That last statement isn’t true. I know people with a blueberry farm that machine processes (with extra human qa step) blueberries packaged for retail sale.
You can do some casual searching and find that I'm right about this in most cases. If your prices are high enough you can tolerate a lot of waste, but for most farms the economics favor hand harvesting. We're talking about at least 20% waste when you're machine-harvesting and even then a significant amount of what ships to retail has internal bruising.
Maybe that farm is selling in an area where consumers are less choosey? I certainly prefer hand-harvested blueberries (and can tell the difference)...
Certainly machine harvesting is an increasing share of the market, but it is still predominantly hand-harvested.
busterarm|5 months ago
Maybe that farm is selling in an area where consumers are less choosey? I certainly prefer hand-harvested blueberries (and can tell the difference)...
Certainly machine harvesting is an increasing share of the market, but it is still predominantly hand-harvested.