# The ongoing Ag Crisis | L5 Automation

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/feed/172106
- Entity ID: wefunder:feed_item:172106
- Published at: 2024-04-02 03:06:45 UTC
- Updated at: 2025-07-09 03:24:42 UTC

## Author
Alexander Gutierrez

## Subject
L5 Automation

## Content
Agricultural labor has been entangled by societal, economic, and policy issues, year after year, creating massive risk factors that threaten America’s food security. In the coming days we’ll highlight how L5 Automation is working to solve three critical issues: labor availability and predictability, crop loss and waste, and economic viability for growers. We want visionaries and investors along on our journey, so please connect with us and explore our WeFunder campaign.Today, we’re discussing farm labor availability and predictability. No other industry is so dependent on being able to call up, train, and operate a huge workforce for a few weeks to several months every growing season. If growers can’t find the labor they need, when they need it, we simply won’t have the fruits and vegetables we have grown accustomed to enjoying.While legal migrant guest workers haves grown dramatically to 370,000 in the last two decades to fill the domestic labor gap [see the attached certification/visa chart], this is a fraction of the 2.4 million farm workers needed every year. This shortage is reflected in the increase of labor costs. The Adverse Effective Wage Rate, the wage you need to pay migrant workers in California, has gone up 50% in the last 6 years, from $13.18/hour to $19.75 hour this year.For row crops, machines have helped mitigate the farming labor gap, however most specialty crops, have been resistant to mechanization due to their physical characteristics and how they are cultivated. Not surprisingly, “The fresh produce most specified in H2-A visa applications were all fruits that need gentle handling: apples, blueberries, and strawberries.”When we speak to growers of the most labor-intensive crops, we consistently (and emphatically) hear feedback on how they would jump at the chance to reduce their labor risks with cost-effective automation solutions. L5 Automation envisions a fleet of deployable robotic harvesters, which would seamlessly integrate with current human operations creating a predictable solution for growers. Our service would give growers more choices to better manage their operations and reduce their reliance on temporary work crews.