British growers are increasingly turning to recent developments in automation to reduce their reliance on a dwindling supply of labour.
An AHDB Horticulture survey has revealed that 82 percent of UK growers believe emerging technology in robotics and automation have helped their businesses.
Growers also report key areas for future technological investment should be focused on harvesting and improvements within the pack-house.
Areas of production with particularly high manual labour inputs – such as harvesting – are high priority for future research and investment, with nearly 60 percent of growers identifying this as an area to focus on.
Other responses highlighted a need for developments in transplanting and planting, crop monitoring, application of crop protection products, transport systems, grading and packing.
Left unharvested
Both growers and food product manufacturers further down the supply chain are concerned about produce potentially being left unharvested due to a lack of workers.
Recruiters warn that it will be impossible to replace EU workers with British substitutes due to current high employment levels.
They fear that British jobseekers will be overqualified to perform low-skill roles, while others will be unable to do physically demanding roles because of pre-existing conditions.
The farming industry is therefore aiming to identify technologies that can help reduce labour costs and pressures for businesses which will become "more critical" as the UK leaves the EU.
'Clear priority'
Dr Debbie Wilson, AHDB’s Head of Knowledge Exchange, said labour utilisation is a "clear priority" in current strategy.
“It’s critical that our activities complement rather than duplicate existing industry developments, which is what this survey was designed to help us investigate.
“Many growers look to robotics as a solution to labour availability issues for the sector, although they recognise that new developments are likely to be long term. Our plans in this area include identifying new ideas from international horizon scanning and sharing best practice.”
Useful robotics
The industry’s commitment to further advance automation is clear, with a third of respondents stating they have begun developing their own in-house solutions and a further third already involved in research and development projects.
Dr Becky Turner, HortSolutions who conducted the survey, said: “Most growers (80%) said they knew of some research into equipment that could be useful for their systems, from sensing technology and imaging analysis to moving robots and harvesting machinery.”
The results show that the current use of available automation in the industry is high with the main recent advancements being achieved in transplanting/planting, moving the crop and grading.
The use of robotics is not so widespread, with 32 percent of growers having what they described as some element of robotics in their system. The main area of use was for moving the product around on the holding.
