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Article

28 Oct 2024

Author:
Amy Taxin and Dorany Pineda, AP & Grist

USA: Farmworkers concerned over impacts of automation on livelihoods

"Automation in agriculture offers solutions for farmers, but workers fear for their jobs,"

...

A growing number of companies are bringing automation to agriculture. It could ease the sector's deepening labor shortage, help farmers manage costs, and protect workers from extreme heat. Automation could also improve yields by bringing greater accuracy to planting, harvesting, and farm management, potentially mitigating some of the challenges of growing food in an ever-warmer world.

But many small farmers and producers across the country aren't convinced. Barriers to adoption go beyond steep price tags to questions about whether the tools can do the jobs nearly as well as the workers they'd replace. Some of those same workers wonder what this trend might mean for them, and whether machines will lead to exploitation...

Erik Nicholson, who previously worked as a farm labor organizer and now runs Semillero de Ideas, a nonprofit focused on farmworkers and technology, said he has heard from farm workers concerned about losing work to automation. Some have also expressed worry about the safety of working alongside autonomous machines but are hesitant to raise issues because they fear losing their jobs. He'd like to see the companies building these machines, and the farm owners using them, put people first.

Luis Jimenez, a New York dairy worker, agrees. He described one farm using technology to monitor cows for sicknesses. Those kinds of tools can sometimes identify infections sooner than a dairy worker or veterinarian.

They also help workers know how the cows are doing, Jimenez said, speaking in Spanish. But they can reduce the number of people needed on farms and put extra pressure on the workers who remain, he said. That pressure is heightened by increasingly automated technology like video cameras used to monitor workers' productivity...

Automation can be "a tactic, like a strategy, for bosses, so people are afraid and won't demand their rights," said Jimenez, who advocates for immigrant farmworkers with the grassroots organization Alianza Agrícola. Robots, after all, "are machines that don't ask for anything," he added. "We don't want to be replaced by machines."