Doug Kanter wrote:
"BobK207" wrote in message
oups.com...


..................Some crops cannot be harvested by machines. If they
could be, the machines would exist. .............


not if the current alternative is cheaper, if I can have fruit hand
picked for less than the ammortized cost of a machine then there is no
incentive for such a machine to exist.

. ......No machine will harvest them safely, at least not until
robotics are much further along. A long list of other crops are also
too delicate for anything but human handling......

Again at what relative cost?

as long as we have artificially cheap labor innovation in those fields
will be stunted

no machine could ever fly,
one could ever fly faster than the speed of sound,
it would be impossbile to send a man to the moon & return safely
how could one ever operate on a persons heart
active suspension in a production automobile? too expensive!


what else do we put on the list?



The combine was invented in the late 1940s. There was plenty of cheap labor
available at the time, as there has been ever since. In that time period,
farmers have immediately embraced machinery, regardless of labor costs.
There are benefits which go beyond human labor costs.



I don't think you can support those statements.
There were numerous reasons that agriculture was
mechanized--the war reduced the available labor,
the mass movement toward the cities, the
consolidation of farms into bigger units, the
change from the "family farm" to farming as a
business, the change in machinery available etc.