Last Day

Day 4

Great Ending

We woke up this morning to a beautiful day with lots of sunshine. I was wondering if there was really anything more innovative to see, but we were not disappointed.

Our first stop was the farm of Ben Drummond who grows 140 acres of strawberries on raised beds under high tunnels. He has been facing the issue of less labor availability and the deteriorating quality of the workers that are showing up. In the past the major labor force was college students from Eastern Europe – mainly Poland – who would take time off from their studies to come to England and work the farms to raise money for their education. This was a great labor force of intelligent and educated people. With the formation of the EU and more countries joining, the economies of these countries are getting better so there are more jobs in their own country and many colleges are no longer allowing these breaks. England is now getting the unemployed of Eastern Europe who are a much lower quality of worker.

Last year Drummond decided to do something about the labor issues and purchased one strawberry Haygrove picking rig for $44,0000. He found it increased the picker’s productivity by 30% and worked so well that this year he bought five more.

The rig was designed to go down a 28-foot wide high tunnel and have eight pickers lying on their stomachs – one on each side of the four rows. A driver maneuvers the rig down the row and pulls up the trays of picked berries and puts down new empty containers. The pickers put the berries in trays that hang down beside them. Each worker has a pair of foot pedals that they use to move backward or forward while the rig is moving to get in the perfect position to find the berries. A plastic snow sled it tied to the rig with a rope and slides down the middle of the row where workers put the culls.

All the pickers are paid piecework and before the picking rigs Drummond said he kept having to pay them extra because they were not making the minimum wage because they were such poor quality workers. The six rigs have solved that issue and now they pay the whole rig crew as a team based on piecework. Using the team approach has really helped because they police each other. If one doesn’t get out of bed in the morning the crew goes and pulls him out of bed.

Asparagus production for eight months?

Cobrey Farms was the next stop and they had to be the most innovative asparagus growers I’ve ever visited. Their goal is to be harvesting the crop for the fresh market from the end of March to October – that’s right nearly 8 months of production! They started planting asparagus back in 2003 and have will have 1,000 acres by 2010 with 600 of these acres under high tunnels.

To keep an asparagus production going for 8 months Cobrey Farms starts by forcing the plants early with mini tunnels that go over each row and a high tunnel with two layers of poly – what they call a “triple cover.” Their goal is to be able to have supermarkets carry all-English asparagus by March 20 until October. After the early production from the triple covers is finished they move over to open field production.

For the summer and fall months they use a technique called “reverse season.” They let the ferns grow up in the spring and early summer to help the root ball build up energy. In early July they mow down the ferns and then start harvesting until late fall. Once production drops off with the cool late fall temperatures the fields are mowed off for the winter. This late crop is harvested around the third week of July until the first few weeks of October.

Yields vary greatly on the farm based on the growing technique used. The open field production sees 4.5 metric tons per hectare, the mini tunnels eight metric tons a hectare and 15 metric tons per hectare with the triple cover system.

To pack all of this asparagus they have invested in a $450,000 optical sorter like those used for apples. After harvesting the spears are brought in and run through a washer and hydro cooler. The spears are then put on the beginning of the sorting line on a horizontal conveyor with cups that holds one spear each. They go under the optical lens at a rate of 10 cups per second. The optical lens is hooked up to a computer that measures size, color and curvature. The asparagus then goes down the line and the spears are dropped into vertical scoops. The computer decides which scoop to drop the spear in based on customer needs. When the scoop is filled it opens up and a worker bundles it with an elastic band. The system allows the perfect spear to be chosen to make the most optimal bundle. Before the optical sorter, the bundles average 3-4% over weight and the machine has dropped that down to 1% over weight. This 2-3% savings has a big dollar value impact when attached to the amount of asparagus that goes through Cobrey Farms. The operation has two of these lines, one with 50 shoots and the other with 80. It takes 600 workers in peak asparagus season to harvest and sort the crop.




– Matt McCallum, Great American Publishing