SALINAS, Calif. -- As a boy, Abel Montoya remembers his father arriving home from the lettuce fields each evening, the picture of exhaustion, mud caked knee-high on his trousers.
"Dad wanted me to stay away from manual labor. He was keen for me to stick to the books," Montoya said. So Montoya did, and went to college.
Yet Montoya, an immigrant's son, recently took a job at a lettuce-packing facility, where it is wet, loud, freezing -- and much of the work is physically taxing, even mind-numbing.
Now, though, he can delegate some of the worst work to robots.
Montoya, 28, is among a new generation of farmworkers at Taylor Farms, one of the world's largest producers and sellers of fresh-cut vegetables, which recently unveiled a fleet of robots designed to replace humans -- one of the agriculture industry's latest answers to a diminishing supply of immigrant labor.
The smart machines can assemble 60-80 salad bags a minute, double the output of a worker.
Enlisting robots made sound economic sense, Taylor Farms officials said, for a company seeking to capitalize on Americans' insatiable appetite for healthful fare at a time when it cannot recruit enough people to work in the fields or the factory.
A decade ago, people lined up by the hundreds for jobs at packing houses in California and Arizona during lettuce season. No more.
"Our workforce is getting older," said Mark Borman, chief operating officer of Taylor Farms. "We aren't attracting young people to our industry. We aren't getting an influx of immigrants. How do we deal with that? Innovation."
Moving up the technology ladder creates higher-skilled positions that can attract young people like Montoya, who is finishing a computer-science degree, and bolster retention of veteran employees who receive new training to advance their careers.
"We are making better jobs that we hope appeal to a broader range of people," Borman said.
In a 2017 survey of farmers by the California Farm Bureau Federation, 55 percent reported labor shortages and the figure was nearly 70 percent for those who depend on seasonal workers. Wage increases in recent years have not compensated for the shortfall, growers said.
Strawberry operations in California, apple orchards in Washington and dairy farms across the country are struggling with the consequences of a shrinking, aging, foreign-born workforce; a crackdown at the border; and the failure of Congress to agree on an immigration overhaul that could provide a more steady source of immigrant labor.
Farmhands who benefited from the last immigration amnesty, in 1986, are now in their 50s and represent just a fraction of today's field workers. As fewer new immigrants have arrived to work in agriculture, the average age of farmworkers has climbed -- to 38 in 2016, according to government data, compared with 31 in 2000.
Still, about three-fourths of crop workers in the country were born abroad, and they are overwhelmingly in the country illegally. Beefed up border enforcement has rendered "follow-the-crop" migration within the United States a "relative rarity," according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Growers in many states, like Florida, a citrus behemoth, have turned to the H-2A guest worker program to import labor from Mexico. But they complain of government red tape that delays arrivals and of unpredictable weather patterns that can prompt fruit to ripen prematurely, before workers are scheduled to show up -- which both result in losses.
Taylor Farms brings in about 200 workers a year on the visas, about 10 percent of its seasonal labor force. "The program is not always dependable and our items are perishable," said Chris Rotticci, who runs the harvest automation division of Taylor Farms, which is also looking for ways to replace humans. "But we have to do it. We don't have enough people."
Ideally, growers say, Congress would pass a bill to legalize farmworkers in the country illegally and encourage them to stay in the fields, as well as include provisions to ensure a steady flow of seasonal workers who could come and go with relative ease.
California's $54 million agricultural industry cannot afford to wait. As the country's epicenter of technology and agriculture, the state is leading the move to automate in the fields and packing plants.
About 60 percent of the romaine lettuce and half of all cabbage and celery produced by Taylor Farms are harvested with automated systems. The company has partnered with an innovation firm, which previously focused on automated vehicle assembly, to develop a machine to begin harvesting broccoli and iceberg lettuce within two years.
All told, the company plans to double the number of automated harvesters, which cost about $750,000 each, in the fields each year -- until nearly everything can be machine-picked.
Wheat, soybean and cotton crops have long used automation. Delicate fruit, like peaches, plums and raspberries, as well as vegetables like asparagus and fennel, will remain labor intensive for the foreseeable future.
It is difficult to replace the human eye and hand -- and technology is still in its infancy.
"It's going to take years to develop technology that can recognize when it's the right time to harvest our produce and do it without bruising the produce," said Tom Nassif, president of Western Growers, a large association that represents agricultural concerns in Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico.
But given workforce challenges, "it's a long-term solution that must be pursued with vigor," said Nassif, whose association opened an innovation center in Salinas, Calif., two years ago to nurture agricultural technology startups.
Labor challenges are the main reason Taylor Farms is building a second plant in Mexico. It is set to open early next year.
"If we can't find workers here, it is a logical place to grow," said Borman, the executive.
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