{"id":55725,"date":"2025-05-15T07:38:58","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T11:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=55725"},"modified":"2025-05-15T07:39:55","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T11:39:55","slug":"autonomous-harvesters-key-to-florida-strawberry-farming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2025\/05\/15\/autonomous-harvesters-key-to-florida-strawberry-farming\/","title":{"rendered":"Autonomous Harvesters Key to Florida Strawberry Farming"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Autonomous harvesters are the future of Florida strawberry production. They have to be. Labor costs are too high, prohibitively so, for Florida growers to continue at the current rate.<\/p>\n\n\n        \n        <div class=\"embedpress-gutenberg-wrapper source-provider-Youtube aligncenter ep-clear   ep-content-protection-disabled inline\" id=\"5ab27c1c-49b9-4655-939b-10f215291145\" data-embed-type=\"Youtube \">\n            <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper \">\n                <div id=\"ep-gutenberg-content-4a2021a53f8c2897cd3b41a8608a59dd\" class=\"ep-gutenberg-content\">\n                    <div >\n                        <div class=\"ep-embed-content-wraper preset-default insta-grid ep-google-photos-carousel\"\n                            style=\"max-width:600px;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"                                                                                                                >\n\n                            <div class=\"ose-youtube ose-uid-2c6f005288e382938c6f9b1b23e81304 ose-embedpress-responsive\" style=\"width:600px; height:340px; max-height:340px; max-width:100%; display:inline-block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" title=\"Harvest CROO Autonomous Strawberry Harvesting 2025\" width=\"600\" height=\"340\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BuidOS_p3JI?feature=oembed&#038;color=red&#038;rel=1&#038;controls=2&#038;start=true&#038;end=true&#038;fs=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;autoplay=0&#038;modestbranding=0&#038;cc_load_policy=0&#038;playsinline=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; encrypted-media;accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;gyroscope;picture-in-picture clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen title=\"Autonomous Harvesters Key to Florida Strawberry Farming\"><\/iframe><\/div>                        <\/div>\n\n                                            <\/div>\n                <\/div>\n            <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n    \n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is why industry leaders are advocating for time and resources to be devoted to the development of automatic harvesters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cTo be honest, if there isn\u2019t an autonomous solution discovered, the industry is ultimately going to shrink,\u201d said Nick Wishnatzki, public relations director at Wish Farms in Plant City, Florida. \u201cThe cost of harvesting is going to become so expensive that strawberries are going to become a luxury item. It\u2019s really important that the industry, and whether it\u2019s government funding or private institutions, we\u2019ve got to get behind this. The labor force is shrinking, and the costs are just continuing to rise.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Florida H-2A Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) for 2025 is $16.23 per hour. It is a 10% increase from the previous year\u2019s rate of $14.77. It also doesn\u2019t account for housing and transporting the workers, as well as the piece rate paid per box as an incentive.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-dominant-color=\"717574\" data-has-transparency=\"false\" style=\"--dominant-color: #717574;\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"636\" height=\"277\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 636px) 100vw, 636px\" src=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Screenshot-89-3.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-55726 not-transparent\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Screenshot-89-3.webp 636w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Screenshot-89-3-300x131.webp 300w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe have the H-2A program, and it does help us get the crop picked. We are able to get workers from that program right now. That is a positive, but it\u2019s a short-term solution to a long-term problem,\u201d Wishnatzki said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Recent Development<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Harvest CROO, a company whose focus is developing a fully autonomous strawberry harvester, announced recently its automated harvest field trials have successfully demonstrated commercial viability. But Gary Wishnatzki, Harvest CROO co-founder and Wish Farms owner, said additional investment is needed for it to scale to a commercial level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Harvest CROO conducted automated harvest field trials and completed performance rates on par with human harvesting in a commercial operation. Strawberries are the most challenging crop to pick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThere\u2019s multiple stages of berry on the plant. The vision system has to identify the right berries. There is also a lot of leaf material as well that has to be moved. You\u2019re dealing with finding the berries that are hidden underneath,\u201d Nick said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHarvest CROO has proven out this season that they\u2019ve been able to pick close to, if not better than the human level. We\u2019re really hopeful that Harvest CROO will get the funding it needs to scale and prove that they can really help change the industry with that technology.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Autonomous harvesters are the future of Florida strawberry production. They have to be. Labor costs are too high, prohibitively so, for Florida growers to continue at the current rate. It&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMDVcL1NjcmVlbnNob3QtODktMy53ZWJwP2ZpdD02MzYlMkMyNzcmc3NsPTEiLCJ0eHQiOiJBdXRvbm9tb3VzIEhhcnZlc3RlcnMgS2V5IHRvIEZsb3JpZGEgU3RyYXdiZXJyeSBGYXJtaW5nIiwidGVtcGxhdGUiOiJoaWdod2F5IiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTYzMDQwNjYxfQ.jIqpJG9OHJEWnA9V--EvK9hVdSOf56gNzCy1-1uYZXEMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":55726,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Screenshot-89-3.webp","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[11495],"class_list":["post-55725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-autonomous-harvesters-key-to-florida-strawberry-farming"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55727,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55725\/revisions\/55727"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}