Mechanical Hop Pickers Rapidly Replace Hand Labor in Yakima

Between 1940 and 1941, the number of mechanical hop pickers operating in Washington’s Yakima County rose from two to thirty-eight. A Farm Security Administration survey photograph recorded that a fifteen-person machine crew could replace approximately one hundred hand pickers for comparable hours of work. Mechanization reduced growers’ dependence on large seasonal workforces and transformed the labor system behind American hop production. It improved harvesting capacity while eliminating many picking jobs formerly filled by migrant workers, women, and children.