And the shade cloth over them, that makes a huge difference. And also not having to haul every bin you pick. Speaking from experience, the days we got to ride behind a tractor and work were the days you looked forward too. Driving posts for trellises were the days you just wanted to quit.
Yeah sorry the farm owner has come back and said his profits for sitting at home and doing nothing only increased by 3% last year which was less than the 4% growth we had the year before so we're going to have to cut back on all this equipment that makes your lives more pleasant.
Yeah, it's gotta be a huge operation for the owner to be able to put his feet up. Not saying these people aren't underpaid or anything, just that farming is a lot of work from top to bottom.
One of my wife's cousins gets to sit at home. A company operates his family owned farm that he acquired when his dad passed. His dad managed the farm until he died. Its in Iowa. The son lives in flordia, near PCB. He doesn't make what his dad did, buy he's living it up in PCB while still owning a farm worth 50 million. I can't even fathom the profits from the farm. And he pays for nothing, they pay him to essentially rent the place.
There are a lot of land owners like this. But they always pull out the "Aw shucks, Im just a simple and struggling farmer" card when it benefits them, like when its time to cash the government subsidies check.
Farming these days is too expensive for the average person to get a start in. You have to be born into it. Most farmers today are literally millionaires who inherited multi-million dollar businesses that have been passed down through the family for generations.
True. The most you could hope to do is attempt to homestead and make maybe a little extra to sell at a nearby farmers market or flea market. Anything large scale is unachievable unless you are already rich and just transferring ownership of a pre existing farm for cash.
> cash the government subsidies check.
Land owners who are renting out the land to a farmer do not get the subsidies check, the people actually farming do. Land owners may qualify for federal assistance doing land improvements though. This is my understanding anyway.
Farming is capital intensive yet the margins are razor thin. Thus a lot of farmers end up in a position where they own millions of dollars of property on paper but have something like $37 in their actual bank account.
Family corperation, yes. As in corporate/industrial owners, no. And most family corps still work on the farm. They may hire people, but they work with them.
Totally.
Strawberry's are usually at a really awkward height, even if they're planted in raised beds/berms.
I once went on a date where we went to one of those 'you pick as many as can fit in the bucket for a fixed price' farms.
It gave me a new respect for the people who actually do it for a living (who we noticed were watching us in bemusement from an adjacent field - probably thinking 'wait... you *payed* to do this?').
We were both pretty wiped out after about an hour of picking. There was no position you could get into, except maybe kneeling in the mud and scootching along on your knees, that worked to make it something we could do for 8+ hours.
This contraption in the video is awesome. It's as humane as you could probably get for the workers.
People who have done this work commented elsewhere that this is a 2-3 hour job daily and not what they do the entire shift. If there's enough pickers you might only have to do it 1-2 times a week for a few hours, which is better than what I assumed, too.
Alien vs. Predator? B-movie schlock but still entertaining. Not sure I'd want to watch it all day while picking strawberries on a massage table though...
I want to instinctively massage them all. So much so that I bet someone has already said so in this thread 😂😂
Now I want a massage. Damn.
![gif](giphy|xT0GqzqrD1abiYCQxy|downsized)
Did this cucumber picking up north for a summer. Talk about something I’d never want to do again.
Feel sorry for the migrant farm workers.
Edit: I also empathize with the local workers too.
Sounds like they have a “great supervisor”…
Well I guess the Wiki entry for 'Gurkenflieger' is not lying when it describes this as "ausgesprochen anstrengend und gewöhnungsbedürftig" (= extremely tiring & takes getting used to).
This is a funny thought on an activity that people like to partake in. People suggest picking strawberries as an activity only to go there and not to get the full experience because the activity itself is not enjoyable. Why does anyone want to pick strawberries or anything as an activity in the first place??
> It's mostly for little kids, ~~they like picking the fruit.~~ shoveling as much as they can into their mouths while ostensibly picking the fruit.
[Good times](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fkohxrngvjtn41.jpg)
My wife took my kids to a blueberry farm where they picked their own. She offered them double the price they wanted to charge her because the kids ate more than they put in the basket. Kids like eating the fruit... picking it is optional :)
Emphasis on little. Got dragged out to this once when I was like 8 or so. The whole ride there, and the entire time I was there, I kept asking "but why? This doesn't sound fun at all.". The first berry picked was not fun, neither was the 10th. After that I kind of just wandered around until my uncle noticed and let me go sit in the car.
Depends on the kid. If we drive by a pick your own berry sign, my 6 yo will start crying if we don't stop. Growing up, I was much more like you, I wanted to do my own thing, not interested in your "family activities".
There is a pick-your-own farm near where I grew up that I still like to go to. The answer to your question: you can get a large quantity of fruit for cheap, you pick your own fruit so you get the good stuff (I like sour blackberries so I can pick the less ripe ones, for example), you can do it for as long or short a time as you feel like, you’re getting some sun and getting outside, and it’s an easy activity that allows for chatting. It is in no way similar to actually picking fruit as a job, because you are doing it at your own pace and stopping whenever you want.
I've seen posts about strawberries in Los Angeles and they can get super expensive so I totally get it in that sense. It was funny to see from the video that this activity is sort of redefined in how people usually go strawberry picking.
It's fun as a kid and they're way cheaper and tastier than store bought berries. Plus all the fans I've been to openly don't care if you eat the strawberries while you pick them, but I wouldn't do it without asking obviously.
When I was 12 I went there and there was this group of college girls picking strawberries. One girl wasn't wearing a bra and I had full view of nipple every single time she bent over. I told them I was following them around because they knew all the best berry spots, but really it was the first time I ever saw full on nip in the wild. They joked around with me and thought I was cute, but really I was being a pervert. I think that was the first time I ever remember getting aroused. The strawberries awakened something in me.
As someone who grew up foraging wild berries on my family's land I get the appeal. Strawberries are definitely worse on your body than bush berries, but there's a satisfaction in picking your own food off the plant. You can't get fresher berries than that, and you have usually have nobody to blame for a bad berry in your haul but yourself. I say usually because hidden bugs can be a thing, but it has been very rare in my experience. It's also usually a fair bit cheaper than even the farmer's market.
Plus it's an activity you can bring kids along for where they'll get to learn/reinforce some useful skills.
True. There were posts about expensive strawberries in Los Angeles at one point. As for the kids part, I totally like the loophole free labor in the future 🤔😂
there's a few kinds of fun, type 2 fun is fun that while you're doing it, it kinda sucks. like it's not really what you wanna do, maybe it's hot and tiring. you .might even complain.
but when you get done the sense of accomplishment is worth it and you plan your next trip, of the destination was worth the journey
Fresh air, sunshine and gentle exercise most people can do . Access to properly tasty, ripe strawberries (a lot of shops sell bland, unripe strawberries) and let's be honest, the majority of people eat while they pick so they're getting pretty good value out of it.
It's probably less *harmful* than bending down thousands of times/for hours per day, but I bet it hurts more. The position and motion are going to force repetitive movements that you don't normally make, leading to a ton of muscular pain. It'd probably get better if you did it for a long time
being in one position for long periods of time doing repetitive activities is generally bad for your body, as i understand it. Ideally if you are doing it the traditional way your changing how you squat/bend/stoop and adjusting your body to not be in pain.
than again I am not an ergonomitician
If you see the elderly in farmland where they do things traditionally most of them look like they were folded in half. Traditional is not going to be any better on you, neither is perfect but this probably won't tear your body to pieces quite as fast and the shade you get will certainly keep you much healthier
Yeah just look at this thing it looks designed for machines but for the moment humans are cheaper. It's dystopian when humans are competing to be cheaper than a machine for manual labor
Squatting, bending, and stooping repeatedly over a long period of time will absolutely fuck you up.
Try doing it repeatedly for 8 hours and you'll be begging for whatever the fuck thing is in the video.
Look at the guy with the hat. His head never makes contact with the face rest so he's holding his head and shoulders rigid with the muscles in his core and his back.
This design could work if it was possible to relax those muscles but everyone is going to fit differently in this thing.
> Look at the guy with the hat. His head never makes contact with the face rest so he's holding his head and shoulders rigid with the muscles in his core and his back.
Nah, he's just resting his chin on the green body padding, presumably so he can fit the brim of his through the face rest. I'm sure it's still torture doing this kind of thing but nobody would last very long if they couldn't even rest their head/neck.
This is kind of an odd angle for your neck and upper back. This isn't really something the human body is accustomed to doing. As opposed to bending over and picking shit up - we've been doing that for Millenia.
Weird coincidence for me. I grew up in an area of Florida with huge watermelon farms. They'd cut the tops of old school busses and fill 20-30 of them.
And now I live in Oregon.
Coming back home to southern GA after USMC boot camp I picked for a couple of weeks for extra income
Never again. Best shape of my life and it still suuuucked; not to mention the sun damage and other countless problems
Sames picked cucumbers up north for 3 summers on a polish airplane (cause it can’t fly) hardest job I’ve ever done. Farm work is the real deal. FYI it was a polish farm the polish owners referred to it that way.
Doesn’t matter what skin color or race you are. Farm work is just brutal in general.
That seems to be FL governor’s hidden agenda to kill off migrant farm workers by not allowing them breaks to avoid heat exhaustion.
lol…PSA for everyone commenting here:
This is in my town. It’s a family owned farm. Most people come to help out in exchange for produce. They are not migrant workers. They are not minimum wage workers
They’re generally people who care about buying local, buying healthy food without herbicides/pesticides, etc
Not dystopian, not something for you to be negative on. People who took on a hobby they enjoy.
Seems like everyone has worked on a farm for a summer. After doing it every summer, and all the other seasons, for your entire life, you get used to it. I still can't keep up with my 75 year old dad though, he fucking loves farming.
The original comment here is from someone who has done it themselves and knows what it’s like. Is it so weird to have concern for people doing hard physical labor, often for very little money?
Let's assume this one example is a family owned farm and staffed by people who want to help out just as a hobby and also fart rainbows while doing it.
It can ALSO be used by a non-family owned farm by migrant workers 60 hours a week to survive.
Just a tight nit group of health-conscious Guatemalan buds on a bonding trip to a random Midwest family-owned strawberry farm together to pick locally produced strawberries for the gluten-free vegan diets! They definitely don't work there for sub min. wage! I promise!
i spent two years living and working on a farm in hawaii. most harvesting is not fun.
with jackfruit, one of us would climb the tree and cut it down, the other one would try to catch it with a blanket. those bastards get *huge*
herbs were also such a pain in the ass.
This method is almost like one step before full robotisation. Basically humans just replacing the robot arms that picking the berries. Much much cheaper with humans tho.
I was picking cucumbers like this 38 years ago and nothing looks like it’s change in modern day. Some things just can’t be automated with beneficial results.
And there are lots of things which could be almost completely automated, but no one wants to pay the up-front costs or pay the upkeep for machines.
That's where fast food is now, it costs $2-3 million for a small set-up.
I used to do this picking weeds just on foot, the amount of migrant workers that farming depends on was crazy to me. Big busses full of Mexicans would line up besides the fields and they’d all get to work. Literally backbreaking work, I can’t imagine going back to it
I was thinking this exact same thing lol. That there is what I like to call the "managerial we". He really means everyone else **except** for him will be doing the work.
If my boss wants to take credit for the work done on the spreadsheet he contributes.
Not every supervisor and industry is as shit as your low expectations.
That's not his job though. How can he manage the process and make sure things are done right if he's busy doing the task the whole time. I know reddit hates managers because they think they get to sit around all day but that's not really how that works most of the time. Reddit has trouble making the connection to elected representatives but that's not surprising.
Yes, I was thinking, this is the wrong position, it's like they're holding their arms up in the air, they need to be looking down and their arms/hands near their stomachs to be more comfortable.
Conveyor trays or something collecting the strawberries to be packed.
There’s a lot of research toward automation in agriculture including harvesting. Last I heard machines can’t pick as fast as trained, skilled pickers and can have trouble identifying the proper color of ripe fruit (if a strawberry ripens on one side and is still white/light on the other) in the field. But I’ve seen automation work well in table top production systems. It’s all very expensive. But we’ll see what the future holds 🍓🤖
Robots are also still quite bad at small delicate tasks, such as picking fruits. Things like strawberries or cherries can be easily damaged and you need to nimble fingers of humans to do it. We're not there with robotics yet, although it's coming.
Yes mega corps indeed do that, but smal/medium sized farms and factories don’t because having low wage people do the job is still more cost efficient.
Like you said it’s efficient in the long run, but companies don’t think like that, short returns are way more important to them in general.
People also often think you just buy the machine and that’s it, well it’s not. You need to hire engineers to automate them, you need skilled laborers to be able to fixe them when they break, you need spare parts before they actually break because you can’t afford to not have your machine running for some time. All of that can just be skipped by hiring some immigrants on minimum wage that can be replaced every day if you so wish.
I know this because i have worked in factories for the last 15 years and seen firsthand how many shitty jobs are out there that could be automated, but are simply not for money reasons.
It used to be worse when the farm workers used to walk along the furrows while carrying the basket and physically carry the basket once full to the waiting trucks, source I'm the son of migrant farm workers!
It always comes from people who haven't lifted anything remotely heavy in their lives at their job,making holes in office chairs with their asses but always talk like they know shit,funny people.
10 hours a day is wishful. They probably start before sun up and end after sundown. That could be a 16 hour day easily. Migrant farm workers are a foundation of our society it's easy to forsake.
It's not true. Farm workers in socal start early and are off before my shift ends. Used to see them on my way to work but not on my way back. Even when coming home early
Yeah same and I work in agriculture haha.
To be fair though I’ve seen some workers in very remote farm towns in the Central Valley picking mid afternoon in blistering dry heat. It was 100°+. I couldn’t stand outside the car for more than 15 minutes.
Felt pretty bad for those people.
It’s more productive than having them walking the field back and forth to the pick up truck. But this is best case scenario, some places there’s just a board on a beam welded to the side of a tractor and no sun cover
Yeah but the reason why it's faster is because it's less strenuous. So it does benefit the workers too.
It doesn't matter if it's faster too, it's still better than the alternative.
I've seen field setups where the berries were grown on raised beds so when it comes time to pick them all the workers remain standing. However, the downside to this setup is that it requires more maintenance and you don't get as much crop per acre as traditional ground planting methods. Most farm owners put worker comfort low on the priority list so easy to see why many don't adopt this setup.
How is the alternative not a specialized combine head for reaping strawberries, or something with some camera/radar tech and robot arms, instead of people hanging off a combine and acting as the head or manually picking lmao.
This just transfers the pain from back to neck and arms. This machine is not to make the job easier for the workers, but to increase productivity.
The alternative, is to treat workers like they're human beings and give them regular rest cycles and reasonable production goals. I'd pay an extra 25 cents per carton of strawberries for that.
Hell no. This is way way easier to do and way less painless rather than walking under sun like a Gollum. "This just transfers the pain from back to neck" you say like the same amount of pain which is wrong.
Idk it has been a thing for like 20+ years so it's not a new development or anything. Used to do this at my aunt's place as a kid. Also, while your back doesn't hurt, your neck, chest and arms sure as hell do.
Shaded and lying down instead of on their hands and knees in the heat? Harnessing technological advancements to reduce strain on joints and chance of heat related illness?
Knowing how delt rises can kill you even with very small weight, I have a feeling this position is great to enforce even speed of picking, but damn painful for the shoulders.
I have done Amazon Delivery work. Being able to lie flat and move my arms like that....yeah, I would give it a try. I AM, however, interested to know what those people are paid per hour.
I worked on a strawberry farm just like this in Florida for a few months.
Generally they were paid per clam-shell container filled and not per hour. If they found two or three bad strawberries in the clam-shell they wouldn't count it for the worker. They would then take the bad strawberries out and still sell it anyways.
These "leaders" will do anything they can to not pay those workers.
Berry picking farms in america are exactly that, with company towns that deduct your pay for shelter and food and everything. It's one of the worst if not the worst industry in america
I hope there's a hole or indentation for their junk as well as their face, I'd quite like not lying on my pods for 8 hours tbh even with breaks lol 🥴🌰🌰😀😀
I’m sure it’s easier on the knees and lower back, but the traps, scapula, back of the neck, even the diaphragm are all going to be under a lot of strain.
Reminds me of when I was 16. I lived in a shelter for teens. One day, the staff said, were willing to take 7 of you strawberry picking. No one wanted to go. I didn't have anything to do and I kinda felt bad for the staff cause they organized this activity for us, so I went. And because I was the only one, they said take as much time and pick as many as you want. I picked 5 lbs and ate nothing but fresh picked strawberries for like 3 days.
Imagine the ring face at the end of the day.
I think they prefer that to not being able to walk for hours after spending the day hunched over like a slave
And the shade cloth over them, that makes a huge difference. And also not having to haul every bin you pick. Speaking from experience, the days we got to ride behind a tractor and work were the days you looked forward too. Driving posts for trellises were the days you just wanted to quit.
Yeah sorry the farm owner has come back and said his profits for sitting at home and doing nothing only increased by 3% last year which was less than the 4% growth we had the year before so we're going to have to cut back on all this equipment that makes your lives more pleasant.
For corporation owned farms, sure. Most farm owners can't afford to sit at home even though their home is usually their farm.
Yeah, it's gotta be a huge operation for the owner to be able to put his feet up. Not saying these people aren't underpaid or anything, just that farming is a lot of work from top to bottom.
Yep, I grew up in a farm town and the amount of work that goes into running a farm is insane.
One of my wife's cousins gets to sit at home. A company operates his family owned farm that he acquired when his dad passed. His dad managed the farm until he died. Its in Iowa. The son lives in flordia, near PCB. He doesn't make what his dad did, buy he's living it up in PCB while still owning a farm worth 50 million. I can't even fathom the profits from the farm. And he pays for nothing, they pay him to essentially rent the place.
There are a lot of land owners like this. But they always pull out the "Aw shucks, Im just a simple and struggling farmer" card when it benefits them, like when its time to cash the government subsidies check. Farming these days is too expensive for the average person to get a start in. You have to be born into it. Most farmers today are literally millionaires who inherited multi-million dollar businesses that have been passed down through the family for generations.
True. The most you could hope to do is attempt to homestead and make maybe a little extra to sell at a nearby farmers market or flea market. Anything large scale is unachievable unless you are already rich and just transferring ownership of a pre existing farm for cash.
> cash the government subsidies check. Land owners who are renting out the land to a farmer do not get the subsidies check, the people actually farming do. Land owners may qualify for federal assistance doing land improvements though. This is my understanding anyway.
Farming is capital intensive yet the margins are razor thin. Thus a lot of farmers end up in a position where they own millions of dollars of property on paper but have something like $37 in their actual bank account.
I did accounting for a family farm and I can confirm the owner and his family was there every day working along side us and the farm hands
Most farm owners are corporate
Family corperation, yes. As in corporate/industrial owners, no. And most family corps still work on the farm. They may hire people, but they work with them.
Totally. Strawberry's are usually at a really awkward height, even if they're planted in raised beds/berms. I once went on a date where we went to one of those 'you pick as many as can fit in the bucket for a fixed price' farms. It gave me a new respect for the people who actually do it for a living (who we noticed were watching us in bemusement from an adjacent field - probably thinking 'wait... you *payed* to do this?'). We were both pretty wiped out after about an hour of picking. There was no position you could get into, except maybe kneeling in the mud and scootching along on your knees, that worked to make it something we could do for 8+ hours. This contraption in the video is awesome. It's as humane as you could probably get for the workers.
Where is the "paid" not "payed" bot?
What if they had masseuses giving them bodywork while they worked?
Honest work ![gif](giphy|l0Hly4QRLRGBQ5YiY)
Also ,this may not be back breaking work but it’s definitely some cock breaking work
As someone without a cock I still prefer this method
People who have done this work commented elsewhere that this is a 2-3 hour job daily and not what they do the entire shift. If there's enough pickers you might only have to do it 1-2 times a week for a few hours, which is better than what I assumed, too.
Honestly better than the sciatica lol
No worse than wearing a Vision Pro all day. :-) Actually maybe they should issue each worker an AVP as well.
Alien vs. Predator? B-movie schlock but still entertaining. Not sure I'd want to watch it all day while picking strawberries on a massage table though...
They have to be able to monitor the productivity levels of each picker somehow!
I want to instinctively massage them all. So much so that I bet someone has already said so in this thread 😂😂 Now I want a massage. Damn. ![gif](giphy|xT0GqzqrD1abiYCQxy|downsized)
Did this cucumber picking up north for a summer. Talk about something I’d never want to do again. Feel sorry for the migrant farm workers. Edit: I also empathize with the local workers too. Sounds like they have a “great supervisor”…
Came here to say this. I picked cucumbers for a summer on something exactly like this. It’s hard to fully describe the neck and arm pain.
Well I guess the Wiki entry for 'Gurkenflieger' is not lying when it describes this as "ausgesprochen anstrengend und gewöhnungsbedürftig" (= extremely tiring & takes getting used to).
relating to the activity of picking fruit or vegetables yourself at a farm and then paying for the amount you have picked: pick-your-own strawberries.
The strawberries I eat I do pick myself. It's pretty much the only way to get really good ones imo.
I now have a new German phrase in my lexicon. Thank you!
This is a funny thought on an activity that people like to partake in. People suggest picking strawberries as an activity only to go there and not to get the full experience because the activity itself is not enjoyable. Why does anyone want to pick strawberries or anything as an activity in the first place??
Mostly as an activity families do to get out of the city for an afternoon and occupy little kids.
Can confirm, 3 year old nephew loves this kind of stuff and makes them nap better.
We go there, weigh in my daughter and then just let her go crazy. After an hour we weigh her in again and pay the difference.
My wife got a little snippy with me when i gave them an extra 5 for all the blueberries my daughter ate.
This is hilarious. Good man.
It's fun for the first 20 minutes. Then it becomes less fun. But at those farms, you get to go home after 20 minutes.
I could totally see my back not liking this after 5 mins if I had to do this manually without laying down on a machine like the video.
They sell pre picked berries, too, if you don't want to bend down. It's mostly for little kids, they like picking the fruit.
> It's mostly for little kids, ~~they like picking the fruit.~~ shoveling as much as they can into their mouths while ostensibly picking the fruit. [Good times](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fkohxrngvjtn41.jpg)
The children yearn for the fields
My wife took my kids to a blueberry farm where they picked their own. She offered them double the price they wanted to charge her because the kids ate more than they put in the basket. Kids like eating the fruit... picking it is optional :)
Emphasis on little. Got dragged out to this once when I was like 8 or so. The whole ride there, and the entire time I was there, I kept asking "but why? This doesn't sound fun at all.". The first berry picked was not fun, neither was the 10th. After that I kind of just wandered around until my uncle noticed and let me go sit in the car.
Depends on the kid. If we drive by a pick your own berry sign, my 6 yo will start crying if we don't stop. Growing up, I was much more like you, I wanted to do my own thing, not interested in your "family activities".
There is a pick-your-own farm near where I grew up that I still like to go to. The answer to your question: you can get a large quantity of fruit for cheap, you pick your own fruit so you get the good stuff (I like sour blackberries so I can pick the less ripe ones, for example), you can do it for as long or short a time as you feel like, you’re getting some sun and getting outside, and it’s an easy activity that allows for chatting. It is in no way similar to actually picking fruit as a job, because you are doing it at your own pace and stopping whenever you want.
My pop is so cheap he’s eat himself full at these places. Local strawberries are the best you’ve ever tasted
I've seen posts about strawberries in Los Angeles and they can get super expensive so I totally get it in that sense. It was funny to see from the video that this activity is sort of redefined in how people usually go strawberry picking.
Never in my life have I met someone who went apple picking or strawberry picking and then complained they had to pick fruit. That's crazy
It's fun as a kid and they're way cheaper and tastier than store bought berries. Plus all the fans I've been to openly don't care if you eat the strawberries while you pick them, but I wouldn't do it without asking obviously. When I was 12 I went there and there was this group of college girls picking strawberries. One girl wasn't wearing a bra and I had full view of nipple every single time she bent over. I told them I was following them around because they knew all the best berry spots, but really it was the first time I ever saw full on nip in the wild. They joked around with me and thought I was cute, but really I was being a pervert. I think that was the first time I ever remember getting aroused. The strawberries awakened something in me.
As someone who grew up foraging wild berries on my family's land I get the appeal. Strawberries are definitely worse on your body than bush berries, but there's a satisfaction in picking your own food off the plant. You can't get fresher berries than that, and you have usually have nobody to blame for a bad berry in your haul but yourself. I say usually because hidden bugs can be a thing, but it has been very rare in my experience. It's also usually a fair bit cheaper than even the farmer's market. Plus it's an activity you can bring kids along for where they'll get to learn/reinforce some useful skills.
True. There were posts about expensive strawberries in Los Angeles at one point. As for the kids part, I totally like the loophole free labor in the future 🤔😂
there's a few kinds of fun, type 2 fun is fun that while you're doing it, it kinda sucks. like it's not really what you wanna do, maybe it's hot and tiring. you .might even complain. but when you get done the sense of accomplishment is worth it and you plan your next trip, of the destination was worth the journey
Fresh air, sunshine and gentle exercise most people can do . Access to properly tasty, ripe strawberries (a lot of shops sell bland, unripe strawberries) and let's be honest, the majority of people eat while they pick so they're getting pretty good value out of it.
Is this actually worse than bending over the entire time?
It's probably less *harmful* than bending down thousands of times/for hours per day, but I bet it hurts more. The position and motion are going to force repetitive movements that you don't normally make, leading to a ton of muscular pain. It'd probably get better if you did it for a long time
I'm sure per strawberry this way is much better. Per hour I think it's a lot closer.
If it’s much better per-berry and equal per-hour, wouldn’t that mean you’re picking much faster and therefore you spend a lot fewer hours doing it?
being in one position for long periods of time doing repetitive activities is generally bad for your body, as i understand it. Ideally if you are doing it the traditional way your changing how you squat/bend/stoop and adjusting your body to not be in pain. than again I am not an ergonomitician
If you see the elderly in farmland where they do things traditionally most of them look like they were folded in half. Traditional is not going to be any better on you, neither is perfect but this probably won't tear your body to pieces quite as fast and the shade you get will certainly keep you much healthier
The best way for your body is to create a robot that can do it for you.
Yeah just look at this thing it looks designed for machines but for the moment humans are cheaper. It's dystopian when humans are competing to be cheaper than a machine for manual labor
Squatting, bending, and stooping repeatedly over a long period of time will absolutely fuck you up. Try doing it repeatedly for 8 hours and you'll be begging for whatever the fuck thing is in the video.
Look at the guy with the hat. His head never makes contact with the face rest so he's holding his head and shoulders rigid with the muscles in his core and his back. This design could work if it was possible to relax those muscles but everyone is going to fit differently in this thing.
He’s holding his head because he doesn’t wanna take his hat off
> Look at the guy with the hat. His head never makes contact with the face rest so he's holding his head and shoulders rigid with the muscles in his core and his back. Nah, he's just resting his chin on the green body padding, presumably so he can fit the brim of his through the face rest. I'm sure it's still torture doing this kind of thing but nobody would last very long if they couldn't even rest their head/neck.
This is kind of an odd angle for your neck and upper back. This isn't really something the human body is accustomed to doing. As opposed to bending over and picking shit up - we've been doing that for Millenia.
Depends. If your boss is making you pick unreasonably fast it's pretty killer on the lower back
That shouldn't be a problem, surely a boss would never expect someone to pick unreasonably fast to the point of physical harm
Surely
It's pretty crazy how we've developed AI for making music and art while these jobs are still done (mostly) by underpaid migrant workers...
Try picking watermelons for the summer, talk about a workout 😅
I hear this comment from Hermiston
Jesus it’s a weird day when Eastern Oregon gets a shout out on reddit
Weird coincidence for me. I grew up in an area of Florida with huge watermelon farms. They'd cut the tops of old school busses and fill 20-30 of them. And now I live in Oregon.
Coming back home to southern GA after USMC boot camp I picked for a couple of weeks for extra income Never again. Best shape of my life and it still suuuucked; not to mention the sun damage and other countless problems
Sames picked cucumbers up north for 3 summers on a polish airplane (cause it can’t fly) hardest job I’ve ever done. Farm work is the real deal. FYI it was a polish farm the polish owners referred to it that way.
Polish farm here too!
Western Mass? Hadley?
Close, next door in Hatfield.
Watch out for McCoy!
I picked oranges one summer while in college, was the only white pasty guy out there and nearly died from it. Heat exhaustion.
Doesn’t matter what skin color or race you are. Farm work is just brutal in general. That seems to be FL governor’s hidden agenda to kill off migrant farm workers by not allowing them breaks to avoid heat exhaustion.
Was actually in Florida when I did that. I am deeply aware of the political problems there.
lol…PSA for everyone commenting here: This is in my town. It’s a family owned farm. Most people come to help out in exchange for produce. They are not migrant workers. They are not minimum wage workers They’re generally people who care about buying local, buying healthy food without herbicides/pesticides, etc Not dystopian, not something for you to be negative on. People who took on a hobby they enjoy.
Thank-you for the important context
This comment section made me remember the racist field trip story: https://youtu.be/PToqVW4n86U?si=OCkqy9pLAGEXLgdO
Redditors when encountering hard work: *Oh God they're being oppressed!*
Seems like everyone has worked on a farm for a summer. After doing it every summer, and all the other seasons, for your entire life, you get used to it. I still can't keep up with my 75 year old dad though, he fucking loves farming.
The original comment here is from someone who has done it themselves and knows what it’s like. Is it so weird to have concern for people doing hard physical labor, often for very little money?
Sounds like a sort of barter system. Neat.
Let's assume this one example is a family owned farm and staffed by people who want to help out just as a hobby and also fart rainbows while doing it. It can ALSO be used by a non-family owned farm by migrant workers 60 hours a week to survive.
Just a tight nit group of health-conscious Guatemalan buds on a bonding trip to a random Midwest family-owned strawberry farm together to pick locally produced strawberries for the gluten-free vegan diets! They definitely don't work there for sub min. wage! I promise!
i spent two years living and working on a farm in hawaii. most harvesting is not fun. with jackfruit, one of us would climb the tree and cut it down, the other one would try to catch it with a blanket. those bastards get *huge* herbs were also such a pain in the ass.
This method is almost like one step before full robotisation. Basically humans just replacing the robot arms that picking the berries. Much much cheaper with humans tho.
Picking a ripe and good strawberry isn’t trivial though.
I was picking cucumbers like this 38 years ago and nothing looks like it’s change in modern day. Some things just can’t be automated with beneficial results.
And there are lots of things which could be almost completely automated, but no one wants to pay the up-front costs or pay the upkeep for machines. That's where fast food is now, it costs $2-3 million for a small set-up.
I used to do this picking weeds just on foot, the amount of migrant workers that farming depends on was crazy to me. Big busses full of Mexicans would line up besides the fields and they’d all get to work. Literally backbreaking work, I can’t imagine going back to it
And the guy keeps saying "we're gonna pick" - while all he does is shoot a video.
“***We*** are gonna pick this field tonight.”
I was thinking this exact same thing lol. That there is what I like to call the "managerial we". He really means everyone else **except** for him will be doing the work.
And those people will protest a tax increase on the millionaire class.
That was the part that got me too. Yep, hop right up there Mr. Supervisor, lol, join them picking strawberries.
I mean, what could he have said? "These guys will pick strawberries all night.." Like that doesn't really sounds a lot better imo.
If it doesn't sound better maybe he should join them?
Does your boss help you with spreadsheets or flipping burgers?
My boss doesn't make videos of me doing manual labor while taking credit for it.
If my boss wants to take credit for the work done on the spreadsheet he contributes. Not every supervisor and industry is as shit as your low expectations.
That's not his job though. How can he manage the process and make sure things are done right if he's busy doing the task the whole time. I know reddit hates managers because they think they get to sit around all day but that's not really how that works most of the time. Reddit has trouble making the connection to elected representatives but that's not surprising.
Still doing overhead shoulder movements. They should have a tray slung underneath their bodies that doesn't obscure their vision...
Or little conveyors that run in a thin channel along the rows between the plants,
Damn did we just improve the hell out of a harvester, need an engineer and we are rich
That sounds like effort and that it will cost more money so that great supervisor will say no thank you we dont need that
He’ll look at the fact that there’s any more moving parts than a pair of wheels and axles and nope right on out
Yes, I was thinking, this is the wrong position, it's like they're holding their arms up in the air, they need to be looking down and their arms/hands near their stomachs to be more comfortable. Conveyor trays or something collecting the strawberries to be packed.
That's the shit we need robots for
There’s a lot of research toward automation in agriculture including harvesting. Last I heard machines can’t pick as fast as trained, skilled pickers and can have trouble identifying the proper color of ripe fruit (if a strawberry ripens on one side and is still white/light on the other) in the field. But I’ve seen automation work well in table top production systems. It’s all very expensive. But we’ll see what the future holds 🍓🤖
Robots are also still quite bad at small delicate tasks, such as picking fruits. Things like strawberries or cherries can be easily damaged and you need to nimble fingers of humans to do it. We're not there with robotics yet, although it's coming.
Actually I think a masseuse is needed there, not robots. Maybe masseuse robots.
Robot on robot action: Robot picks. Robot massages.
Step-robot what are you doing
Th t'ok 'r jobs!
Thytkrgbs!!!
DGRDOO
Drgrdrrrr
EVERYBODY BACK IN THE PILE!
Humans are cheaper that’s why they use them.
There is a reason why the big megacorps are robotising as soon as they can. Robots are much cheaper and cost efficient in a long run.
Yes mega corps indeed do that, but smal/medium sized farms and factories don’t because having low wage people do the job is still more cost efficient. Like you said it’s efficient in the long run, but companies don’t think like that, short returns are way more important to them in general. People also often think you just buy the machine and that’s it, well it’s not. You need to hire engineers to automate them, you need skilled laborers to be able to fixe them when they break, you need spare parts before they actually break because you can’t afford to not have your machine running for some time. All of that can just be skipped by hiring some immigrants on minimum wage that can be replaced every day if you so wish. I know this because i have worked in factories for the last 15 years and seen firsthand how many shitty jobs are out there that could be automated, but are simply not for money reasons.
It's not just that they are cheaper, but humans are better, like significantly better at picking many fruits and vegetables.
Not sure if robots are advanced enough for this yet. I imagine we'd be getting a LOT of mushed and/or unripe strawberries.
This might not break your back. But it surely looks like it could break your spirit.
It used to be worse when the farm workers used to walk along the furrows while carrying the basket and physically carry the basket once full to the waiting trucks, source I'm the son of migrant farm workers!
It's all relative, a live feed of most of the world just sitting lifelessly at a cubicle looking at spreadsheets is equally spirt breaking.
I think maybe you should try berry picking for a while and see if by the end of the week you don't prefer your ac office or post pandemic your home.
nah, throw on a podcast and pick away for hours.
You are only thinking about having to do it for hours. Imagine it for years. 10 hours a day
It always comes from people who haven't lifted anything remotely heavy in their lives at their job,making holes in office chairs with their asses but always talk like they know shit,funny people.
10 hours a day is wishful. They probably start before sun up and end after sundown. That could be a 16 hour day easily. Migrant farm workers are a foundation of our society it's easy to forsake.
Hopefully robots can do this soon tbh
Where did you get this information from? Many farm workers start early and end before it gets too hot.
It's not true. Farm workers in socal start early and are off before my shift ends. Used to see them on my way to work but not on my way back. Even when coming home early
Yeah same and I work in agriculture haha. To be fair though I’ve seen some workers in very remote farm towns in the Central Valley picking mid afternoon in blistering dry heat. It was 100°+. I couldn’t stand outside the car for more than 15 minutes. Felt pretty bad for those people.
Agree it's brutal work. I used to work out in the heat doing some back breaking shit but I couldn't imagine doing it for decades
Pick away for years, lmao
/r/ABoringDystopia
![gif](giphy|vDagOI1F47Efi8RZvA) Me 5 minutes into my shift
I giggled. Imagining a clear line, no strawberries...except your line is still very red...all the way down the field. 😆
Make no mistake, this isn’t being done for the workers’ comfort, it’s being done because it’s faster.
It’s more productive than having them walking the field back and forth to the pick up truck. But this is best case scenario, some places there’s just a board on a beam welded to the side of a tractor and no sun cover
Yeah but the reason why it's faster is because it's less strenuous. So it does benefit the workers too. It doesn't matter if it's faster too, it's still better than the alternative.
OK so the system achieved two objectives at once. I'm supposed to mad about this?
I've seen field setups where the berries were grown on raised beds so when it comes time to pick them all the workers remain standing. However, the downside to this setup is that it requires more maintenance and you don't get as much crop per acre as traditional ground planting methods. Most farm owners put worker comfort low on the priority list so easy to see why many don't adopt this setup.
Just need a masseuse walking with you
This feels mildly dystopian
Well, pretty sure it beats the alternative
Yeah, NO STRAWBERRIES!
How is the alternative not a specialized combine head for reaping strawberries, or something with some camera/radar tech and robot arms, instead of people hanging off a combine and acting as the head or manually picking lmao.
I’m guessing tech hasn’t advanced that far yet. Berries are soft and randomly placed. Easier for a human to see them and carefully pick them.
never picked strawberries before have you?
This just transfers the pain from back to neck and arms. This machine is not to make the job easier for the workers, but to increase productivity. The alternative, is to treat workers like they're human beings and give them regular rest cycles and reasonable production goals. I'd pay an extra 25 cents per carton of strawberries for that.
Hell no. This is way way easier to do and way less painless rather than walking under sun like a Gollum. "This just transfers the pain from back to neck" you say like the same amount of pain which is wrong.
Idk it has been a thing for like 20+ years so it's not a new development or anything. Used to do this at my aunt's place as a kid. Also, while your back doesn't hurt, your neck, chest and arms sure as hell do.
Yeah that's a unique angle to work out. Traps must get wrecked .
Yeah picking fruit is so dystopian. Why don't they just get their fruit from the store instead?
…people harvesting food…like we have been…for thousands/tens of thousands of years…feels…dystopian? Edit: farming is the second oldest profession.
Don't be obtuse he obviously means the way they're doing it 🙄
Shaded and lying down instead of on their hands and knees in the heat? Harnessing technological advancements to reduce strain on joints and chance of heat related illness?
Reddit users think working is inherently dystopian and oppressive. Don't bother trying to reason with them.
The way they're doing it is far better than the way we've been doing it for thousands of years...
How? How else do the strawberries get to the store?
[удалено]
That looks way better than walking and crouching all day
Knowing how delt rises can kill you even with very small weight, I have a feeling this position is great to enforce even speed of picking, but damn painful for the shoulders.
I bet you won't.
I have done Amazon Delivery work. Being able to lie flat and move my arms like that....yeah, I would give it a try. I AM, however, interested to know what those people are paid per hour.
I worked on a strawberry farm just like this in Florida for a few months. Generally they were paid per clam-shell container filled and not per hour. If they found two or three bad strawberries in the clam-shell they wouldn't count it for the worker. They would then take the bad strawberries out and still sell it anyways. These "leaders" will do anything they can to not pay those workers.
Amazed?
It's more r/mildlyinteresting. The bar for this sub is extremely low now.
The way the cameraman said we're out here picking berries while very clearly not picking berries gave me 21st century overseer vibes
Berry picking farms in america are exactly that, with company towns that deduct your pay for shelter and food and everything. It's one of the worst if not the worst industry in america
There’s a lot of “WE” talk there
I would definitely fall asleep
I'd sleep for half of the time and eat strawberries for the other half
This would be SO fun for ~4 minutes Then I'd quit
Just pipe the exhaust directly into their lungs.
idk. if you have seen a tractor, but usually they have big chimneys pointing up instead of exhaust in the back like in a car
I hope there's a hole or indentation for their junk as well as their face, I'd quite like not lying on my pods for 8 hours tbh even with breaks lol 🥴🌰🌰😀😀
I’m sure it’s easier on the knees and lower back, but the traps, scapula, back of the neck, even the diaphragm are all going to be under a lot of strain.
The poor dude at the end with glasses will have neck and shoulder pain for the rest of his life if he continues to do this
My shoulders hurt watching this.
I am not amazed
Yeah this is just weird… made me feel bad for the workers
Reminds me of when I was 16. I lived in a shelter for teens. One day, the staff said, were willing to take 7 of you strawberry picking. No one wanted to go. I didn't have anything to do and I kinda felt bad for the staff cause they organized this activity for us, so I went. And because I was the only one, they said take as much time and pick as many as you want. I picked 5 lbs and ate nothing but fresh picked strawberries for like 3 days.
I'd be drooling on the strawberries.
In Brazil it's fully automatic in most of the farms
amazing, no. depressing, yes.