvester
lor processing tomatoes has an
electronic sorter that eliminates
15 to 20 hand sorters now needed
on commercial harvesters
There are harvesting machines
that reach up to 50-foot palm
trees to harvest dates and
ones that go deep into the soil for
such crops as potatoes and
carrots
These are just a few of the
“1972 models” that are appearing
on farms around the country
On the whole, machinery m the
works focuses on specialized fruit
and vegetable crops—and on
tobacco, the last major holdout
for mechanized harvesting
The need for farm machinery
for these crops is accentuated by
the decrease in avaiable stoop
labor, by rising farm labor costs,
and by competition from foreign
countries
Take the tobacco harvester.
It s probably the most talked
about new piece of machinery
around Economists foresee that
if there is another big wage rti
crease for workers, these
machines will be in operation
whether all of the flaws are
worked out or not.
Adoption of a mechanical
tobacco harvester, plus removal
of barriers to larger production
units, could reduce labor input by
about half frorh 471 hours per
acre in 1967 to an estimated 246
hours in 1975, according to an
ERS report The peak harvest
demand for labor would be more
than halved, and output per four
would be approximately doubled.
Although mechanization would
be costly in flue-cured tobacco
areas, ERS estimates that the
mechanical harvester is the least
costly means to harvest when
operated to capacity (about 40
acres) and wage rates exceed
$1 35 per hour The system would
require an estimated $52,000
capital outlay—s4o,ooo for bulk
curing barns and $12,000 for the
harvester and support equip
ment
The winter produce industry is
another one that, drives home the
need for mechanization to keep
up with competition. Last year
Mexico exported to the U S. a
record $l9l-milhon worth of fresh
and processed fruits and
vegetables. It supplies most of
our fresh tomatoes in the winter
In Florida, a tomato harvester
for fresh-market tomatoes will be
given a commercial test for the
first time this winter season by
the Florida Tomato Committee
and the University of Florida It
will be tested on a new machine
harvestable variety of tomato
that has a tougher skin and a
jointless stem The test will
evaluate buyer and consumer
acceptance of the tomato,
practicability of the machine
harvest system from the
grower’s- standpoint, and the
exonomic feasibility of the
machine har est system.
“Predictions are that any fruit
or vegetable crop that cannot be
mechanically harvested will
disappear from the consumers’
shopping lists because of
economic competition from fruits
and vegetables that can be
mechanized,” according to
researchers at the Rural Man
power Center of Michigan State
University.
With labor becoming in
creasingly more costly and less
available, an ERS study reported
that even on relatively small
farms, farmers are being
.pressured into adopting labor
saving equipment
New machinery that cuts the
amount of labor required on the
farm is constantly being tried
and adopted.
Tart cherries are now mostly
machine harvested. They’re
loaded into tank trucks full of cool
water and ride to the processing
plants in this cushion.
A cling peach harvester shakes
the tree limbs, catches the fruit,
and conveys it to a bin. A
minimum crew of three to four
workers can harvest 6 to 10 bins,
averaging 1,000 pounds each, in'
an hour and 4 to 5 acres in a day.
This compares with a crew of
about 20 workers for hand picking
this output
Other possible uses for the
harvester include prunes,
freestone peaches, apricots,
almonds, and walnuts.
A shake-catch method is now
being used in harvesting apples,
and a shake method is being tried
for citrus harvesting in Florida
A cucumber harvester
averages an acre an hour and can
be expected to harvest 100 acres
per season
An experimental strawberry
harvester combs plants and
strips off berries.
The labor shortage is so acture
in some areas where
strawberries are produced that
grower groups are earmarking
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and BAKER’S
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Baker’s ag-lime sweetens soil to reduce acidity and raise pH level It
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More Machinery
funds for harvester development.
Such development will help
growers meet competition from
Mexico, which continues to ship
in increasing quantities of fresh
and frozen berries.
In Delaware, 12 harvesters
took care of 1,200 acres of
asparagus at about 6 acres per
machine hour—replacing 400
workers. The interest in
mechanized harvesting there
grew after 1969 when 5,000 acres
in Delaware and New Jersey
went unharvested because of a
shortage of workers.
A trade source estimated last
ybar that for the farmer with 50
acres, the cost of hand harvesting
would be about $ll5 per acre,
whereas the cost of a harvester,
at around $6,000, would be paid
for in 2 years. The fact that the
machines deposit spears in a
jumble concerns processors, but
this problem is being solved
through hand sorting or by
mechanical devices that align
about 85 per cent of the spears.
New machinery for reduced
tillage and stubble mulch puts
tilling, planting, fertilizing, and
pest control into one operation.
An onion harvester digs and
tops the bulbs, recovering better
than 90 per cent of them.
Long rubber fingers in an
experimental harvester snap
pineapples off, but to be
economically feasible, a
breakthrough is needed in getting
pineapples to ripen uniformly in
the field. Even then, mechanical
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See your Baker representative at
SPACE 510 - Section E
Pennsylvania Farm Show
harvesting will be feasible only if
there is a continuing severe labor
shortage.
Some farm machinery, in
troduced only a few years ago,
has already dramatically
changed the harvesting of the
crop for which it was tailored.
For example, a mechanical
grape harvester was introduced
in Washington in 1968. That year,
barely one per cent of the state’s
grape crop was harvested
mechanically. By 1970, more than
54 per cent of the grapes were
mechanically picked.
Dates on palms 30 to 40 feet
high are now mostly harvested by
cutting the branches and
lowering them to a shaker trailer.
The fruit is shaken into bulk bins.
About 80 per cent of the 1966-67
crop was harvested
mechanically. Labor inputs were
reduced by 80 per cent and
harvest costs cut in half-down to
20 per cent of total production
costs.
Call Us Now
To serve the Lancaster
County farm community bet
ter, we maintain two phone
ers and advertisers can also
'each us through 626-2191
(ask for Lancaster Farming)
and avoid a toll call from the
Akron, Ephrata and Man
heim exchanges.
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