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Addressing labor issues with new technologies can be a complicated process. Senior Vice President of Innovation at Western Growers Association, Walt Duflock, described some of their industry resources that will be highlighted at this year’s FERA USA event.
“We’ve got an economic template these growers will be able to use and we’ve got a WG assist module that we’re building and staffing out for where you’ll be able to pay Western growers to put somebody in a chair at your operation for a couple weeks so that we can help you do the math because the Excel spreadsheet is pretty easy to build. Now it’s a matter of sourcing out the data in your operation so you know exactly what you’re paying for labor and exactly what it’s being used for, weeding, thinning, harvesting, etc. and then you can work against the right set of math because it turns out no matter what size the operation is, it takes hours and hours to pull this data out, get it baseline, and then compare it to the robot that’s now coming in to help relieve some of the pressure on that labor.”
Brian German
Ag News Director / AgNet West