Is there an Oxcart in your future?

Headline: Labor fears force many nurseries to scale back

http://portland.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2007/10/01/story5.html?b=1191211200^1527529

The September 27th showing of OPB's Oregon Field Guide report "How trees are made" told the story of how Oregon Nurseries grow trees from beginning to end.

The majority of the segment was devoted to showing us how the highly labor intensive industry goes about growing and hybriding (grafting) a tree from a simple bud and to the point it is balled and ready for market.

And yes 99% of the people seen toiling away were our friends from South of the Border.

However, at the end of the story they shifted to a laboratory setting where it was explained how much of the early and more effort and hand skill demanding parts of the process can now be eliminated with using modern science rather than employing stoop labor.

Controlled lab conditions trumped muddy fields!

So maybe there isn't an Oxcart in my grand children's future.