Someday plants may be able to tell us if they need water and nutrients, or if they’re not feeling so well. Sound absurd? One company is experimenting with tiny strips that attach to plants that can relay this information. The technology is being tested with outdoor agriculture. For now, though, growers have access to tried and tested technology that will help reduce operating costs and produce a better crop.

I got my eye on you

Sometimes it’s hard, if not impossible, to be everywhere at once in a greenhouse, especially when your houses are measured in acres.

Luna, created by a Seattle-based company called iUNU, offers growers an extra set of eyes and more. This high-tech system features mobile and stationary cameras and monitors that can keep an eye on each plant in your house, no matter how big your operation.

“We can help with the challenges that large-scale operations can have trying to monitor everything in large facilities or even on multiple sites,” CEO Adam Greenberg says.

The camera sensors run along rails above the plants in a greenhouse. Looking down on a crop, they do more than a camera watching people move about in a city. You might call them smart sensors because they know what they’re looking for in a crop.

“Plants don’t always grow in a linear fashion,” Greenberg says. “We had to know how that plant grows, what it is supposed to do.” He says that’s why it was important to tap into the expertise of horticulture professionals as well as techies.

In addition to spotting insect and disease problems in a greenhouse, the technology can track inventory, making the most of available space on the benches, determining when to harvest, and planning and recordkeeping, according to Greenberg. It can also alert growers when it spots discoloration due to chlorosis, especially in places where a grower might not be able to see it, such as the center of the benches. While it may reduce the need for labor, it also has the potential to identify the best workers.

“We know this is a highly competitive industry for workers. There is weekly turnover of employees,” Greenberg says. “With this technology we can manage the workforce more efficiently and also know who our good workers are and what they’re best at.”

iUNU partners with growers to get the system up and running, assuring that everything is in place before they turn over the keys, or in this case, the password.

“We’re investing in their infrastructure,” Greenberg says. “They’re only paying us when we turn the system on, thus avoiding any capital expenditures.”

Measuring all types of light

If a straw poll of produce growers was taken, it would most likely show that lighting is one of the top concerns with growers, whether that lighting comes from the sun beating through the poly or artificial lighting in a converted warehouse.

“To date, the prevalent approach for supplemental lighting appears to be ‘What is the growing area?’, ‘What is the desired light level in µmol m^-2 s^-1?,’ ‘And how many light fixtures are needed to meet this requirement?’” says Ian Ashdown, senior scientist at British Columbia-based SunTracker Technologies.

Ashdown says that coming from the architectural world of electric lighting and daylighting design, there are many more factors horticultural professionals can use to determine the quality and quantity of light that will reach the leaf canopy of the crops (and when during the day and year).

The technology becoming available can help growers make decisions regarding lighting in real time. Light varies greatly in a greenhouse, and this technology can measure and interpret it all and make the information useful for greenhouse operators.

The Cerise 365 from SunTracker is a software technology that uses both climatic data and technical data to come up with “light recipes” that manufacturers and designers can pass along to growers.

More specifically, Cerise 365 technology uses typical meteorological year (TMY) weather data for 2,000 locations worldwide to calculate site-specific daylight availability based on many variables, including building orientation. This data is valuable during the greenhouse design phase when decisions are made about where to locate a greenhouse.

According to the manufacturer, the technology can calculate “in seconds” daylight availability at any location in the greenhouse on an hourly basis throughout the year. This information can greatly assist greenhouse designers and manufacturers as they help growers make important decisions and invest their capital.

This technology comes from research and an understanding of architectural lighting and issues that affect lighting in the varied situations in the horticultural space, including the variations in light coming in through different types of coverings.  

“We are currently working with several manufacturers to provide them with a better understanding of the issues, but there are many more,” Ashdown says.

Keeping an eye on tomatoes

All eyes are on tomatoes at Texas-based NatureSweet. The tomato-producing company is using artificial intelligence in some of their houses to monitor its tomatoes 24/7, rather than once a week as they did before investing in AI. The result has been a reduction in labor costs and an increase in harvests by two to four percent.

The technology, developed by the Israeli digital farming company Prospera, consists of 10 cameras installed in the ceilings of the houses that are continuously snapping pictures of the crop below. The software has been programmed to spot trouble, such as an insect infestation or wilting plants before it can get out of hand.

Back at the office, workers can access computer screens for those houses that currently have the technology installed, and more importantly, where there might be trouble brewing. Little red dots on individual plants indicate a pest infestation.

Perhaps the real value of AI in this case is the ability to compile data that can be used to make future growing decisions. That data is available to anyone in the company who has the accompanying app.

NatureSweet’s chief innovation officer Adrian Almeida is confident the new technology will eventually improve tomato yields by 20 percent. The technology, which he admits is still a work in progress, should help save in inputs of water and insect and disease controls as better monitoring of crops is achieved.

“It’ll be better for the environment and for the customer,” Almeida told CNN in an interview.

Daniel Koppel, the founder of Prospera, was originally interested in predicting crop yields from satellite images — information that could be used to trade commodities on Wall Street. Instead, he turned to doing something for the greater good that would have more of a global impact: growing quality produce. The company has plans to use its technology to track additional crops inside and outside of greenhouses, including peppers and potatoes. As for NatureSweet, it has plans to spy on more of its tomatoes, having raised $15 million dollars for expansion into all of its greenhouses.

Neil is a copywriter for the green industry and frequent contributor to Produce Grower. greenindustrywriter.com

Aiming to resolve labor shortages and improve space efficiency at greenhouse operations producing leafy greens, Green Automation develops, manufactures and sells automated growing systems with movable gutters for nutrient film technique (NFT) hydroponic lettuce production. The company is based in Finland and established a U.S.-based subsidiary, Green Automation Americas, in 2015. Its North American clients include Little Leaf Farms in Devens, Massachusetts; lef Farms in Loudon, New Hampshire; and Gotham Greens in New York City and Chicago.

“Our system is more like a manufacturing production system in some ways,” says Green Automation Americas CEO Patrik Borenius. “It [can have] hundreds of conveyor belts and thousands of sensors. Everything’s automated. You almost need a different skillset. You need factory people more so than [greenhouse] labor, and you have very few people,” he says.

Green Automation’s technology includes gutters that automatically adjust to separate crops as they grow, Borenius says. The systems give plants enough space to grow, while at the same time trying to ensure as much space efficiency as possible in the greenhouse.

The systems

The company has tiers of automation from system to system, Borenius says. Green Automation’s Automated System, which is optimized for head lettuce production, requires humans to perform certain tasks, such as transplanting seedlings into the growing system and harvesting. “In the beginning, everything’s very close together,” Borenius says. “That’s really where the efficiency comes from, having everything really close together when [the plants] don’t need the space. Only as they grow, that’s when — up to five stages, over the length of the greenhouse — those gutters separate out from each other, until the final spacing, which could be seven, eight inches apart for those gutters, for the heads to give them the space they need.”

By comparison, Green Automation’s Fully Automated System is optimized for baby leaf lettuce production and doesn’t involve any human contact with the produce, Borenius says. “The seeding is [done directly] into the gutter, then germination takes place in the system,” he says. “Then at the end of the growing cycle, those gutters are moved on turntables and conveyors to an automatic cutting machine [to harvest the lettuce]. The substrate is removed automatically, the gutters are cleaned, and then it starts again — the process with the automatic filling step, either rockwool or peat — and then seeding again.”

Out of Green Automation America’s clients, lef Farms and Little Leaf Farms produce baby leaf lettuce using the Fully Automated System, while Gotham Greens uses the Automated Growing System to produce head lettuce and herbs. Because Gotham Greens grows its product in rooftop greenhouses and has some dimension restrictions within its houses, the company has incorporated more manual steps into its process.

In addition to offering technology, Green Automation Americas has an advantage over European technology companies that work in the produce space, Borenius says. “We’re selling the systems in U.S. dollars from a U.S. entity to a client,” he says. “You don’t have to deal with exchange rates — Euros.”

Founded in Finland

Green Automation’s founders, Tero Rapila and Juhana Kantola, are from Finland. For more than 40 years, Rapila’s family has run a lettuce greenhouse operation. “Initially, they developed a system for their own use, and they did this back in the ’80s,” he says. “They started out and improved it further and further, and the system got better and better. Then in 2002, they decided to go out into the market and sell this to other growers around the world.”

Rapila and Kantola created the technology because manual greenhouse production involves many labor-intensive steps, but there was a scarcity of labor in Finland and a high cost associated with it. Finland imported fresh lettuce from Spain, Greece and Portugal, and the product lost its freshness and nutritional value during long deliveries.

“It’s like a six-day truck trip — very expensive,” says Borenius, who was born to Finnish parents in Germany and now lives in the United States. “[The founders] very early realized that we really need to do this ourselves. It’s very difficult to get it from all the way down in Spain, so they started with this.”

Because of its climate, Finland has a short growing season, so Rapila and Kantola realized greenhouse production would be the best way to provide consumers with fresh and locally grown produce, Borenius says. Decades later, the technology that addressed labor problems in Northern Europe in the 1980s began to help growers facing similar issues in North America.

Competing with megatrends

Borenius sees many agricultural “megatrends” impacting agricultural open-field operations in the Western United States. Many of these operations use an abundance of water, which is in scarce supply, and unsustainable amounts of nitrate from many of their fertilizer programs enter aquifers. Meanwhile, field growers are encountering more trouble finding labor; while extreme, unpredictable weather hurts their yields. Borenius has noticed demand increasing for pesticide-free hydroponic greenhouse production, and he thinks it can be cost-competitive with open-field growers if greenhouse producers address space and labor efficiency, as well as energy efficiency.

Green Automation recommends growers produce in greenhouses and use light from the sun for energy efficiency, but the company could arrange its growing system in layers for vertical farm or plant factory applications, Borenius says. “There will always be the need to be as space-efficient as possible, to minimize the investment, optimize it, and there will always be a need to be as labor-efficient as possible, because whatever happens in the future, labor will be an issue,” he says.

“You’ve got to get the highest yields per square foot in your greenhouse, and then you’ve got to do it with as little labor as possible,” Borenius says. “We think our system is absolutely a key component of achieving this, at least for leafy greens. There are other systems for other crops that make sense, but for leafy greens, we think we’re really on the forefront of this.”

Photo: Adobestock

This month I was asked to discuss how technology has improved my business and life and provide some tips for how you can better use technology to improve yours — even if it’s only small steps. I’d suspect that to most of you, technology feels like both a blessing and a curse at times. We’ve all had those moments, probably on a daily basis, when we’d like to throw whichever device isn’t working as promised out the window. I’m sure I’ve put on a few good technology temper tantrums for unlucky witnesses. Nevertheless, technology is the supporting structure of my business, and I can’t imagine working and growing without it.

Where do you fit?

As a technology user you may find yourself in one of the following common categories. Technophiles: You roll the dice as an early adopter (which essentially means you’re doing free beta testing for everyone else) and buy the latest tech when it’s released. Wait and See: You hang back a year or two and wait for us early adopters to work out the kinks for you, then dip your toes in. Cold, Dead Hands: You dig your heels in and hang on with white-knuckle force to the 15-year-old piece of software, equipment or website that you think is still working just fine for you. I’ll let you do some honest self-reflection about where you best fit.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each tech-user category, of course. As technology is a core part of my business, not just in how I use it for myself, but in how I help my clients grow, I tend to be a technophile/early adopter, and I push to try out new tech as early as it makes sense. Like it or not, to stay ahead in the marketplace, we must constantly learn how to use new tools.

Housekeeping

As a produce grower, you’re no doubt confronted with more emerging technology than you can keep track of. The boom in automation, hydroponics and grow lighting technology offers you many opportunities to take your operation to the next level. All that modern technology is great, but I often find that the technology companies in our industry can most quickly benefit from, is the technology that helps them get their house in order. Fundamental business tools that help you better organize your accounting, employees, and communications can reduce stress and improve productivity. Are you taking advantage of the technology tools that help you stay mobile, but simultaneously connected to your business operations?

The list of technology that helps me in my day-to-day business and life is a long one. But when I really started thinking about which tools help me the most, it’s hard to ignore the power of basics such as the combination of the internet and the smartphone. Building a website that is current, responsive, and puts your best business step forward is a non-negotiable these days — but the green industry is still lagging in this department. When it comes to business operations, I can run just about every aspect of my business online these days from my pocket-sized phone. Yet, in my dealings with industry members, I see a lot of untapped potential for using these tools to better manage and grow many aspects of their business. If you fall into the “wait and see” or “I’m still living in 1998” technology category, you may not be reaping the benefits of technology on the go.

Business on the go

While there are a lot of potential downsides to smartphones, they are powerful tools, and what they can do for you in your business is pretty amazing. Combine a smartphone with a few solid productivity and accounting apps and there’s little you can’t do directly from your phone. Email is of course tied to my phone, as are my personal and business banking apps; my business accounting and payroll platforms, my employee time clock, which links to payroll; and my project management software, through which I manage all my employees, contractors, and client project tasks (I use Asana, which I can tell you has been nothing less than a lifesaver). I can access all my business documents and files kept on cloud server platforms such as Google Drive, Dropbox and Asana — to name a few — and I can even work on and edit the files directly from my phone. I can run online meetings and webinars with apps such as GoToMeeting.

Stay connected

Not to mention, my phone serves as an excellent camera and video-capturing tool, which is essential for my work activities. I can stay connected to website activity and communications, and with a few targeted social media apps stay well-connected to my professional and personal networks. I even monitor and run my home irrigation system, which has wireless connectivity — and that of a few of my residential clients — directly from my phone, as I’m sure you can do with your environmental control systems. I even talk on it, now and then.  

I treat my website and my smartphone as high-powered tools that are integral to my business operations. I spend money to keep my website current, update to new software in real-time, and I regularly upgrade to newer devices and apps so I can stay as current as possible with my mobile business activities. The ROI is well worth the cost.

While it can be tough to keep pace with new technology tools, it’s necessary to at least try to keep up. Looking for a good starting place? Audit your internal company operations to see where you might be struggling with either client or employee communication issues or redundancies. Chances are, there’s an app for that.

Leslie (CPH) owns Halleck Horticultural, LLC, through which she provides horticultural consulting, business and marketing strategy, product development and branding, and content creation for green industry companies. lesliehalleck.com

Photo: Adobestock

As technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT) develop at a dizzying pace, the World Economic Forum claims the world is entering a “fourth industrial revolution.” Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, writes on the nonprofit’s site that this revolution “is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.”

Produce professionals at the forefront of greenhouse production and vertical farming technology realize this, and they seize the opportunity to utilize technological developments to garner investment, improve crop yields and maximize profits. Companies in the produce space offer technologies such as cameras and monitors that notify growers of pest and disease issues; robotic systems that sort, cut and label fruits and vegetables; and hydroponic channels that maximize space efficiency.

In this section, read about several innovative technologies and companies that are influencing the way the produce industry operates, beginning with a profile of indoor farm Plenty here. Next, read about vertical farms in the third part of the Urban Agriculture Series on here. Then read about how columnist Leslie F. Halleck uses technology in her life here. Additionally, you will find stories on automation in hydroponic systems (here), sensor technology (here), a smartphone app (here), produce labeling (here) and robotics (here).