COVID-19 hastening automation trend, analyst believes
The expensive commitment to automate farm labor is gaining momentum with the COVID-19 pandemic, Phil Martin says.
Martin, professor at the University of California-Davis, spoke in early December at the online National Council of Agricultural Employers annual meeting on the topic of COVID and Farm Labor in 2020.
While greater mechanization is the goal of farmers, Martin agricultural employers will continue to lean on H-2A guest agricultural workers as the supply of U.S. farmworkers dwindles.
The produce industry survived COVID-19, Martin said, as total fruit and vegetable shipments and employment in 2020 appear similar to 2019.
In addition, he said there were few reports of labor shortages during the pandemic. That, Martin said, could be tied to reduced overall work hours this year.
Labor costs were up for growers because of personal protective equipment for COVID-19 and social distancing costs related to housing and transportation.
At the same time costs were higher, Martin said commodity prices were lower this year,resulting in a price-cost squeeze.
Big trends getting bigger
COVID-19 served to increase trends that were already underway, he said, notably mechanization of farm labor, increased use of the H-2A program and rising imports of fresh produce.
“There’s been a big new interest in labor saving mechanization and there also is a new interest in productivity,” he said.
Autonomous devices that can move big volumes of grapes to a packing station or take full trays of strawberries to a central location are a couple of the projects under development.
“There’s a lot of venture capital coming in trying to either automate farm labor tasks, or make workers more productive.”
Imports of fruits and vegetables will continue to rise, he predicted.
H-2A guest worker certifications were up to 275,000 jobs in 2020, Martin said, up 7% over 2019. The H-2A program represents about 10% of the total U.S. crop labor supply and is up threefold from 2012.
There may be increasing tension between non-H-2A farmworkers in the U.S. and H-2A workers in the years ahead, Martin said. Farm workers living in the U.S. are aging, mostly unauthorized and settled with families, where H-2A workers are younger, single, are provided free housing and pay no taxes.
Most farm workers have U.S.-born children, Martin said, and three out of four want to continue in agriculture.
“One big question is whether farmers are going to think about investing in harvest aids that make the work easier for (U.S. workers) or whether they’re going to invest in housing in order to employ H-2A workers,” he said. “There’s going to have to be an investment one way or the other.”
The period of 1980 to 2010 represents 30 years of farm labor abundance. From 2010 to 2030 is a time of transition, Martin said, where employers now are attempting to replace workers with machines and grow crops whose harvest can be automated.
Martin said mechanization has not been easy.
“(The technology) has to be cheap, it has to be durable, it has to be able to stand up for field conditions,” he said. “And that’s turned out to be an enormously expensive kind of proposition.”
Responding to a question after the presentation, Martin was asked about how the Biden administration will handle the H-2A program.
“I have a feeling we’re going to see a renewed emphasis on labor law enforcement, not just in agriculture, but across the entire economy,” Martin said.
Another question asked what higher labor and regulation costs in California will mean to long-term prospects.
“I think there’s no doubt that there will be (acreage reductions) at the margins, some shrinkage in high-cost areas,” Martin said. “I don’t see it affecting the mainstream of the commodities, but at the margins.”
