Diversified global packaging company Sonoco has announced a joint partnership with Plant City, Florida-based robotics company Harvest CROO Robotics. The tie-in will see the development of packaging to support a fully automatic, fully autonomous harvester that working 20 hours per day, will harvest eight acres of strawberries with the goal of being able to pick 95 percent of the fruit off of any plant. This efficiency will allow growers to avoid picking during the hottest part of the day, when berries bruise the easiest.
“This partnership solidly aligns with our focus on improving the supply chain for fresh produce by connecting harvesting technology with new packaging technology,” said Sonoco CEO Rob Tiede. “Efforts to improve harvesting efficiency, decrease food waste and extend freshness life are key focus areas for us as we expand into fresh food packaging.”
The patented technology revolves around the concept of the Pitzer Picking Wheel. This wheel utilizes “conservation of motion” principles, with robotic picking heads that can achieve 360 degrees of rotation and will decrease the amount of movement the robot has to accomplish to complete the picking action. A series of claws on the wheel picks the berries, which are then transferred to a packing region of the harvester, where they will be inspected and packed into consumer units.
Labor Shortages Driving Innovation
Improvements in the labor market and the recent crackdown on undocumented workers has hit agriculture hard, with harvesters moving into landscaping, construction, and food service jobs. Tom Deardorff, a California celery farmer, recently told NPR that wages for his pickers have risen from $8.50/hr in 2006 to over $21/hr now, and even that hasn’t solved the problem of not being able to find enough workers.
At GAI’s AgTech Week 2017 in Boston, a panel entitled How Can AgTech Tackle the Farm Labor Crisis? including Jeffrey Steen, partner with Kachina LLC & Ecosa Opportunities; Alan Boyce, executive chairman of the Materra Farming Company; Jacob Carter, founder and CEO of Tellus Partners; and Daniel Rothrock, controller of Piepel Premium Fruit, discussed the labor landscape in the ag sector and how agtech is being applied to alleviate the challenges and address the issues.
Rothrock explained that Piepel Premium Fruit spends about $10,000 per acre on labor – 60 percent of which is dedicated to harvest. The company has seen a 30 percent increase in wages in the past three years and is facing another 20 percent increase by 2020. And while Materra isn’t faced with as severe a labor shortage as other operations due to its Mexican work force being able to obtain day passes to work, Boyce noted that the rise in minimum wages is a challenge. “I have a couple of challenges,” he said. “We’re a big grower of pistachios, and trees if taken care of will live for hundreds of years – with that it’s very important to us to be sustainable – and if labor is going to be expensive now, just image the future.”
Looking to Robotics
To alleviate these labor pains, producers are looking to robotics integrated packaging and harvesting technology solution is the current and projected labor shortage in agriculture.
The most prominent investment in harvesting robots was last year’s $10 million Series A for Hayward, California-based Abundant Robotics, led for by GV (Google Ventures), and including BayWa AG, and Tellus Partners. Spun out from startup incubator, SRI Ventures last year, Abundant Robotics has developed a robot that uses computer vision to recognize apples on the branch, and uses a vacuum system that can pick one fruit per second without damaging the fruit, as many clawed robotic arms can.
“The produce industry is on the cusp of a major revolution in robotics. Labor-related issues are going to have to be addressed through technology, and we believe we can be part of the solution,” said Gary Wishnatzki, co-founder of Harvest CROO Robotics and owner of Wish Farms.
David Nitchman, GAI Media