3:10 to Yuma
Reflections from my recent trip to Yuma, Arizona
It is harder to automate the harvesting of lettuce than to send a human to the moon.
I had the privilege to visit multiple harvesting operations during my visit to Yuma, Arizona, last week. I also had the chance to connect with other players in the ecosystem who have worked on various aspects of the problem.
These included forward-thinking Farm Labor Contracting (FLC) companies, local manufacturers, AgTech adoption services companies, research institutions, and, of course, many growers, shippers, and packers. Just as with any population, I encountered people with extremely strong opinions about how things should be done!
Harvesting lettuce (and many other specialty crops) is still very much a majority human-driven endeavor.
A brief history of automation and mechanization attempts
According to a 1973 research paper, serious attempts to mechanize lettuce harvesting at public research universities began in 1962. We have been trying to fully automate lettuce harvesting for almost 64 hours years, but we have not succeeded yet.
And it is not for lack of trying.
There are multiple startups and other custom shops working to automate this process.
According to the latest crop robotics report from Better Food Ventures, there are more than 450 robotics companies, with many focused on harvesting operations.
The Bracero Program - Farm Labor in the 1950s-60s
US Growers, shippers, and packers prior to the 1960s benefited from the Bracero program.
This was a government-to-government agreement. The US government acted as the labor contractor in the early years, transporting workers to distribution centers. It was massive in scale and focused almost exclusively on Mexican nationals.
Growers paid low wages, and the program itself was accused of suppressing domestic wages. There was little financial incentive to replace Braceros with machines, since labor was so affordable.
The Bracero program was terminated in 1964. This created a huge challenge for growers, unless they had access to undocumented workers.
Right after the program was terminated, UC Davis began commercializing a tomato harvester for processed tomatoes, which was quickly adopted. Some acreage for labor-intensive crops, such as asparagus and strawberries, moved south to Mexico.
The Bracero Program ended in 1964, and many farmers expected to continue to hire Mexican workers under the H-2 program. However, the DOL issued regulations on December 19, 1964, that required employers of H-2 workers to offer and pay the AEWR to any U.S. workers they employed (Martin, 2007, pp. 15–16). Unlike bracero employers, H-2 employers were also required to offer and provide U.S. workers with the same housing and transportation guarantees that were included in bracero contracts. At a time when U.S. farm workers were not covered by minimum wage laws, most U.S. farmers adjusted to the end of the Bracero Program by mechanizing or changing crops rather than continuing to rely on migrant workers (Clemens, Lewis, and Postel, 2018).
The post-Bracero period saw many attempts to mechanize lettuce harvesting. But these early machines were heavy, slow, and often crushed the lettuce. The technology of the time (analog sensors and hydraulics) lacked the finesse of a human hand.
With the rise in undocumented workers, the pressure to automate harvesting decreased a bit.
From the 1980s to the 2010s, the industry paused on full automation and switched to doing “harvest aid” machines.
The harvest aid machine typically consists of a slow-moving tractor that pulls a long conveyor belt wing. A crew of about 20 people walks behind the conveyor belt. They continue to cut, trim, and place lettuce heads on a belt.
On the right-hand side of the picture, you can see about 20-25 people selecting, cutting, and cleaning lettuce heads, then placing them on a conveyor belt that moves from right to left.
There are about 3-6 people at the end of the conveyor belt who are responsible for quality-checking the lettuce. The QC people are called “ojeros” as they keep an eye on the quality of produce coming through.
If the field has a high-quality product, the harvesting crew will have more cutters and fewer cleaners. If the product quality in the field is not top-notch, the harvesting crew will have more QC personnel and fewer cutters.
For shed pack products (as seen in the picture above, which will be used for processing, the lettuce heads are kept clean through a spray of water and then end up in large bins (left of the picture), which are then immediately moved to a cooling facility for further processing for salads, etc.
The two or three people standing by the bins make sure the bins are filled uniformly. This part of the harvesting crew is called “reinas” (queens, as they stand and work higher up on the machine).
For field packs, the lettuce heads are immediately wrapped in plastic and placed in boxes for shipping to a cooler.
Harvest aid machines reduce physical strain on workers by reducing walking and bending (depending on the product) and increasing harvesting speed.
The most critical process in harvesting lettuce requires the ability to spot a mature head, cut it at the right angle and at the right spot, and trim the bad leaves. The robotics capabilities of the 1990s and 2010s didn’t have the capabilities to replicate it cost-effectively, whereas a trained human can do it quite effectively.
(This should quell the notion that farming is an unskilled job)
As a result, human harvesting still accounts for more than 50% of the total production cost for specialty crops like lettuce and berries.
The University of California, Davis, publishes detailed cost breakdowns by different crop types in different parts of California. The table below shows a screenshot of the total operating costs per acre for field-packed iceberg lettuce.
I have highlighted the harvest/field pack costs of $7,200 per acre, out of the total operating costs/acre of $14,584. This data is for 2023 for iceberg lettuce in the Central Coast region of California. Labor costs will be slightly lower in Yuma, Arizona, but the percentages will remain the same.
H2-A program - a new far labor program from the 1990s
The H-2A program began in 1986, though the first visas were not issued until 1992. The H2-A program's goals and structure were in sharp contrast to those of the Bracero program.
After the Bracero program was terminated for suppressing wages, the Department of Labor (DOL) implemented strict rules for H-2 visas. They created the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR).
AEWR is a minimum wage floor designed to prevent foreign workers from being paid less than US workers.
For example, today in Arizona, the hourly legal rate for an H-2A worker is around $18, and they are required to have housing and other amenities, which bumps the hourly rate to $25 to $30 per hour.
For the first 20-25 years, the H2-A program was hardly used, as it was cheaper and easier for farmers to hire undocumented workers. As a result, in the first 20-25 years of the program, H2-A issued only 30,000 to 40,000 visas nationwide each year.
Around 2010, due to stricter border enforcement and demographic changes in Mexico, the cheap, undocumented labor supply started to dry up. It forced farmers into the H-2A program as the “labor of last resort.”
As H2-A program costs have risen, it has once again created a financial incentive for growers to automate as much of the harvesting process as possible to reduce costs and stay competitive with other parts of the world, such as Mexico and South America. My friend and fellow AgTech Alchemist, Walt Duflock, has written extensively about these challenges, and you should follow him on LinkedIn.
As you can see from the images below, harvesting lettuce requires speed, keen observation, precision, and stamina. Harvesting lettuce across Salinas, California, and Yuma, Arizona, is a 6-day-a-week, 52-weeks-a-year, around-the-clock operation.
Humans are very dexterous and versatile in their skill sets. Picking romaine or iceberg lettuce is not straightforward.
For example, lettuce picked for shed packing for value-added products like salads has to be cut at the right angle, a few leaves have to be removed, and the core is stabbed with a coring knife.
This lettuce is then put into large bins, which are sent to the cooler for further processing.
For a product like romaine heart lettuce, the human has to discern which lettuce to pick and which to leave behind, cut it at the right spot, and then remove the right amount of leaves to leave a beautiful-looking heart, which is then immediately packaged.
This is a bit of a consumer expectation problem. Consumers expect beautiful-looking produce that stays fresh for at least a reasonable amount of time in their refrigerator before it is used.
As a result, a large amount of potentially usable product is left behind (by some estimates, 40-50%). This is plowed back into the ground before the next crop goes in, providing some nutrients to the soil.
As you can see from some of the examples here, it is challenging for a machine to completely replace a human, as it must match the speed, quality, and cost of the human crew. The harvesting crew has to perform the following three main operations for lettuce.
Cutting, cleaning, and packing.
Harvesting process capabilities and requirements
There are 5 different buckets of capabilities that an automated machine should be able to meet to reduce the amount of human labor used or almost eliminate it.
These required capabilities will illustrate why, even though the ecosystem has been working for more than 64 years, we still have not fully automated lettuce harvesting.
Though with powerful vision systems, sophisticated AI algorithms, edge processing, advances in materials engineering, and rising H2-A costs, it might be feasible to address this problem.
Performance and Throughput
The system must match or exceed the efficiency of manual labor crews to justify the capital expenditure. Current crews work fast and move through fields quickly, easily processing thousands of heads per hour.
The crew has to maintain the quality of the cut, the cleaning, and the packing while maintaining a high throughput.
As I said earlier, lettuce harvesting happens 6 days a week, all year round. The system must be capable of near-continuous operation during the harvest window of April–November in regions like Salinas, CA, and November through March/April in Yuma, Arizona. The changeover time between fields has to be kept to a minimum.
Economic and Commercial Viability
The machine must reduce the human workforce requirement over a longer time period, and it should have a reasonable and acceptable ROI timeline for adoption.
Obviously, any new machine will not meet these requirements on Day 1, and so there should be a plan to go down the cost curve by learning with enough reps in the field.
Food Safety and Hygienic Design
The machine must adhere to the Produce Safety Rule (PSR) under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). The Produce Safety Rule has specific requirements around agricultural water, biological soil amendments, sprouts, domesticated and wild animals, worker training and health and hygiene, and equipment, tools, and buildings.
Food safety is absolutely critical. All the operations I saw took food safety very seriously. We always had to wear gloves, hair nets, and beard nets (whether you had a beard or not)!
Machines are washed, and surfaces are cleaned regularly. Everyone has to constantly wash their hands to maintain a hygienic environment.
One of the growers had a pet peeve about birds! Birds can be a nuisance as they can damage the crop. If birds do their “business” while flying over the field, it makes harvesting the product challenging from a food-safety standpoint.
I heard stories about how 100s of acres of crops had to be abandoned due to excessive bird excrement! This particular grower had hired an 8-person crew with the sole responsibility to scare the birds away. Innovative attempts to scare the birds away include drones chasing birds, specific frequency sounds, etc.
Product Quality and Grading
The cut must be made exactly at the “collar” (where the leaves meet the stem) to prevent a reduction in shelf life. The automated system must identify and reject heads with visible defects. Mechanical damage should be kept to a minimum and meet USDA standards for different grades of produce.
Operation and Environment
Meeting operational and environmental requirements is one of the most challenging aspects for these machines. The harvesting environment and the time period are characterized by mud, dust, and high heat.
Furrows might be wet and muddy. Machines have to turn around at edges, which may have different characteristics. It should be able to enter a field and be easy to transport from one field to the next.
Growers are very passionate about how they grow their crop. Some growers are extremely passionate about their bed width, and it would be very hard to get them to change it if it meant an easier operation for their harvesting machine.
Due to this, a harvest machine should be flexible and able to adjust to different bed widths (ranging from the low 30s to mid 80s inches).
Ecosystem Support
For any product, especially a startup, it is impossible to get all of these right in the first version. The product development process has to start with a particular capability and then build experience in the field through a real, growing operation.
Given the number of startups working on robotics, it is often challenging for startups to reach the right type of growers to get feedback on their products and then have the infrastructure to test and iterate on their product.
This is where the ecosystem comes into play. I had the privilege to connect with a few public and private players in the space in Yuma.
For example, YCEDA (Yuma Center of Excellence for Desert Agriculture) under the University of Arizona umbrella is
dedicated to bringing scientific research and industry together to find solutions that bring value to stakeholders by addressing “on-the-ground” needs of Desert Ag production.
YCEDA members can provide technical and research assistance, field acres for testing, and ecosystem support to startups and other players working on bringing innovation to market.
An organization like The Reservoir provides support, office space, field testing infrastructure, and grower connections.
Reservoir helps founders build, test, and scale technologies that farmers can put to work—faster, fitter, and with lasting impact.
The Western Growers Association serves as a voice for specialty crop growers and provides important connections, expertise, and perspectives on technology adoption, policy, and industry needs.
A private organization like Axis Ag provides “Technology services for the agricultural community.”
Axis Ag empowers farmers with innovative agricultural solutions that drive sustainable growth, optimize productivity, and foster environmental stewardship. We are dedicated to advancing technology and partnerships that enhance the future of farming, building resilient food systems, and supporting the communities we serve.
Axis Ag has an interesting model. They have years of experience in specialty crop agriculture, strong grower connections, and the expertise to field-test different AgTech solutions, provide feedback to startups, and find the right set of early adopters to test and scale them.
They have partnered with multiple AgTech companies to help them bring their products to market and to scale.
The services and support provided by YCEDA, The Western Growers Association, The Reservoir, Axis Ag, and many others are critical to bringing these very much needed AgTech innovations to market and scaling them.
The normal conversations within AgTech can feel depressing. The farm economy is definitely in trouble, but my trip to Yuma, Arizona, showed me that the AgTech ecosystem is working hard, is collaborating, and is focusing on solving the right type of problems with rigor.
It might take longer than sending a human to the moon, but many of the existing problems, will get solved in the near future!
Next week’s edition
I will write about the amazing irrigation infrastructure in Yuma, Arizona, how Yuma became the winter salad bowl of the US, the challenges the region faces, and the role AgTech can play.
Happenings
I will be leading a two-and-a-half-hour session during the “AI in Agriculture Forum” at World Agritech San Francisco on March 16, 2026. The focus of the session will be on AI benchmarking. I hope to see many of you in San Francisco in March.
I will be hosting a session titled Robotics & Autonomy: The New Agricultural Workforce on March 17th, 2026, at World Agritech, featuring speakers from CNHi, Kubota, Tavant, and AgZen.
AgTech Alchemy will host an event in Monterey, California, on February 17th, in collaboration with AgSafe. The AgTech Alchemy team will share more details shortly.
I love this! You've convinced me (again) I need to spend more time thinking about agriculture and tech, as should people in the following categories: a) those who eat, and b) those who want to go to Mars.
Such an interesting piece, Rhishi (as always!) Thank you for writing and sharing this. You may remember that early in 2025, we spoke about some of the work I’m leading at Giga Futures on orchestrating more integrated solutions in agriculture. This made me think of our conversation!
Reading this, I keep coming back to two parallels. First, indoor lettuce production, which has effectively “designed out” many of these harvesting constraints through tightly controlled, end‑to‑end optimization (even if it’s still a small share of total production today). Second, commodity row crops, where genetics, planting architectures, and machinery have co‑evolved over decades to make large‑scale mechanization possible.
By contrast, in crops like lettuce, breeding and system design have been largely optimized for consumer and retail traits (appearance, shelf life, eating quality) and the cheap labour market, rather than for ease of harvesting in an automated era.
So your piece really raises, for me, a forward‑looking question: as we think about robotics, should we be trying only to fit machines into today’s paradigms, or also to build new ones that are more integrated and orchestrated, from genetics through to harvest and packing?
And if that could be a goal, in such a fragmented industry, who can realistically play that “integration authority” role - e.g. at the farm enterprise level, within a specific value chain, or via new platform players that sit across breeders, equipment manufacturers, and growers? What would the practical unlocks be (standards, incentives, shared infrastructure)?
Thanks again for a great story — it really underscores how much we may need to rethink how we innovate and not just what technologies we build, if we want automation to truly work for crops like lettuce.