Investing in automation

No matter the scale of your nursery operation, automation can be a worthwhile investment for many reasons. But what type of automation would be best for your company? That was the big question a Cultivate’23 panel aimed to answer Saturday afternoon.

The panel was moderated by Rob Lando, chairman of AmericanHort’s board of directors. Lando co-founded AgriNomix, the Ohio-based automation supplier that is now part of AdeptAg, a family of companies founded in 2022.

Being a low-cost producer is tremendously important if you want to be a profitable growing operation, Lando says. Labor costs have increased 25% compared to 2019.

“Automation isn’t the answer to the labor problem but it is part of the solution,” Lando says.

Three growers shared their experiences with automation on the panel: Brian Groves, project manager at Panoramic Farms, Mike Miller, general manager and CEO of Decker’s Nursery, and Bud Summers, COO of Everde Growers.

(L-R) Bud Summers, Mike Miller, Brian Groves, Rob Lando

Summers talked about the importance of knowing your nursery’s labor costs. You can’t have an accurate idea of when your automation’s payback will occur if you don’t know how much you were spending to do the same job without automation.

Miller agreed, and said growers need to define the process they’re considering automating, account for all support and be brutally honest.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” he said.

At Panoramic Farms, Groves said uncertainty about how to determine return on investment contributed to a hesitant approach to automation.

“We didn’t know what we didn’t know, and that’s why we waited so long to automate,” he said.

Miller suggested looking for “low-hanging fruit” – projects that can show the benefits of automation without reconfiguring your entire nursery.

Visiting other nurseries that have automated parts of their operation can help you identify these sort of projects and determine where your biggest labor costs may be. Look for something with a comparatively low cost and low difficulty to set up and running.

Groves agreed, and said automation to his loading dock was the best low-hanging fruit with the easiest entry and quickest payback. He also said a $15,000 EZ Cut trimmer was a good introduction to automation for his crew. It provides a better more uniform cut when trimming plants and a vacuum clipping collection system. That makes the job easier for employees who are sometimes reluctant to embrace automation and “shows them that machines aren’t the enemy.”

Another topic discussed was preventative maintenance. The machines that make automation possible do need to be maintained regularly.

“It’s only making money when it’s running,” Summers said.

One question from the audience addressed short-term tasks. If you only do a certain job for one or two weeks out of the year, is it worth automating it? How can you calculate the payback? The growers said that just because a piece of machinery is expensive that doesn’t mean it needs to be running all year round. It’s tough for growers to make their peace with that, but automation allows high intensity, fast work when it’s necessary.

Groves said he has a potting machine that sits idle most of the year, and he’s OK with that. By having it, he ensures his team can hit that task hard when they need to do it.

The growers also discussed the drawbacks of automation and how to address them with your team. No. 1 is resistance to change. Also, some difficulty getting set up should be expected.

“It’s never going to work right the first time,” Miller said.

The way your nursery is built will contribute to how you can mechanize, Summers said. Many automation solutions are wheeled machines, which require flat, hard surface to work the way they should.