New Harvesting Technology Brings Mechanization To Vegetable Growers

Taylor Farms uses three mechanical harvesters built by California-based Ramsay Highlander, who also owns the patent for the equipment. The harvester, designed to handle Romaine and green leaf crops, uses a patented water jet system to cut the vegetables.  Photo courtesy of Frank Maconachy

Taylor Farms uses three mechanical harvesters built by California-based Ramsay Highlander, who also owns the patent for the equipment. The harvester, designed to handle Romaine and green leaf crops, uses a patented water jet system to cut the vegetables.
Photo courtesy of Frank Maconachy

Trial and error; it is a part of life. It’s also how some of the greatest technological advancements were developed, and harvesting equipment is no exception.

At a time when labor is a critical issue, it makes sense that mechanized harvesters, or some form of mechanization, may be the way of the future. Taylor Farms, a vegetable processor, is already moving in that direction. The operation handles the harvesting and processing tasks for about 60 lettuce growers between Yuma, AZ, and Salinas, CA.

Advertisement

Recently, Taylor Farms has been “working out the bugs” on mechanical harvesters used on Romaine lettuce, and, thanks to some modifications, should see a return on its investment very soon.

According to Andrew Fernandez, vice president of raw product at Taylor Farms, the operation turned to mechanized harvesting to reduce not only labor costs but also the time involved in the search to find labor.

Top Articles
Have a Plan For Climate Change? Why Fruit Growers Need To Act Now

For the last few years, Taylor Farms has used three mechanical harvesters built by California-based Ramsay Highlander, who also owns the patent for the equipment. The harvester, designed to handle Romaine and green leaf crops, uses a patented water jet system to cut the vegetables.

As Romaine lettuce grows upright, off the ground, the water jet stream can be manipulated, ensuring the best cut to the lettuce, Fernandez explains. The cutting device can be adjusted from the cab, which is a new modification. For example, if the bed is round or if there is a shoulder on the bed, the cutting mechanism can be changed to accommodate a different configuration.

Modify For Efficiency
Over time, several changes were made to the machines to achieve maximum efficiency. In addition to adjusting the cutting device from the harvester cab, one of the biggest modifications was configuring the track layer to better fit field conditions.

“Instead of being wheel-driven, we have gone to a track layer configuration with the machines,” explains Fernandez. The modifications from wheel drive to track drive were made
by Ramsay Highlander.

“[The modifications] have helped because the footprint is significantly less and when there are rain conditions, we can enter the field a lot quicker than we would have with the tires. With the track configuration you get less pressure and you are not sinking into the dirt and causing problems for postharvest soil movement.”

As to be expected, the harvester operator needs some training, but the training is not too extensive, Fernandez points out.

“You need to know how the vision system works and understand that if you dial to the left or the right, you can lift [the water stream] up and put it down,” he says. “You can also change the angle of the water stream.”

Reduce Labor, Increase Output
To date, only two companies in the U.S. are using the mechanical harvester: Taylor Farms and the Andrew Smith Company.

According to Fernandez, each stainless-steel unit came with a half-million dollar price tag, including the modifications. In spite of the initial investment, the equipment is providing significant labor savings, as Taylor Farms has cut in half the number of people needed for a Romaine ground crew, which can be between 24 and 30 people. Plus, the machine crew is in a much more worker-friendly environment.

“It is a preferred way to harvest for the employees, as they would rather be up in the machine riding than down on the ground walking through the mud,” he adds.

Output has increased significantly, too, exceeding more than 600 pounds per man hour but can go as high as 1,000 pounds per man hour.

“On a normal ground crew, we are closer to 300 pounds per man hour, so the harvester doubles the output,” Fernandez adds.

Politics And Mechanization
The President and CEO of the company that created the harvester, Frank Maconachy of Ramsay Highlander, says the machine used by Taylor Farms for Romaine is just one part of the harvesting equation.

Crops that require multiple passes through the field do not lend themselves to being mechanized, so a labor force will still be necessary, he says. The result, is growers need to tackle
the harvesting issue on two fronts: fixing the labor situation and finding inroads with mechanization.

Even if the labor landscape changes in the near future, and there is suddenly a pathway to a legal workforce, that workforce is dissipating. The average household in Mexico, which used to consist of six children, is now down to two, Maconachy says. Growers will need to turn to some form of mechanization to get the job done, but it may not be as complex as you might think.

“In some cases it is not about a fully mechanized unit operating with a vision system to do selective picking that is very sophisticated,” he explains. “It can be as simple as a harvest aid that could centralize the work force, use less people, and still get more productivity.”

More Growers And More Crops
Maconachy says he fields questions from growers about harvesting devices for a variety of vegetables, including bell pepper, zucchini, and other crops. He’s even had conversations with melon growers.

And mechanization is not just for the big growers and processors like Taylor Farms, either. He says Ramsay recently finished a mechanized unit to harvest Chinese vegetables for a 200-acre grower in California. Testing will begin soon.

In addition to Chinese vegetables, Maconachy says the cutting mechanism used in the machine has applications for celery, iceberg lettuce, cabbage, and even some of the newer consumer-friendly specialty lettuce. He says this new mechanism can cut right to the soil and subsoil levels.

The device is simple, he says, but the cutting mechanism needs to be adapted depending on soil type, which means what can be used in Florida soils can’t necessarily be used in California.
“Because of the heavy soil in California, the blade wants to plow into the ground,” Maconachy explains. “So we need a mechanical blade that would be shearing through the crop versus something that would push through a crop.”

The “pickup device” behind the cutting mechanism will need to be adapted to specific crops, too. For example, cabbage is heavy and iceberg lettuce is a little lighter, so adjustments will need to be made.

Mechanize For Fresh Market Tomatoes
Maconachy says his company also is moving into the fresh market tomato arena and is finalizing a prototype. The machine is designed to de-vine the tomatoes. Working with a grower, Ramsay came up with a separation unit to open up the plant and de-vine it, releasing the tomatoes without bruising them.

“With fresh market tomatoes, we have to get them to release in a natural way and not be thrown or dropped,” he explains. “We need to be able to do that, and we are very close.”

He adds, however, that more testing is needed and the drought this year is an additional complication when trying to test the machine among tomato producers.

Waiting On ROI
In the end, Maconachy says growers need to look at the long-term payback when opting to mechanize. Like most things, it won’t happen overnight.

“For example,” he says, “you may need a lettuce wrap crew where you have 24 people on the ground — 12 cutters and 12 packers — but if you can eliminate your packers by 10, you have significantly reduced your workforce because you used mechanization as a portion of that process.

“That is a significant savings because now you aren’t searching for those 10 workers.” Maconachy concludes. “The return on investment (ROI) may be a year or 18 months, but after that it is perpetual savings for the grower.”

Future Collaboration

Many research projects dedicated to mechanizing not only harvesting but other parts of the production process, such as weeding, planting, etc., are taking place across the country. These research efforts have become rather complicated because none of these efforts is centralized, says Frank Maconachy, president and CEO of Ramsay Highlander, a manufacturer of specialized harvesting aids for vegetables.

Ramsay Highlander works with growers in California and Florida and some of the growers in California have relationships with growers in Florida for year-round product for salads. They all have the same set of problems, says Maconachy, and that is why collaboration is necessary.
“Some universities are doing researcher that is overlapping. I feel there should be unified collaboration within the industry to get things done and make sure efforts are not duplicated,” says Maconachy. “Through that, maybe we can get things fast tracked.”

Steve Fennimore, Extension vegetable weed specialist at the University of California-Davis, agrees that unified collaboration would be, and is, very productive when it happens. However,
he says it takes time and effort to build up the relationships and trust needed to make
this happen.

“By sharing information and dividing up the tasks in a team-work manner, we all win by making more progress in solving real-world problems,” he says.

Things can get messy, however, because this information is often proprietary as private industries do not want to share information with competitors. As a result, university scientists working with private companies often need to sign confidentiality agreements to protect proprietary information for a few years.

In the end, however, Fenimore says despite the complications, collaborative relationships
are “worth the effort.”

2