Nature Fresh Farms Revolutionizes Tomato Harvesting with Robots & AI
Nature Fresh Farms uses AI-powered FANUC robots to automate tomato harvesting, easing labor shortages and enabling rapid greenhouse expansion.
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Challenges
A need to overcome the lack of available labor to work in the greenhouse environment.
Harvest only the tomatoes that are ripe and ready for shipment without causing damage.
Find a solution that provides the flexibility to keep up with rapid expansion.
Results
Analytics provide valuable crop data
Robots + AI Supports Rapid Growth
Reduces labor concerns
Story
Nature Fresh Farms, based in Leamington, Ontario is one of North America’s largest greenhouse farms growing high-quality organics, berries, peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers.
Established in 1999 by President & CEO Peter Quiring, Nature Fresh is committed to providing safe, healthy, and sustainably grown food through innovation, creativity, and development.
Recently, significant expansion, and a lack of available labor prompted Nature Fresh to consider a more innovative method to harvest tomatoes. The harvesting area is particularly humid, labor intensive and tedious, which can lead to repetitive motion injuries. Also, given the current labor market, it’s difficult to find people willing to take jobs they consider dull or physically demanding.
In 2022, Nature Fresh partnered with Four Growers, a FANUC Authorized System Integrator, to develop a robotic system equipped with AI to harvest tomatoes in the greenhouse environment.
Four Growers designed a smart system for Nature Fresh that includes a FANUC LR Mate 200iD/7L robot running HandlingTool software. The FANUC robot was selected based on its performance capabilities and ease of use. Four Grower’s proprietary AI provides analytics to detect the ripeness and overall health of the tomatoes, and the optimal path the robot needs to take for harvesting.
Today, the automated system allows Nature Fresh to expand more rapidly and potentially cover double the acreage with their current staff. Going forward, Nature Fresh plans to add more robots for harvesting other fruits and vegetables.
Our employees sometimes think they will be replaced by the automation, but that's never the case. In agriculture, you still need the human touch. Nature Fresh Farms is growing for a kinder future.
Cornelius Neufeld Executive Vice President – Nature Fresh FarmsFANUC Products Used
LR Mate 200iD/7L
Fast at handling small payloads, the FANUC LR Mate 200iD/7L compact multi-purpose industrial robot offers an enhanced reach at 911mm and payloads of up to 7 kg.
- Max Payload:
- 7 kg
- Reach:
- 911 mm
Four Growers
Four Growers, a FANUC Authorized System Integrator, was founded to provide healthy, affordable, local produce by reducing the production costs of greenhouse growers through robotic technology. Our technology currently optimizes autonomous tomato harvesting and will soon be available for pepper and cucumber crops.
Nature Fresh Farms
As a family owned and operated farm, we pride ourselves on providing your family with the same high-quality, clean, healthy produce we feed our own families. We nurture nature in smarter ways, providing you and your family with sustainably grown produce you can feel good about eating.