The meat industry press has been predicting the arrival of widespread automation in the industry since long before I started working at Meatingplace, a decade ago.

Nevertheless, I’m going to go out on a rather short limb here and say, based on some developments I saw at the International Production and Processing Expo in Atlanta in January, the U.S. meat processing industry may finally be moving to a level of automation and robotics that heralded the modernization of other manufacturing industries decades ago.

Without naming specific companies (because I didn’t see every new development on the floor, and I wouldn’t want to leave anybody out), I saw several examples of technologies designed to work with the always changing, organic nature of animal proteins in ways that are more flexible and productive than ever before. These include new visioning technologies, cutting processes that improve yield by coming at the task from a new direction, and fully robotic carcass splitting.

That these levels of automation now are gaining traction stateside says as much about long-term economic macro-shifts as it does gee-whiz technology.

Specifically, I agree that the minimum wage these days is not enough to feed a family, and that minimum wage simply is worth less in real dollar terms than it was 30 or 40 years ago. However, the push to raise the minimum wage — and the domino effect that has on hourly wages generally — has the unintended consequence of making the capital costs of these new technologies more affordable.

Whereas 15 years ago paying humans to make those cuts to the bird or the animal was a financial no-brainer, now the amortized cost of that $1.5 million machine doesn’t look so bad by comparison.

The issue of immigration, which has gone from difficult to intransigent over the last 20 years, and the chronic difficulties many processors have keeping their plants staffed makes the technology look even cheaper.

As they invest in automation, companies are going to need more workers with technology skill sets, need to entice them to work in small towns and rural areas where the plants are located but a social support system may not exist, and need to pay to educate workers already in the area.

Perhaps more of those jobs can be done remotely at least some of the time — jobs that involve mostly monitoring operational tolerances by computer, for example. That could be good news for prospective employees, bad news for communities that have been net losers of young talent for decades and are facing the loss of replacement residents in the form of immigrants.

The meat plants of the future look significantly different than they do now, and so do the communities around them. When production moved out of urban areas in the 1960s the loss of jobs and population devastated the neighborhoods left behind. Another massive shift in production is in the offing.

Will the processors’ communities fare better this time around?

"A" for automation, or abandonment?

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