# Mechanization



## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

...and hand labor.

Regards, Mike

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2015/09/07/machines-replacing-migrant-berry-pickers.html


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

Just like any industry. When it's hard to find workers and then the government throws in a bunch of paperwork and red tape to hire workers the machines come.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Teslan said:


> Just like any industry. When it's hard to find workers and then the government throws in a bunch of paperwork and red tape to hire workers the machines come.


Just like McDonalds, people think they need $15/hour for entry level work only to be replaced by a kiosk for ordering. Several companies offer machines now that can cook and assemble your burger, one even uses all fresh ingredients and processes them.


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## Mike120 (May 4, 2009)

mlappin said:


> Just like McDonalds, people think they need $15/hour for entry level work only to be replaced by a kiosk for ordering. Several companies offer machines now that can cook and assemble your burger, one even uses all fresh ingredients and processes them.


Pretty much where it's all going. What will be interesting is what role do people have? There were ~80 million Baby Boomers who will be retiring over the next decade or so, ~51 million Gen X'ers (many with useless degrees) but they like automation and ~75 million Millennials coming on-line who are big into the social aspects and technology. When the robots can work 24/7 at much greater precision there will only be so many people needed to program and fix them.

I thought the following (video at bottom) was pretty interesting:

http://www.wirelessdesignmag.com/blog/2015/09/watch-samurai-robot-slice-peapod-half-horizontally?et_cid=4805875&et_rid=652401088&type=headline


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

mlappin said:


> Just like McDonalds, people think they need $15/hour for entry level work only to be replaced by a kiosk for ordering. Several companies offer machines now that can cook and assemble your burger, one even uses all fresh ingredients and processes them.





Mike120 said:


> Pretty much where it's all going. What will be interesting is what role do people have? There were ~80 million Baby Boomers who will be retiring over the next decade or so, ~51 million Gen X'ers (many with useless degrees) but they like automation and ~75 million Millennials coming on-line who are big into the social aspects and technology. When the robots can work 24/7 at much greater precision there will only be so many people needed to program and fix them.
> 
> I thought the following (video at bottom) was pretty interesting:
> 
> http://www.wirelessdesignmag.com/blog/2015/09/watch-samurai-robot-slice-peapod-half-horizontally?et_cid=4805875&et_rid=652401088&type=headline


And it's a lot harder for a machine to spit in your food because they don't like what race you are...

Later! OL JR


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## hillside hay (Feb 4, 2013)

I'm not so sure about avoiding the spit by using automation. I happened across a needle bearing in a muffin once last year.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

hillside hay said:


> I'm not so sure about avoiding the spit by using automation. I happened across a needle bearing in a muffin once last year.


That's interesting... most factories/industrial bakeries today have metal detectors that the food goes through before its packaged, or before its boxed up...

Later! OL JR


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## Mike120 (May 4, 2009)

Here's another one on robots with an interesting twist.....IF you can find the workers.

http://www.foodmanufacturing.com/news/2015/09/robots-take-root-smaller-dairy-farms-upping-production?et_cid=4812653&et_rid=652401088&type=cta


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

Mike120 said:


> Here's another one on robots with an interesting twist.....IF you can find the workers.
> 
> http://www.foodmanufacturing.com/news/2015/09/robots-take-root-smaller-dairy-farms-upping-production?et_cid=4812653&et_rid=652401088&type=cta


there are a few robotic dairies here.Each robot does about 60 cows.Most of the ones I know of are 2-3 robots.180 cows and little extra help.Not real practical with the huge dairies.


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## Mike120 (May 4, 2009)

The issue is pretty much always labor. My neighbor looked at robots, couldn't make the economics, couldn't find replacement workers, had a heart attack and sold his herd. When he recovered, he got a few beefies and went into the hay business. He only kept one of his guys who's been with him since swimming the river 17-18 years ago. They built a subdivision in one field he's leased forever, 500 acres are turning into housing across the road from us, they are starting on a 600 acre development a couple of miles south of us, and building factories to our West. At our age, neither of us even think about starting over and with the current property values our biggest concern is boredom after we sell out.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Mike120 said:


> The issue is pretty much always labor. My neighbor looked at robots, couldn't make the economics, couldn't find replacement workers, had a heart attack and sold his herd. When he recovered, he got a few beefies and went into the hay business. He only kept one of his guys who's been with him since swimming the river 17-18 years ago. They built a subdivision in one field he's leased forever, 500 acres are turning into housing across the road from us, they are starting on a 600 acre development a couple of miles south of us, and building factories to our West. At our age, neither of us even think about starting over and with the current property values our biggest concern is boredom after we sell out.


That's why I just laugh and laugh at the constant drumbeat in the farm magazines and ag TV about "we're going to have to double food production in the next 20 years to keep the world from starving to death"... NOT gonna happen!

Some of the best farmland on the planet is constantly being paved over for shopping centers and new subdivisions and taken out of ag production permanently...

After the killer drought of 2011, there's huge areas of south Texas where the ranchers had to liquidate their herds... and they simply never restocked... Course most of those guys are in their 70's and 80's, so I guess they figured it was time to finally retire... After all, when you're 80 years old, WHY BOTHER to restock?? Most of them don't have any kids or kin willing to run cows for a living, and when they're gone the ranch will probably be divided six ways and none of the pieces will be large enough to sustain an operation anyway...

I know the first year or two after we quit row cropping, I was pretty antsy... when it was time to get the ground ready for planting, or most folks are in the field spraying, or out picking cotton, I'd feel like I should be in the field... That went on a lot the first couple years...

But then, it's like this HUGE relief... You'd see it raining every day and the frustration and worry about whether you'd get into the field or not, and how much would be left to harvest when you did, or see the prices in the dumper and costs going sky-high, or the weather turning dry and crops burning up and wondering if it'd ever rain, and then you feel a lot better that you don't have to worry about that anymore... ESPECIALLY when its flooding...

Good thing about cows-- they have four wheel drive! Dry weather isn't so much fun, but then again, it isn't for anybody, crops or livestock alike. Wet weather that can ruin crops just generally leave the cattle belly deep in grass...

Plus, now I can go to Indiana and run my BIL's equipment, play with his toys, which are a lot bigger and nicer than our old stuff, and I don't have to worry about the bills or breakdowns (other than helping fix them). That makes farming a whole lot more fun...

Later! OL JR


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Mike120 said:


> At our age, neither of us even think about starting over and with the current property values our biggest concern is boredom after we sell out.





luke strawwalker said:


> That's why I just laugh and laugh at the constant drumbeat in the farm magazines and ag TV about "we're going to have to double food production in the next 20 years to keep the world from starving to death"... NOT gonna happen!
> 
> Some of the best farmland on the planet is constantly being paved over for shopping centers and new subdivisions and taken out of ag production permanently...
> 
> ...


Pretty much what I figure to do in 30 years or so, rent the home farm and other ground we own out with use of the grain setup to whoever is best able to keep the land in shape. No-till and cover crops are a must. Figure to keep enough cows around so I'll have to make at least a little hay to keep from getting bored.


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## Mike120 (May 4, 2009)

luke strawwalker said:


> That's why I just laugh and laugh at the constant drumbeat in the farm magazines and ag TV about "we're going to have to double food production in the next 20 years to keep the world from starving to death"... NOT gonna happen!
> 
> Some of the best farmland on the planet is constantly being paved over for shopping centers and new subdivisions and taken out of ag production permanently...


Actually we've already done it a few times...Since about 1940 American farmers have quintupled corn while using the same or even less land. The rising yields have not required more tons of fertilizer or other inputs. The inputs to agriculture have plateaued and then fallen, not just cropland but nitrogen, phosphates, potash, and even water. Precision agriculture makes a hell of a difference. Unfortunately, it will put a lot of smaller producers in a very noncompetitive position and the farm magazines will lose readers. Technology is disrupting a lot of industries, as it has for eons.



luke strawwalker said:


> After the killer drought of 2011, there's huge areas of south Texas where the ranchers had to liquidate their herds... and they simply never restocked... Course most of those guys are in their 70's and 80's, so I guess they figured it was time to finally retire... After all, when you're 80 years old, WHY BOTHER to restock?? Most of them don't have any kids or kin willing to run cows for a living, and when they're gone the ranch will probably be divided six ways and none of the pieces will be large enough to sustain an operation anyway...


I don't even know how many owners what's left of our old place in South Texas has now. Parts started getting sold or commingled 40 or so years ago and it went down hill from there. I tried to get my brothers and cousins to restructure everything before my father died but no one would get off their butts and I was either out of State or overseas. Right after my father died I deeded my share to my two kids and caused untold confusion in the Medina and Frio County tax offices who listed them as sole owners because they couldn't do the math. The only way the title will ever get straightened out is if it goes to a tax sale because none of my relatives can agree on anything. I quit worrying about it many years ago, but sadly its a pretty common occurrence.

A good friend of mine was running registered Brangus on ~300 acres NE of Houston. He got wore out and sold his entire herd for top-dollar this summer. His biggest concern after the cattle were gone was that he didn't have any way to control the grass growing on his miles of fence line. He's got some of it leased out for hay but now trying to figure out what to do with the land because his son is pretty useless and he doesn't want his DIL to get anything in case of a divorce. He and his wife are on a cruise ship right now.....I'm trying to learn from his experiences.

I've retired a number of times already but every time I did, I got bored and needed more income to buy expensive equipment to offset my taxes on the the income I needed to buy expensive equipment with. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results......


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

That's true, Mike, BUT...

The "low hanging fruit" has already been picked... all the EASY and BIG increases have been made, decades ago. As time goes by, we still see improvement-- BUT, those improvements are increasingly smaller and smaller, and cost more and more to implement. GMO's, precision farming, drones, etc. all are relatively new technologies and are yielding the "low hanging fruit" in their respective areas of improvement, but as time goes on, those increases are going to be smaller and smaller and ever more expensive and difficult to obtain. It's like the oil industry-- all the "cheap, easy" oil has been drilled decades ago. It's only now with the steeper prices over the last decade that fracking made sense economically-- a technology which, incidentally, was invented way back in the 40's but was never economically justified to implement, until recently.

Want to keep the brush and weeds out of fencelines?? I ride my fences a couple times a year and hit them with Sahara (total vegetation control chemical-- kills everything under the fence-- shoot it on the fenceline with a gun from the tractor fender-- mix a five pound bag in 100 gallons of water and pop the tractor in second gear idling fast enough to run the PTO pump at 30 PSI...) and then Remedy/diesel for any brush on the place, using the basal bark treatment at 1 gallon of Remedy mixed in 3 gallons of diesel for a 25% mixture, sprayed on the bottom foot of the brush trunk from the ground up all the way around. Small brush only needs two squirts, one on each side...) Keeps the fences clean CHEAP!

As for the inlaws/outlaws, etc... I know what you mean... Remember reading years ago Susan Combs, when she was ag commissioner, getting all uptight about the 'fractionalization' of farm land, but what can you do?? Not much that I've seen... We're on some of the best cotton ground in the world, but we can't compete with places like Lubbock that irrigate everything... and most of the land around here is slowly and surely being divvied up into worthless "ranchettes" with a few stupid nags and longhorns roaming around, stuff like that...

I'm ready to sell out and get the h3ll out of here myself-- too many friggin' people! I've come to realize that the more people you have in an area, the sorrier and sorrier it gets... Heck the gubmint wants the farmers gone-- think about it... they can get a WHOLE lot more tax money off a new subdivision with 20 new $400,000 homes than they can get off 40 acres of prime farmland in cotton, corn, or pasture running cows... and we ALL know, the gubmint just LOVES money!!!

Later! OL JR


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## Mike120 (May 4, 2009)

I agree with the "low hanging fruit" on both Ag and Oil. The promise from Precision Ag, as well as "Smart Wells" is more consistent higher yields. Ag-wise, the problem I see right now is we've really only scratched the surface on the sensor technology. Yes, we can collect "big data" but we have limited abilities to validate that data or do much to effect change, at a micro level, over a large area. There are a huge number of variables, including rain, that you can't do much about. Also, most of our current processes are really mechanized, manual processes that often rely on HP (brute force) to work. The 'fractionalization' of farm land may be a solution if you have a "transporter" to get the product directly to the consumer. The biggest problem with oil is that I can count the number a decent exploration subsurface guys I've run into on one hand. In their mind, every well will be a gusher. Then you get the crazy drillers, with leased rigs they have to keep busy, and most of the well locations are determined by throwing darts at a block map so they don't have any down time. When you do get oil, it's only because the development and Ops guys have cleaned up the mess and are milking the reservoir to try and make the inflated projections. It's only going to get worse.....

Agree with the fences.....I told him to get a sprayer. He rides his fences but he always just had to look at them. Cattle work for a while, but then the only thing that will grow under the fence is the stuff they won't eat. Then you either need very hungry cattle or goats which are a whole lot more trouble than a sprayer.


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