[HeyLaughingBoy]

Yup. I went through the site and I still don't know what problem it solves. Modern ag equipment is scarily efficient and fast. The farmer who's just driving into the field when I leave for work in the morning is towing out carts piled full of corn by the time I get home in the afternoon.

As an aside? How to mechanical harvesters for grapes work without breaking/getting tangled in the wires supporting the vines?

[keenerd]

You need to spend the rest of the year pruning and training the canes to be harvester friendly. The harvester itself shakes and beats the berries off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv-AnyvWL7g around 38 seconds in.

Quality is questionable, as it will also harvest the unripe secondary clusters and any rot. (There are probably visual systems for cleaning these out.)

Grapes (and a lot of perennial fruits) are a little oddball in this discussion though, because they are very low impact. For example, you rarely (maybe once when first planting) have to till or fertilize or spray for weeds and we've got plenty of biodiversity in the turf.