American agriculture is turning to automation

Purdue University, the leading agricultural study and research center in the United States, claims that 40% or more of new jobs in agriculture are not filled each year, which is an average 59,400 rural jobs will remain unfilled between 2020 and 2029.

This is a phenomenon that North American agriculture has seen in the last 40 years and is now, because of its magnitude, The main limitation of expansion Which introduces the world’s first agriculture.

That is why agricultural producers (farmers)particularly in the Midwest — Illinois, Nebraska, and Iowa — Provide incentives of all kinds in addition to high salaries to attract employees and retain them in their jobs, such as special vouchers for childcare and kindergarten facilities and scholarships for workers to complete their digital and management training in Community College Across the country, plus health insurance without any restrictions.

This situation is exacerbated by the labor shortage in California, where more than 80% of the fruit and vegetable production in the United States is produced in the valleys of the central region.

California’s fruit and vegetable production relies heavily on temporary workers from Mexico and has now had to turn to illegal operators originating there and in Central American countries, especially Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

It is estimated that in the past two years, more than 2.5 million illegal immigrants entered the United States through the southern border, and they come from all over the world from Venezuela to Haiti including Cuba and some South American countries.

the farmers They also use a federal program called H-2A that allows “imported” foreign workers to take temporary jobs, on a special one- or two-year visa.

The success of the H-2A has been truly extraordinary in the post-pandemic era. Employment of foreign operators increased by more than 450% between 2001 and 2019 It promises an even greater increase in the period 2020-2030.

It should be added that the costs of this procedure amount to 10,000 USD per temporary worker.

However, the primary consequence of the shortage of rural workers is that the farmers They have shifted en masse to automating their tasks.

The first to be automated were tractors and combine harvesters that excluded the presence of drivers. Now the trend is that agricultural production in North America has its own characteristics. Axis on digital control panels of all your activities.

This, in turn, requires a larger number of registered employees (less than 20% of the previous stage) but with a very high level of qualification, which is why it allows very high salaries.

he In short, the future of US agri-food production Completely digitaland its workforce will increasingly come from organizations like Purdue or its equivalent.

For this reason, in business schools in the United States, there is a proliferation of agricultural majors, which are generally studied farmers or their children.

These studies are no longer just about agriculture, however We demand to train advanced entrepreneurs with a global vision.

The shift is so profound that it forces us to redefine our role farmers, who turned from farmers into highly qualified businessmen, with a specific and modern vision of the markets, i.e. of the world. It is the end of American agricultural boycotts.

The agricultural engineering course established by the University of Oklahoma is now called the Agricultural Technology System, which includes the study of soil, plants, and life sciences in general, including ancient veterinary sciences, and all this is integrated with training work and the use of electronic sensors in networks (the Internet of Things), in addition to technologies The other aspects of the fourth industrial revolution are artificial intelligence and robotics.

The basic thing in this agricultural technology system is teaching He thinks in a global, scientific and technological way.

“America is not the future of the world,” Tocqueville said, “but the country of the world where the future comes first.” And what happens in agriculture in the United States could be the future of agricultural production in Argentina.