As California’s labour shortage grows, farmers race to replace workers with robots

Agricultural worker Alicia Solano thins rows of lettuce near Salinas, Calif., in March 2017. A computer-guided machine had done the bulk of the work, leaving her small crew to hoe only what it missed. (Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

SALINAS, California: Driscoll's is so secretive about its robotic strawberry picker it won't let photographers within telephoto range of it. 

But if you do get a peek, you won't see anything humanoid or space-aged. AgroBot is still more John Deere than C-3PO – a boxy contraption moving in fits and starts, with its computer-driven sensors, graspers and cutters missing one in three berries.