Your story reminds me of the 'pick your own' fashion of the 1980's in the UK. For small children it was great fun with more eaten or thrown at siblings and friends than put in the basket to be paid for.
This was a special time in that you couldn't just buy strawberries year round from the convenience store in single use plastic packaging, strawberries had bona-fide treat-luxury value. The excitement level of strawberries was definitely up there with chocolate Easter Eggs.
The trip to the field with the pick your own sign was a great day out but you had to have a functional family that did not work silly hours and had a lead-belching automobile. This was the high point of 1980's consumerism and it worked great for the farmer as the customers rather than hired-hand immigrants did the work of picking the strawberries. They just had to have some small child by the gate with some scales - a great cash only business.
I have noticed fewer pick-your-own signs in recent times and I wonder why. In the 1980's the shops were not open on a Sunday but the pick your own fields were. Also families are not quite the same and neither are communities, society has become more atomised. Screens have also taken over so kids today have better things to do on their hand-rectangles to be interested in spending a glorious summer day having fun with strawberries.
Anyway, returning to the original question - of course robots can do a better job of picking strawberries. We made it to the moon, right? It would be defeatist to think that we could not put our finest minds and billions of dollars to solving the problem of picking strawberries by robot. There are bigger fish to fry though.
We have something similar here in Minnesota during the Fall: pick your own apples. You and kids walk through the orchards with a basket, gathering as you go or sometimes there's a tractor towing a wagon that will take a dozen or so people at a time out, and pick them up after their baskets are full.
Of course, it's much better when it's your friend's apple trees and they're begging you to take a few bags home before they're indundated with rotting apples :-)
"Of course, it's much better when it's your friend's apple trees and they're begging you to take a few bags home before they're indundated with rotting apples :-)
"
In Southern California it's Tangerines. Suddenly everybody has them for a few weeks.
I've been to a few pick your own farms in Staffordshire, but these have been secondary businesses to farm shops or petting zoos.
I think strawberry farms have got technology down to a point where having people (especially children) ambling around is invasive. I see a lot of polysterene covered tunnels in fields which I've seen strawberries grown in. As we rely more on technology, the more it distances us from the process.
This was a special time in that you couldn't just buy strawberries year round from the convenience store in single use plastic packaging, strawberries had bona-fide treat-luxury value. The excitement level of strawberries was definitely up there with chocolate Easter Eggs.
The trip to the field with the pick your own sign was a great day out but you had to have a functional family that did not work silly hours and had a lead-belching automobile. This was the high point of 1980's consumerism and it worked great for the farmer as the customers rather than hired-hand immigrants did the work of picking the strawberries. They just had to have some small child by the gate with some scales - a great cash only business.
I have noticed fewer pick-your-own signs in recent times and I wonder why. In the 1980's the shops were not open on a Sunday but the pick your own fields were. Also families are not quite the same and neither are communities, society has become more atomised. Screens have also taken over so kids today have better things to do on their hand-rectangles to be interested in spending a glorious summer day having fun with strawberries.
Anyway, returning to the original question - of course robots can do a better job of picking strawberries. We made it to the moon, right? It would be defeatist to think that we could not put our finest minds and billions of dollars to solving the problem of picking strawberries by robot. There are bigger fish to fry though.