With farm labor costs increasing and worker availability shrinking, growers continue to look to automation and robotics to do jobs traditionally done by people.
In vegetable farming, equipment commonly used to plant delicate seedlings still requires a crew. Manufacturers of fully automated transplanters want to change that, and early adopters such as Yolo County farmer Ray Yeung say the machines are ready for prime time, though they may be cost-prohibitive for some farms.
Yeung was the first in California to acquire the Agriplanter by the Belgium company Agriplant after seeing a Facebook post about it three years ago. The machine has been around for 20 years, according to Eric Puehler, a U.S. Agriplanter distributor in Ohio. But it did not debut on American soil until 2019, on a New Jersey farm. There are now 31 Agriplanters in the U.S., with 13 in California, he said.
Other automated transplanting systems being used on California farms include Ferrari Growtech’s Futura from Italy (no relation to the sports car) and PlantTape, owned by Salinas-based vegetable producer Tanimura & Antle.
Yeung, who specializes in tomatoes and also operates a custom transplanting business, said his move to automate planting was driven by need. He said hiring enough employees willing to work on a planter has become increasingly difficult, especially during the early days of the pandemic due to social-distancing requirements.
