Remoaner engagement with the post-Brexit immigration debate rarely gets beyond calling Leave voters fascists and complaining “but who will do all the jobs I don’t want to do like fruit and vegetable picking?” Not all scientists have been moaning about it, some have actually been getting on with coming up with novel technological solutions. Basic economics, if the supply of low-skilled labour is reduced it will increase the incentives for new technologies to be invented instead…

One company recently developed a fruit-picking robot that can pick raspberries more than 66% faster than humans. Now Cambridge University have invented a prototype which uses machine learning to do the much more delicate task of picking iceberg lettuces. Harvesting of crops like wheat and potatoes has been mechanised for years, now the researchers say that their new robot can adapt to pick other fragile above-ground crops which have proved much more of a challenge to pick with robots so far. It can even selectively pick only crops that are ripe, avoiding the waste when unripe crops are picked by hand and then thrown away. Helping to move low-skilled workers out of backbreaking menial jobs while making farming more efficient in the process…