The famed ’60s cartoon series “The Jetsons,” which still lives on the Boomerang network, featured an endearing robot housekeeper named Rosie. Gliding along in her frilly maid’s uniform, Rosie had a great work ethic, ever-ready to tidy up after George and Jane and their kids, Judy and Elroy. And who can forget the loyal robotic manservant to Will Robinson and Dr. Smith in “Lost in Space”?

It all seemed so exotic and far-fetched back then.

Well, four decades later, robot are very much a reality. They aren’t just friends who fix stuff for us — they could be here to take our jobs.

A growing number of robots, for instance, are sprouting up in American farms around the country. Most robots are milking cows, but they’re also expected to appear in strawberry fields, blueberry and orange groves, lettuce patches, urban “plant-farms” — and in wheat acreage and soy fields.

Costs are imposed when farmers employ illegal immigrants, who comprise nearly half of all farm labor in the United States.

Economic pressures are pushing farms to buy more robots, especially for labor-intensive fruit-picking and plant nurseries, said Stavros Vougioukas, a professor at the University of California, Davis. “In the applications where they adopt robots, it makes financial sense,” he said.

In Europe, many small farms are desperate to reduce labor costs, according Susan Eustis, president of WinterGreen Research, which studies the trends in agricultural automation. “You don’t see the large industrialized agriculture we have here in the United States, so (Europe) is more attuned to smaller robots,” she said. “And the robots are enormously successful at reducing costs.”

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Those robots save money not just for farmers but for taxpayers. They don’t have low salaries that must be supplemented by taxpayer-provided health care or food stamps. They don’t require state-funded education classes, and they don’t create enforcement hassles for federal and state law-enforcement officials. Those costs are imposed when farmers employ illegal immigrants, who comprise nearly half the farm labor in the U.S.

Nationwide, farmhands “generally pay very little in taxes and absorb a lot of services,” said Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for reduced immigration. Farmhands are paid roughly $19,000 each year.

The new machinery will reduce the use of expensive water, pesticides and land, and will allow companies to grow uncontaminated food near downtown supermarkets.

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The new machinery will reduce the use of expensive water, pesticides and land, and will allow companies to grow uncontaminated food near downtown supermarkets, rather than at some remote farms.

U.S. workers are likely to gain as robots replace labor, Camarota said. Americans will be far more willing to work in the agricultural sector “if all the tough work is done by robots, and the only manual work needed is hosing off the machines or maintaining them.”

Also, the political pressure to import more migrants for field jobs will likely drop, he said.

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Currently, the Obama administration is slowing this high-tech transition by turning a blind eye whenever farmers hire groups of low-wage illegal immigrants.

Yet the transition is occurring anyway. One reason is that banks and farmers’ associations are pressuring farmers to invest in the new technology, said Eustis of WinterGreen Research. The technology will also allow U.S. farms to compete against the increasing food production in Mexico, where labor is cheaper than labor in California, Georgia, or New Hampshire.

The technology will also allow U.S. farms to compete against the increasing food production in Mexico, where labor is cheaper than labor in California, Georgia, or New Hampshire.

The replacement process has been underway for more than 100 years. The huge combine-harvesters and tractors on heavily mechanized farms have long since sent millions of low-wage farmhands into highly productive factories, and their millions of manure-producing horses into history.

In 2013, the worldwide agricultural robotics industry was valued at $817 million. But it’s projected to reach $16.3 billion in 2020, according to a 2014 report by WinterGreen Research. That’s a 20-fold increase in just seven years.

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For example, several rival companies are developing machines to automate the laborious task of picking strawberries. A strawberry harvesting machine from the Spanish company Agrobot costs $250,000 with 60 robotic arms. A cheaper, 16-armed version is being tested in California. Each machine would only have to replace a few workers to make the purchase profitable for farmers or firms that rent out harvesting machines.

Juan Bravo is the founder and CEO of Agrobot. He’s been working on his strawberry harvester for nine years and has entered the final phase of device testing. “We cannot keep using manual labor for harvesting crops because we need that labor for other kinds of jobs,” he said.

There’s a huge market for his machines in the United States, which is the world’s largest producer of strawberries. In 2012, U.S. producers grew more than $2 billion worth of strawberries.

Bravo said he doesn’t think robots like his will completely replace all manual labor. For instance, the delicate hands and thoughtful eyes of people are still needed to pack only the best strawberries. But he does think robotics will play a very large role in the farming of the future.

The delicate hands and thoughtful eyes of people are still needed to pack only the best strawberries.

Automated pickers, sprayers, planters and weed-removers will sharply reduce the labor costs for growers, and those savings can help growers compete for advantage against each other.

Automated cowsheds are automatically feeding and milking cows, cleaning up the manure and monitoring each animal’s health for rapid, disease free growth. Lely, a Dutch firm, dominates this sector and is selling more of its machines to Americans farm. “It is really dramatic. The cows come into the stall and the milking robot attaches itself automatically,” Eustis said.

Small-scale family dairies gain because the newest generation of cow-milking machines reduces the huge burden of milking the cows two or three times a day, 365 days a year. The cow-milking machines will also help mid-sized family farms with about 350 cows to stay competitive with the largest corporate dairies, because they each replace up to six workers, said Eustis.

The machines are “about to hit every single dairy farm… that’s going to be huge,” she said.

Automated factories include stacked trays of plants under racks of bright LED lights that simulate the sun’s rise and fall. 

Companies in Taiwan, Japan and even the United States, meanwhile, are building urban greenhouses where valuable plants, including herbs and fruits, are grown under LED lights in so-called “plant factories.” These automated factories include stacked trays of plants under racks of bright LED lights that simulate the sun’s rise and fall, alongside huge air filtration devices to exclude pests and diseases, and huge water filtration units to clean recycled water for the plants.

In Chicago, for example, Whole Foods supermarket is working with FarmedHere to produce fresh arugula, basil, mint and other salads for upper-income buyers. In 2013, investors spent $403 million to build these new hyper-clean food factories. They’re expected to spend five times as much, or $2 billion, budging the factories in 2020, according to a July 2014 research firm, ReportBuyer.com.

Regardless of whether used on a small or large scale, robots in agriculture appear to be the future of the agricultural sector. “They’re here to stay,” said Professor Vougioukas.

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