Labor is a big part of an apple grower’s budget, and it is why robotic harvesters have taken off in recent years.
One group tells aginfo.net they are encouraged by how far the technology has come and says there is no such thing as one size fits all.
“We figure it takes between 50 and a hundred million dollars of investment. And most of that you cannot have in three years, right? So a lot of the investors don’t like that because they want to have a sellable piece of machine in three years, and that’s just really not feasible; this is not working very well. The other thing we had, is a lot of times people came to us with actually a piece of machine that was already done, instead of coming to us first, looking at everything, talking through everything, and then co-creating something together with us,” said Executive director of the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission, Ines Hanrahan.
Hanrahan says she worked with Advanced Farm for harvesters at their operation. Earlier this year, students at Michigan State University debuted their apple picker. Professors say there is big demand in the state with 11 million apple trees covering more than 35,000 acres.
