Vine Fresh Acres Overcomes Grower Shortage With Autonomous Growing
March 8, 2024 Canadian grower Vine Fresh Acres has experienced significant growth in recent years. The family-owned controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) business focuses on sustainable, healthy food production in two year-round, high-tech greenhouse facilities, with 34 greenhouse acres in cucumbers and 52 acres in bell peppers.
While growth for the grower has been positive, it didn’t come without challenges. “It has become increasingly difficult to find sufficiently qualified employees,” says Head Grower Pete Neufeld. “We needed to figure out how to utilize our current growers to their fullest potential and how to maximize their time.”
It’s a problem echoed by growers throughout North America, as labor often constitutes horticultural products’ largest single input cost. Many horticultural and agricultural research programs have increased their emphasis on automation as a result. The Horticultural Technology Solutions program at Ontario’s Vineland Research & Innovation Centre, for example, focuses on horticultural automation services to connect technology innovators with growers to validate new technology and hasten real-world results.
Despite challenging times for many CEA growers, some fully automated growers seem to stay ahead of the crunch. Massachusetts-based Little Leaf Farms continues to expand production and geography. With a goal of 100 acres in greenhouse production by 2026, Little Leaf opened two new facilities in 2023 and broke ground on a third, bringing its total to five greenhouse facilities.
In looking for solutions to its grower shortage, Vine Fresh Acres turned to technical solutions provider Ridder, who introduced the company to Blue Radix and its autonomous greenhouse management systems. With Blue Radix and its focus on autonomous growing, the Vine Fresh team hoped they would be able to manage more acreage. “And that was exactly what has happened,” Neufeld shares.
Shifting Grower Focus
One of the Blue Radix services helping optimize Vine Fresh Acres is Crop Controller, a key tool to optimize the grower’s unique crop strategy and bring it to pass. Under the system, artificial intelligence (AI) forecasts and optimizes the greenhouse climate and irrigation according to the grower’s cultivation planning, continuously using all available data from greenhouse sensors, climate boxes and meteorological-data providers.
Crop Controller then integrates all the data and autonomously controls the greenhouse installations, such as the climate control computer, to reach the grower-defined targets. This frees up the grower from personally analyzing all the greenhouse data or manually setting the climate computer. Instead, growers can shift their focus to increasing the quality of the crop strategy and devote more attention to scaling and innovation.
But there’s still a human touch. An off-site Autonomous Greenhouse Manager continuously monitors the situation in the greenhouses, and can proactively discuss ideas, results and improvements with the grower.
Now a believer in the concept of autonomous growing, Neufeld says he believes it is the only option to cope with the grower shortage Vine Fresh Acres and others face.
“In the past, we have tried to find new growers around here, but that has proven to be extremely difficult. We just don’t have that many young people who are interested in horticulture anymore. It’s a very demanding job, seven days a week,” he says. “But it is not an option to have our current people do even more work. Autonomous growing helps us focus on the crop or on different aspects of growing.”
From Trial to Better Yield and Product
Vine Fresh Acres started their Autonomous Growing journey with a six-month trial in 2021. Grower Jake Knelsen shares, “When you start something new, there are always challenges that you have to overcome. But the support we got from the team of Blue Radix helped us with that.”
Now Knelsen says he’s able to control a larger area more efficiently. “It makes my job easier and helps me oversee it all, while I can focus on other important things. Autonomous growing tools like Crop Controller collect all the data from the greenhouse and integrate it to autonomously control our installations.”
But grower efficiency isn’t the only benefit Vine Fresh Acres saw. During the trial, the company divided the greenhouse into two phases with eight zones.
“We allowed the system to control two zones at first and from there we kept a close eye on what was happening. When we saw good things, that gave us the confidence to go a step further, and now all zones in both phases are controlled by Crop Controller,” Knelsen says.
In addition, he’s seen crop yields increase since Crop Controller came on board. With a 10% yield increase, 2022 was a record-breaking for the grower. “There is still room for improvement, but I’d estimate 2.5% to 5% of the growth was due to autonomous growing,” Knelsen says. The quality of the product also improved.
Neufeld hopes that working with AI techniques and similar cutting-edge technologies will help draw more young people into horticulture careers. “That would be a nice plus,” he says. “Extra modules can contribute to that, because it will make the work of a grower even less difficult.”
For growers hesitant to embrace these new technologies, Knelsen offers this advice: “At first it will feel like you are letting go. But the reality is that you are letting go to something better. You can own a new sense of trust, knowing that your crop is in good hands.”