[AT] OT robot apple pickers

[Mike M]

What makes me sad are the orchards disappearing. My first job as a 14
year old boy was to pull suckers and run irrigation drippers through an
apple orchard, in Grand Rapids, MI. Now the whole area is littered with
strip malls and restaurants. Not a fruit tree to be seen.

Mike M

On 1/13/2020 7:00 PM, Indiana Robinson wrote:
> There are a few old orchards in this area and quite a few newer ones.
> One of the newer ones has more recently added hundreds of peach trees.
> The orchards in that case along with a large sweet corn operation is a
> replacement for that families confinement hog operation. It all comes
> about during a generation change. All of the orchards around here are
> not really mega volume many semi loads heading to some factory type of
> things. They make their main income as "destinations" with steady
> sales along and a lot of weekend events in the fall that also usually
> involve a lot of pumpkins as well. Some even involve a few old tractors.
> We always had an old sales adage... "Sell the sizzle, not the steak".  :-)
>
>
> .
>
> On Mon, Jan 13, 2020 at 3:48 PM Brian VanDragt <bvandragt at comcast.net
> <mailto:bvandragt at comcast.net>> wrote:
>
>     My Grandpa was a fruit farmer here in southwest Michigan until the
>     mid 70's.  He had migrant workers from Arkansas, and during WWII,
>     German POW's picking fruit.  What killed the apple industry here
>     was that cheaper transportation brought Washington apples to our
>     markets (Chicago). The WA apples look nicer, but don't taste as
>     good, but people buy them based on looks.  I still have the John
>     Deere AO that he bought new in 1952.
>
>     Brian
>
>     On January 11, 2020 at 4:39 PM James Peck < jamesgpeck at hotmail.com
>     <mailto:jamesgpeck at hotmail.com> > wrote:
>>
>>
>>     The area I grew up in lost many of its apple orchards due to
>>     Washington state which harvests apples with immigrant labor. Will
>>     robot apple harvesters bring back apple growing nationwide?
>>
>>     https://www.agequipmentintelligence.com/articles/3529-kubota-invests-in-us-harvesting-robot-maker
>>
>>
>>     https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6621786893652676608/
>>
>>
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> --
> --
>
> Francis Robinson
> aka "farmer"
> Central Indiana USA
> robinson46176 at gmail.com <mailto:robinson46176 at gmail.com>
>
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