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Labor saving technology in western North Carolina horticulture operations

PHOTO BY TOM BUTZLER Aluminum movable benches are used througout Van Wingerdens to not only save space but quickly move plants to other areas.

Agriculture is a very labor-intensive industry, and millions of workers are needed for food, fiber, and ornamental production.

But many factors, primarily the change in the nation’s immigration system, which limits foreign-born farm workers, and the nature of the work, which is often physically demanding, seasonal, and low paying, have created labor shortages. Because of this, the agriculture industry has been looking for labor-saving devices and ways to make tasks more appealing.

Our trip to western North Carolina highlighted how horticulture is adapting to changes in labor through innovation.

Van Wingerden International, Inc. is a large wholesale operation specializing in bedding plants and potted foliage with over thirty acres of greenhouses. It used to be that watering was done with a hand-held hose, but that was a time-consuming process.

A few decades back, they installed flood floors for sub-irrigation. Concrete flooring was installed with curbing around production areas to pool water.

PHOTO BY TOM BUTZLER A robotic arm, at right, picks up cuttings off a conveyor belt and places it into trays at Costa Farm.

Holes in the concrete floor connect to the underground irrigation system. Water is pumped onto the concrete floor, which remains flooded for several minutes before draining back down through the holes. During each flood event, water moves into the soilless mix of potted plants on the floor through capillary action. Without overhead watering, the foliage remains dry, and disease pressure is minimized.

Van Wingerden also has rolling benches throughout segments of the operation. Moveable benches allow for more of the area under plastic to be in production as stationary aisles are eliminated. But there are some labor-saving implications with this setup. The rolling benches can be moved onto transport lines that carry them throughout the operation, in contrast to years past when each pot or tray had to be individually handled if you wanted to move them for some reason, such as to the delivery area.

Our group also visited Costa Farms, one of the largest ornamental horticultural growers in the US, with operations in several states and the Dominican Republic. But with that size comes significant labor demand. While the company employs over 5,000 people, it looks for new ways to incorporate technology to assist its day-to-day operations.

Many of their product lines start with cuttings. These are placed into soilless media-filled trays, not by hand but by machine. Costa Farms installed an ISO Cutting Planter 2500 that, according to the literature, “automates the heavy, monotonous manual work of planting cuttings.”

Cuttings are placed on the unit’s conveyor belt, and an image is then taken of each cutting and tabulates the position, size, length of the stem, etc. These parameters are fed into the software, and a robotic arm responds to the information by picking up an individual cutting and sticking it into the tray. Occasionally, the conveyor belt jumps to reposition the remaining cuttings, and the process starts all over. Van Wingerdens’ greenhouses also contained a similar unit.

PHOTO BY TOM BUTZLER Movable benches, to the right, can easily be placed on transit rails, at left, to move plants quickly to other areas of the greenhouse.

As the tour continued through their facility, we observed other technologies at Costa Farms that made their labor force more efficient. Recently rooted cuttings need to be misted regularly as their roots are not developed enough to move water into the foliage. Unassisted irrigation booms ran the greenhouse length, applying fine mists in the air to keep humidity high. Further in the tour, we had the chance to observe the filling of pots with media. The only worker in sight was an individual placing the pots onto a conveyor belt. The fill was accomplished with a Bouldin and Lawson potting machine.

But it is not just ornamental horticulture that employs labor-saving devices but also our food producers. One of our tour stops took us to Apple Wedge Farm and Apple Hill Orchards, a sixth-generation family farm growing apples on over 200 acres. They also have a packing operation for their apples and surrounding producers. Our tour took place in late June, so no apples were moving through the packing process, but owner Greg Nix explained the journey once apples were picked and entered the shed. It was a maze of belts and machines that were designed to handle numerous tasks at a rapid pace. Greg pointed out the various stations where electronic eyes help color sort the apples, followed by electronic weighing, so each apple bag is a consistent weight and color.

The stop to Flavor 1st was very similar to Apple Wedge but different in product line and size. They grow and pack over 30 different varieties of vegetables, with an emphasis on vine ripe tomatoes and southern vegetables. In addition, they partner with farmers in the Carolinas down to Florida. Not only is their production footprint large but their distribution takes place in supermarkets east of the Mississippi. Manual labor alone could never keep up with this volume of product coming in and out of the packing facility.

During our tour, we had a chance to see slicer tomatoes run through the line. Once the tomatoes are hand-harvested from the fields, it is more than likely that the next human hand to touch them is the consumer as they utilize them for meal prep. The tomatoes come into the packing line and are placed onto belts that grade and sort them out by color, weight, and defects. This is all done with cameras and software that direct the action at fast speeds. The marketable tomatoes are transported (via belt) to the finishing area, where they are packaged in containers per customer requests. Amazingly, every package is a unique product, so they can trace it easily through the whole system (from farm to table) in case there is ever a food recall.

PHOTO BY TOM BUTZLER Pictured are greenhouse bays at Van Wingerden International. Notice the holes in the floor (right) where sub-surface irrigation pushes water up and floods the floor. Rubber curbing prevents water from moving into adjacent bays or aisles.

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