What harvest machine will they invent next?

[Dick2]

I've been telling people that the growers need to invest in research and development to design new machines to harvest crops that tradionally been harvested by hand.

I saw last week on America's Heartland that a lettuce grower in CA has designed a machine that harvests lettuce. It uses high pressure water jets to cut the lettuce, that it then moves to the sorting table on the machine. Instead of a crew of people cutting off the lettuce, there are only a couple of people riding that machine to sort out rejects and foreign material.

The same company also designed their own processing machines to wash and pack the lettuce. They move all of the equipment to Yuma when it it time to harvest the lettuce there. I'm sure they have reduced the need for manual labor substantially.

Wonder what products will be harvested next by a new machine?
 

[John B.]

Hard telling what new machine will be next. The sad part about a harvester is like the string bean combine. You only get one crop off the plants, because the combine gobbles up the plant along with the harvested beans. The real money is where you get multiple pickings off a given vegetable plant/crop, such as the green beans, berries, asparagus, squash, peppers, tomatoes.

Sweet-corn, potatoes, popcorn for an example are a one time crop producer. Once you pick the plant's produce it's done for the season. It doesn't produce any more.
 

[Dachshund]

Manufacturers have been designing machines to pick our pockets for years.....
 

[GeneMO]

Marijuana harvester


Gene
 

[gtractorfan]

Related to this question, farm show this morning said soon combines will send crop yield information to a compilation center as you harvest.
 

[rabbit]

Asparagras is a limited time crop. Only viable for a few days to a week, or so. Some of the farmers around here have a sledge with a very sharp blade on the front. Hitch it behind the tractor and go like the dickens! Maybe another pass in a week or so. Others have a motorized cart with wings over the rows. Workers ride the wings, hand cutting the shoots by hand - very labor intensive.

String beans, green peas, pretty much mature at the same time. Lots of those grown here for a nationally/world known baby food manufacturer. One pass harvesting with a crew of harvesters.
See them parade by here complete by with self contained portable shop, passing between the various fields. Lots of dump trucks full of product.
 

[Ken Macfarlane]

I'd like to see a small roomba type robot that can quietly patrol row crops and pull weeds manually day and night and goes to charge automatically when needed.
 

[ericlb]

id be looking for a fully remote control harvester, there already about there with gps guidance, the next logical step would be no operater at all leaving the modern farmer to relax in comfort and rest, all while his combine rolls around the clock, needing to only have his hirlings or kids keep the grain wagons up with the combine, i could even see remote control tractors too, but i think your still going to need the human touch to line up the wagon under the combines auger dont see how electronics are going to do that , of course when it all goes wrong due to the whole electronics being made overseas you will wreck at least a half million dollars worth of machines
 

[Kyle in KY]

That one is already invented, it's the local police departments, DEA and government officials!
 

[massey 333]

John Deere already has the remote(unmaned) tractor controls that brings the auger cart to the combine unloading and then goes back and parks until the next command.CIH may have theirs out by now.
 

[Tony in Mass.]

Produce guys are in a hard place. No machines like this? need labor- not full time, just seasonal. Seasonal is sometimes illegals. So feds get on ya. So growers dream up machines again.
Seems alot of the illegals that hang around forever, (until they are allowed to vote and thro elections?) came about as harvesting machines in the 80's and 90's started to cut down on the picking jobs, they got the drift there may not be a sponser next season... so safest thing to do was show up in the states legally, as a temp, but forget to ever go home... now even someone with a second grade education in another language stares the ceiling thinking they were replaced by a computor... but they ain't going home either.
 

[rrlund]

Don't know about produce,but if celulosic ethanol ever becomes a reality,I think you'll eventually see a machine that harvests the whole corn plant. It'll put the grain in one tank,the cob somewhere else,maybe in a truck along side and might bale the stalks,either in large rounds,of more likely large squares since they're easier to haul.

Of course then Deere will steal the patent and have enough lawyers to get away with it.
 

[Greg K]

There has been talk of trying to genetically modify corn so that it is a perennial plant and then harvest off of the same plant repeatedly. It would save planting and tillage in some areas, but require a different method of harvest.
 

[Greg K]

There has been talk of trying to genetically modify corn so that it is a perennial plant and then harvest off of the same plant repeatedly. It would save planting and tillage in some areas, but require a different method of harvest.
 

[Greg K]

There has been talk of trying to genetically modify corn so that it is a perennial plant and then harvest off of the same plant repeatedly. It would save planting and tillage in some areas, but require a different method of harvest.