Part 8/11:
A key advantage of this approach is that robots pick strawberries from the stem, which minimizes bruising and prevents disease spread—a crucial benefit for fruit quality and farm hygiene.
The Broader Impact: From Workforce to Food Security
Originally designed to supplement a declining migrant workforce, these robots are now becoming a migrant workforce themselves—shipped globally in containers to places like Tasmania, where labor costs and logistics make automation more practical than employment of human pickers. This shipping underscores how robotics can extend agricultural reach, making farming feasible in regions previously considered uneconomical.