According to growers like Danny Hayden of Hayden Farms in Pasco, WA, pinning down consistent human labor throughout the harvest season has become an annual struggle and legitimate threat to farm productivity. In fact, recent reports found there could be 40% fewer Ag workers this year over last.

“We’ve been right on the edge all year long and it’s been like that for a couple years, and we don’t anticipate it going better, ” Hayden says.

So Hayden is thrilled to report the positive results he’s seen so far from the DBR automated harvesting system. DBR stands for the last names of the engineers of the machine: Chuck Deitrich, Phil Brown and Mike Rasch. It’s robo-farmer of sorts. A newly-engineered…