Farmers have more mouths to feed. Bring in the robots.
Dalvin Brown
Robots are shouldering more responsibility at Church Brothers Farms in Gonzalez, Calif.
From sunrise through sundown, rows of lettuce, broccoli, and cauliflower are planted, tended to and harvested on the thousand-acre ranch — partially by humans, increasingly by machines.
The products are then packaged and shipped to major grocery store chains and restaurants nationwide. You might have seen their products in the frozen food aisle under the Green Giant brand at Walmart, Target or virtually every other major supermarket.
But what you probably haven’t seen is how much more work autonomous machines and drones are doing on the farm as the minimum wage ticked up a dollar in California this year, heading toward $15 an hour for larger employers across the Golden State, effective 2022.