Hi-tech fruit bin does the heavy lifting
A hi-tech electric fruit bin that takes the heavy lifting out of fruit picking was among technologies featured at Fieldays aimed at easing the pressure of worker shortages.
Engineering Lecturer at the University of Waikato, Nick Pickering, said students developed an electronic fruit bin on wheels after Zespri asked them to help find solutions for labour shortages in the kiwifruit sector.
Pickering said besides tackling worker fatigue, the eBin also opened up picking work to people who previously worked in nonlabour roles, or older workers who did not have the strength for heavy lifting.
Traditionally a kiwifruit picker would carry a bag which could weight nearly 25kg before emptying it into a bin, Pickering said.
A group of four pickers walk alongside the eBin. Fruit was dropped into a fruit catcher, a net cushioned and secured the fruit, before it rolled down and came to rest in the main bin, he said.
Inventors at Fieldays said technologies to help out in times of labour shortages were driving new innovation in agritech.
Earlier this year the kiwifruit industry required 24,000 pickers but was drastically short of workers as the border was closed to seasonal workers previously relied on.
Agricultural innovation professor at the University of Otago, Craig Bunt, said it was risky if a farm, or industry, tapped into unskilled cheap labour as a way to manage their bottom line.
If they could reduce their reliance on cheap labour and fill the gap with technologies and automation, they had more security than just relying on people alone, he said.
Using more technology meant unskilled people could become trained operators who maintained new equipment.
He said innovators were reacting to the need for workers, the desire to create new technologies and a political move to a higher-skilled workforce.
Pete McCann, general manager of Case IH, which manufactures tractors and harvesters, said a lack of labour was partly driving companies to develop better technologies.
The biggest race in agriculture technology was that of unmanned farm equipment, such as autonomous tractors, McCann said.
He said connectivity issues
made adoption of some technology impossible, as some farms still only had small portions covered by internet access.
Vehicles that could complete some tasks autonomously were already helping farmers be more efficient without as much labour as they were used to, he said.
Chief technology officer at SPS Automation, Scott Spooner, invented a drone that sprayed wilding conifers.
Unlike other large commercial drones that had short flight times, his drone charged a battery by using a petrol engine.
There was a shortage of labour to spray wilding conifers and a clear gap between what ground
crews did and what helicopter operators could do, that a drone filled, he said.
The SPS drone did not need a drone operator on site as the drones could be run from a remote location by a skilled operator, he said.
The drones used artificial intelligence and identified invasive trees. It also calculated treespecific herbicide requirements, Spooner said.
Earlier this year the Government signalled an immigration reset and wanted to upskill New Zealand’s workforce, increase productivity and reduce the country’s reliance on overseas labour.