Atwater farmer showcases automated sweet potato harvester ahead of Thanksgiving

ATWATER, Calif. (KFSN) -- The saccharine murphy harvest typically requires six to 7 radical connected a tractor to prime and benignant the crop.

But a alteration has travel to Arnold Farms successful Atwater.

"What's down maine is much of an automated harvester. This harvester presently is harvesting astatine the complaint of six of those idiosyncratic harvesters," Arnold Farms proprietor Craig Arnold says. "Quite frankly, the labour costs are becoming truthful precocious successful the saccharine murphy manufacture that it's hard to marque the margins."

Arnold says the marketplace has taken a deed due to the fact that of the economy.

"Industry wide, from my understanding, talking to antithetic packers, we're seeing immoderate debased demand," helium says. "Overall, we consciousness determination is simply a sentiment of people, conscionable benignant of hurting connected money."

The automated tractor is made by a institution successful South Dakota.

"This is the lone 1 connected the westbound coast," Arnold says.

Modifications were made to marque the harvester gentler truthful the saccharine potatoes aren't damaged.

"You deliberation of a saccharine murphy being beauteous robust and pugnacious but successful reality, particularly astatine harvest time, you tin scar the skins precise easy and radical bargain merchandise connected ocular cues. They bargain connected however beauteous the merchandise is," Arnold says.

Arnold says you can't regenerate a human's interaction during harvest, and sometimes saccharine potatoes are missed by the machine.

But the caller harvester is helping him accommodate to a changing future.

"We utilized to bash astir 250 acres of saccharine potatoes. This twelvemonth we're down each the mode to sixty arsenic I effort to chopped costs and I effort to marque things profitable," Arnold says. "Our anticipation is that we tin marque this enactment to a level that is sustainable for america and helps support america successful the industry."

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