It's a busy time for the agriculture business, like at Hirakata Farms in Rocky Ford.
It's known for its melons and watermelons. We got a glimpse into their watermelon sorting process when they sent Next's producer a great video on Twitter.
First step: people put watermelons onto a conveyer belt to start the sorting process.
They get carried into the washer where the machine brushes and spins the watermelons clean. Then, they're ready for sorting.
After the watermelons look pretty and polished, they go through a sorting process based on their weight and size.
Did you see how it just spit the watermelon off the conveyor belt into the correct size group?!
All people have to do is put them on the conveyer belt ... do we even need people?
According to a tweet from RockyFord Cantaloupe (we assume the tweet's not actually from a cantaloupe), the machines make production faster and more efficient because there is no need for humans to weigh each melon and sort them by size...imagine how long that would take. Especially considering that they package about 900 boxes of personal-sized watermelons in just two hours.
Now, all we need is a machine that'll tell us which watermelon is going to be sweet when grocery shopping. Let's be honest, we all do the knock-on-the-melon trick but do any of us actually know which will one will be good?
