When I was younger, I lived in an agricultural area in Northern California where one of the crops grown widely was tomatoes. They are harvested mechanically, and in my early years the tomato farmers hired a lot of people to prepare the tomatoes for market. For example, it took five or so people just to sort the green from the red tomatoes as they moved down the conveyor belts.
But when I was in high school, the harvester manufacturers began installing electric eyes on the harvesters to sort the tomatoes. A metal “finger” would kick out the green ones, and do the job just as well or better than humans, but cost far less. The electric eyes displaced quite a few sorting jobs across all the fields and all the harvesters, and I can remember wondering what will happen to all those people? Where will they go and how will they support their families?
Read Full Article »
