Technology in Peony Farming
As many of you know I have worked virtually all my career in IT and perhaps unsurprisingly I am intensely interested in the application of technology to our peony operations. I have spent time reading, attending seminars, watching YouTube videos and observing our work practices all to try and work out how technology could help us to operate a more successful peony business. As you can imagine there is a lot of content out there and many many ideas, tools and machines. Some of my favorites include:
- Laser Weeding Machines. I mean, lasers ..... they get marks for being cool. These are large machines that are driven over crops, predominantly vegetables, identify weeds vs the crop (through a combination of image and AI) and then zap the weeds with lasers which kill the weeds by literally cooking them.
- General Autonomous Vehicles. The laser weeders above are normally autonomous but there are a lot of applications for autonomous vehicles in horticulture. They could execute spray, weeding and plant care programmes, mow lawns between rows and carry or fetch tools, product, anything really. The image above shows a burro, a self-driving vehicle that is emerging as an innovative solution in farming, offering numerous benefits to enhance efficiency and reduce labor costs. Capable of carrying up to 225kg of produce, tools, and other materials, it allows workers to concentrate on more critical tasks. Equipped with advanced sensors and mapping technology, the burro can navigate autonomously around the farm without the need for human intervention.
- Humanoid Robots. I imagine a time when rather than employing people I can own and operate a fleet of humanoid robots who can do all the tasks that people would currently do. In my dreams this includes picking and processing flowers and saffron, "hand" weeding around the peonies, spreading fertiliser etc based specifically on an individual tuber’s need
There are plenty of other technologies with huge potential but this isn't really a blog about technology it's a blog about the challenge of being a small family business operating in a niche market. From this perspective the more I studied technology and its ability to support our operations the more deflated I became as reality set in. Applying advanced technologies to our farm was going to be difficult. For example:
- Technology responds to scale and, while we are big for peony growers in New Zealand, we are really small. To illustrate, our single biggest expense is labour (about 70% of operating costs) yet we are talking less than 5 FTEs including my wife and I. That is not a massive cost pool when you consider the likely costs of advanced technology and the experimentation that will be required to implement it effectively in our operations.
- We are working in a small niche industry. Because we are small there is no government funding or any Agritech companies focused on producing solutions to support peony growers. Rightly their focus is on larger opportunities in dairy, viticulture, and kiwifruit, to name a few. This means that we are left looking to those industries for the leading edge innovations because they can afford to invest and wondering if they work with peonies and can we afford the experimentation that will be required to prove or disprove their value?
Finally, all of the advances, trials, and pilots that are out there operate on flat land. Our property is more accurately described as rolling hills and while conceptually all the technologies will operate as tested it's amazing how much more difficult the side of a hill can be when compared to trials done on the flat.
OK, so even I am beginning to feel that this is turning into a bit of a "woe is me" blog. That's not the intention I'm just trying to be realistic and perhaps set the scene for this .....
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¹ How niche? It's difficult to get really solid and consistent data for the peony industry but from what I can gather the New Zealand peony industry is about 3 million stems with half exported and half sold on the local market. If you take a broad market average figure of $2 a stem that's a total market size of about $6 million. It might be $8 or $9 million but even in New Zealand terms that is a micro market!
As a small business owner operating in a niche market when it comes to technology I need to be laser focused on what's practical for us, not what's possible because what's possible may well bankrupt me (Note: this has always been my philosophy, it's just more intense in a small business).
With this in mind, what technology are we investing in or are we likely to invest in over the next year? Most of it is fairly simple, well proven technologies such as:
- A webstore that lets us interact with and sell direct to peony lovers. Through the webstore we sell peonies in season and also a range of peony based skin care products. (a short sales plug - our webstore is here - https://peonies.nz/shop/).
- Social media, particularly Instagram, to engage with peony lovers and florists. We are not that great at social media right now but it will be a focus for this year (this is a big part of why I have started this blog now)
- Utilising SaaS applications that can support us to streamline our processes, predominantly back office and sales / marketing processes. We are currently utilising a number of applications including:
- Xero for accounting, payroll etc.
- UpStock (https://www.upstock.app/) which links us to our wholesale customers and potential customers and streamlines ordering, delivery and invoicing of products
- PICMI (picmi.io) which helps us to streamline recruitment and HR processes and
- Trello to support our planning and project execution (you can take the boy out of IT .......)
I know this seems like a long way away from laser weeding and humanoid robots and perhaps like a cop out but we do need to to start by getting the fundamentals right. That said, it's not just these basics; we are also looking at autonomous vehicles, specifically we are looking at a Burro from AgriAutomation. As noted above, autonomous vehicles have a number of uses in an operation like ours and if we can execute these tasks with one multi-purpose autonomous vehicle there's a good chance the vehicle can pay for itself.
The business case for an autonomous vehicle is fairly simple: if we do not need a vehicle driver we can reduce labour costs and those labour savings can pay for the vehicle. But perhaps the really exciting thing is that if I can get a sensible return on task automation I can then begin to experiment with more advanced use cases. For example, will UV-C treatment enhance peony health? Can I use the vehicle to support precision agriculture through in field data collection and then execution of plant specific treatments? Maybe yes, it's at least possible even if the returns from this are somewhat speculative as there is no research focused on peony returns from such technology. That said, it's easier to experiment if the base unit is already "paid for" through basic operations.
With that in mind we hope to have a Burro on site in the next month or two to progress this thinking. I'll let you know how it works out!
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²It has become quite unpopular to say that advanced technologies will eliminate jobs (perhaps a topic for a future blog) but that is the only way an autonomous vehicle makes sense.
#Technology in Peony Farming