This week we're exploring the latest trend in farm mechanization. Sure, row crop farmers ditched horses for iron decades ago, and even in specialty crop areas mechanization has come a long way. But when it comes to the actual harvest for those specialty crops, mechanization has been slow to arrive. Yet there's a new effort underway to ramp up the use of mechanization for more than corn and soybeans.

Tim Hearden with Western Farm Press shares some insights on a new initiative in the West that has implications for specialty crop producers in other states and around the world. He shares some of what he's learned, and what it might mean. And even for a row crop farmer this move to mechanization in non-traditional crops is interesting.

Check out Hearden's report on the new initiative.

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This machine from the University of California, Davis, works in the "touchless" vineyard in Oakville, Calif. The machine is a mechanical pruner. The University of California is involved in a project to develop mechanical harvesters for fruit crops.