olive/carrot/strawberry harvesting machine GIFs

[Jon]

Olive, carrot, and strawberry harvesting machines, each purpose-built for harvesting a single kind of fruit or vegetable. While we rarely see homebuilt versions of these machines, it's fascinating how different each one is, and how much of our technology goes into replicating the action of the human hand.

Might need to wait a bit for all of these GIFs to load, or use the links to put each one in a separate browser tab.


Olive Harvester: https://diqn32j8nouaz.cloudfront.net..._harvester.gif


Carrot Harvester: https://diqn32j8nouaz.cloudfront.net..._harvester.gif


Strawberry Harvester: https://diqn32j8nouaz.cloudfront.net..._harvester.gif


The strawberry picking "machine" is funny, but it's not an internet hoax. There are many other similar designs online that are intended to place one or more human pickers in a prone position. Agrobot makes an interesting fully-automated strawberry harvester, but it looks like fairly new and extremely expensive technology:

[Jon]

Just in case you think the strawberry harvesters in the GIF above have it bad. Strawberry pickers in Bell, California, 1910.

Fullsize image: https://diqn32j8nouaz.cloudfront.net...w_fullsize.jpg

[Frank S]

Most people go to the produce section of the super market and pick over the produce selecting only what they think is the nicest looking while a lot of the lessor aesthetically pleasing will lay to waste and rot. with no regard or thought of what it took to get that produce to market.
They only know if it is not pretty and perfect to them it must be bad.
There is more produce wasted through harvest, shipping, at the market or thrown out at home in the USA than any other country in the world. Enough is wasted each year in the USA and a few other so called first world countries to feed half the population of the planet

[greyhoundollie]

When I was young in early 1960's there was a school in part of Louisiana that closed during strawberry harvest time and almost all students went to work in the fields.

In the late 1960's I missed school for first 2 weeks of school in my Junior High years to drive combine on the farm. On rain days I had to go back to school and catch up what I had missed. School principals understood this since many of the boys my age had to do the same.

There was one family in my area that had only daughters. So the girls drove combine and tractors during harvest. Their mother drove the truck that hauled the rice to the mill. In between full loads in the truck she cooked lunch for all the workers on the farm.

[desbromilow]

Just in case you think the strawberry harvesters in the GIF above have it bad. Strawberry pickers in Bell, California, 1910.

Fullsize image: https://diqn32j8nouaz.cloudfront.net...w_fullsize.jpg

Change the boxes from wood to plastic and you have the same harvesting photos from when I was doing it in Australia in the 1980s

[Toolmaker51]

Berries in Bell, Fullerton and Buena Park, bananas in Santa Barbara, beans in Lakewood, cows in Artesia, oranges in all the area surrounding Anaheim; unknown who planted fruitcakes in Hollywood.

https://www.kcet.org/shows/la-foodwa...arming-history