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CapitalPress.com
Friday, December 6, 2019
Trees: As supplies drop, average price for trees increase
Continued from Page 1
were more than 750 grow-
ers producing 8 million trees
each year.
Chal Landgren, a Christ-
mas tree specialist for OSU
at the North Willamette
Research and Extension
Center, said there are fewer
trees available now to keep
up with the usual demand.
“We’re coming off a
period where too many
trees were planted and a
lot of growers have gone
out of business because of
the boom-and-bust cycle,”
Landgren said.
As
supplies
have
dropped, the average price
for trees has also increased.
Sales data from the National
Christmas Tree Association
show that, between 2015 and
2018, retail prices rose 23%
from $62 to $73 — includ-
ing a 5% jump last year.
Landgren said the 2019
market is looking a lot like
2018, and he doesn’t see
much relief on the way. The
situation was compounded
by unusually hot and dry
summers in Oregon’s Wil-
lamette Valley the past two
years that led to higher seed-
ling mortality rates for trees,
he added.
“Most Christmas trees are
grown without irrigation,”
Landgren said. “Growers
who had particularly a large
amount of Noble fir that was
planted ... they had real high
mortality rates. Some people
lost their entire plantings for
those years.”
Driving around the area,
Landgren said families
should still have plenty of
options at U-cut tree lots,
though he recommended
getting out early to find the
perfect tree.
In addition to the whole-
sale venture, BTN of Ore-
gon operates a U-cut Christ-
mas tree lot named Tree
Kings Farms. The lot cel-
ebrated its opening week-
end the day after Thanks-
giving, and will remain open
through Dec. 22.
“We have a good supply
of trees for the U-cut,” Tyler
Stone said. “It’s definitely
not an issue.”
Ben, Tyler and Nathan
Stone took over the family
business from their father,
Mike, who got his start in
the Christmas tree indus-
try more than 60 years ago.
Despite recent challenges,
the brothers say 2019 was a
good year for growing con-
ditions, plentiful labor and
transportation at the farm.
One major concern
with the wholesale short-
age is whether people will
be driven to buy an arti-
ficial tree, Ben and Tyler
said. The industry has sup-
ported a checkoff program
of 15 cents per tree, which
goes toward promoting and
marketing live Christmas
trees.
“We’re trying to get our
message out there, that our
product is more environ-
mentally friendly than the
China-made plastic (trees),
he said.
Robotics: ‘The core issue we need to solve is the durability’
Continued from Page 1
Now, the apples are all
picked by hand. Shortages of
pickers have led to increased
use of foreign guestworkers at
high wages that have driven
up all wages, increasing labor
costs for growers. Robotic
picking could save millions of
dollars in labor and alleviate
picker shortages.
Abundant Robotics and
FFRobotics, of Emeq-Heffer,
Israel, appear to be the only
two companies in the world
close to prime time with
robotic apple harvesters.
Abundant Robotics has
done limited commercial har-
vesting. FFRobotics is still
testing its prototype but has
sold one machine in Europe.
Avi Kahani, owner of
FFRobotics, believes more
competitors will emerge
because the potential mar-
ket is huge — apple and cit-
rus production in the U.S.,
Europe, South America and
China.
A retired mechanical engi-
neer, Frank Moore, in Pasco,
Wash., also has been working
on a robotic apple picker.
Abundant Robotics
A robotic vacuum tube sucks apples from trees and
whisks them into a bin on an Abundant Robotics har-
vester last February in New Zealand.
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Avi Kahani, of Israel, and his robotic apple picker with H-2A foreign guestworker
housing in the background, near Quincy, Wash., on Nov. 6. Robotic pickers may soon
replace human pickers.
Abundant Robotics
with two machines for com-
mercial work. One machine
was damaged during trans-
portation. Harvest continued
using the other.
Robotic picking took place
each week from mid-August to
the end of October, Steere said.
Limited volumes of various
apple varieties were picked for
more than 10 companies, large
and small, in the Yakima and
Wenatchee districts.
Abundant
Robotics
began working on its con-
cept in 2013. Early funding
included $550,000 in grants
from the Washington Tree
Fruit Research Commission
in Wenatchee, Wash. Abun-
dant Robotics received a $10
million investment from Goo-
gle a couple of years ago and
will spend about $12 million
developing its system, Steere
has said.
A major milestone was
reached last spring in New Zea-
land, where Abundant Robot-
ics announced the world’s first
commercial robotic apple har-
vest. It was limited but apples
picked by robot entered the
normal sales chain.
The next step was small-
scale harvesting in Washing-
ton this fall.
“Our goal in 2019 was
small scale commercial trials
and then scale up machines for
larger commercial operations
in 2020. That was our goal.
We’re not quite there yet,”
Steere said at the end of har-
vest in early November.
Too many critical parts
broke down too often, he said.
For example, the robotic arms
and mechanisms that physi-
cally do the picking were not
durable enough, he said.
“The core issue we need
to solve is the durability of
the hardware we designed,”
he said, “but all the metrics
around the machine like speed
of picking and ripeness and
various aspects, we’re happy
with what we’re seeing there.”
The company has con-
ducted non-commercial field
trials in Washington for sev-
eral years. It came this year
On the edge of a Kanzi
apple block in a Columbia
Fruit Packers orchard east of
Quincy, Wash., a pickup and
an unusual machine sat a few
hundred feet away from new
housing for H-2A-visa foreign
guestworkers.
It didn’t look like anything
was going on but in a tight
space between the machine
and a row of apple trees a man
sat on a folding chair working
on a laptop.
Another man, standing
nearby, displayed a ready grin
and Israeli accent.
Avi Kahani, CEO and
co-founder of FFRobotics,
simply referred to the fel-
low on the chair as “Or,” and
explained he was working on
the machine’s software.
A few minutes later, they
gave a demonstration. A slight
hum for a couple of min-
utes as the machine sensed
where apples hung on the
trees. Metal arms rapidly shot
out, two each from three lev-
els. On the end of an arm,
three prongs, soft but sturdy,
grabbed an apple. The arm
retracted quickly for the apple
to be placed on a soft con-
veyor. Each pick happened so
fast you could miss it.
A series of conveyors
moved the fruit to a table atop
the platform where one to four
workers could sort out culls or
clip stems. If those tasks aren’t
needed the fruit flowed across
the table, through a few turns
and into a bin. It’s all gravity
and conveyor flow. The whole
machine can be operated by
one person whose main task is
FFRobotics
to steer it at the ends of rows.
Eventually, stem clip-
ping will be automated. The
machine will also be used for
pre-harvest crop thinning,
Kahani said.
He noted the irony of test-
ing his machine so close to
housing for H-2A-visa for-
eign guestworkers, the use of
which has been increasing in
recent years to meet the labor
shortage.
“Machine and H-2A right
here. This is much more
appealing,” Kahani said refer-
ring to the machine. “This is
the future and it is here.”
Two years ago, Kahani pre-
dicted he would have units
ready to sell by the end of 2018
or beginning of 2019. Now he
says he has sold one in Europe,
is working to close a U.S. sale
and envisions full-scale pro-
duction in two to three years.
He plans to open a U.S. office
soon to support his activities in
North America and especially
in Washington.
He will mount his machines
on mobile platforms built
by Automated Ag Systems
in Moses Lake, Wash., that
are similar to the hundreds
of Bandit Xpress and Bandit
Cub apple harvest assist plat-
forms that company has been
building.
The Cyclone
Automated Ag is also
working with DBR Conveyor
Concepts of Conklin, Mich., to
perfect the Cyclone, a machine
that helps pickers.
To use the system, people
on various levels on a mobile
platform pick into small buck-
ets strapped to their chests.
Those buckets in turn feed into
vacuum tubes and bins. The
system eliminates the need for
ladders and picking into bags
and dumping them by hand
into bins.
“We are looking at having
them in production for next
year’s harvest. We have about
10 people who want them and
a lot more interest,” said Kelly
Dagorret, Automated Ag office
manager.
Robotic differences
Abundant Robotics uses a
single robotic picker vacuum
arm that sucks apples off trees
while FFRobotics uses six
arms per side picking with fin-
ger-like prongs and conveyors
instead of vacuum assist.
A full vacuum system
requires more horsepower,
taking up more space on a
platform.
Abundant Robotics is
capable of picking one apple
per second and in New Zea-
land last spring was picking
10 to 20 bins in 24 hours. It is
designed to pick 30 or 40 bins,
Steere said.
While neither company is
ready to talk publicly about
prices and costs, both Steere
and Kahani aim to harvest fruit
at a lower cost than human
picking.
“It must be economical to
the grower,” Kahani said.
They have different busi-
ness plans.
Steere will retain owner-
ship of his machines and con-
tract out to custom harvest for
growers, large and small. Kah-
ani doesn’t want to get into
contract harvesting and will
sell his machines to growers
or people who want to provide
contract harvesting.
“For us as a small start-up
from Israel it would be hard to
be a full-service (contract har-
vest) company,” he said.
Steere said he is concen-
trating on Washington first
but sees no reason his ser-
vice wouldn’t eventually
expand into Oregon, Idaho and
California.
He said steepness of ter-
rain is not a problem and that
his machine can go anywhere
tractors can. He said his sys-
tem detects 95% of apples on
a tree but the problem is limbs
and trellis wires getting in the
way of picking.
‘A big ask’
Karen Lewis, Washington
State University Extension
tree fruit specialist in Ephrata,
has studied mechanical prun-
ing, thinning and harvest for
several years.
She says while it “appears
to have been a difficult year
for Abundant Robotics” with
mechanical issues, FFRobot-
ics “had a real wakeup call”
on row spacing and different
tree canopies.
The companies learned a
lot and got a lot of industry
feedback, she said.
“Avi’s
machine
can
expand and retract, the whole
machine, which is good. It’s
just not narrow enough,” she
said.
Growers remain interested
in robotic picking but some
are getting “a little impatient,”
she said.
“It’s a big ask to ask a
robot to come out here and
do everything as planned and
not expect some bumps and
delays,” Lewis said. “I’m still
confident that both these com-
panies are fully committed.
Goal lines get moved. Nei-
ther one of these companies
is abandoning ship. They are
still in and that doesn’t always
happen with startups.”
Lewis said the indus-
try will benefit from hav-
ing the options of contracting
for harvest service or buying
machines.
“If we want to mitigate size
and scale conditions in the
industry, small and big grow-
ers, you will need to have dif-
ferent ways to access the tech-
nology,” she said. “Some can
do well in a purchase agree-
ment and others won’t want
to. If we don’t have multiple
business models as options
we won’t get the adoption
we’re seeking.”
Hopeful growers
Washington Fruit & Pro-
duce Co., Yakima, and Stemilt
Growers LLC., Wenatchee,
are among the largest tree
fruit companies in the state
that have participated in
robotic harvest testing in their
orchards.
They each own and use
several Bandit Xpress man-
ual picking platforms and
have tested the non-robotic
Cyclone in past years.
Nick Plath, farm and field
staff manager at Washington
Fruit & Produce Co., Yakima,
said he does not think the
company plans to buy any
Cyclones. Last year, he said,
they bruised apples too much.
“Abundant
Robotics
picked some pinks (Cripps
Pink apples) for us at the
tail end of harvest but due to
the freeze it wasn’t what we
hoped it would be. I believe
they were contracted to pick
1,000 bins and weren’t able
to hit that number,” Plath said.
“But we’re interested in con-
tinuing to work with them.”
Washington Fruit & Pro-
duce will continue to ana-
lyze robotics with the hope of
buying a machine when price
and efficacy meet company
expectations, he said.
West Mathison, president
of Stemilt Growers, said it’s
inspiring to see “smart peo-
ple from outside our industry”
help solve big challenges.
“We saw a number of
good demonstrations and
are looking forward to see-
ing how they each evolve and
improve,” Mathison said.
Jeff LaPorte, director of
field services at Chelan Fruit
Cooperative in Chelan, said
the co-op’s members are inter-
ested in robotic harvesting but
being smaller-scale grow-
ers, they will wait to see how
it works out for bigger com-
panies before making any
decisions.
“There is continual stress
on the labor market, but our
growers are small and tend
to be wait-and-see,” LaPorte
said.
They probably won’t be
able to afford to buy machines
individually, but some might
buy a machine collectively
or hire a contract service, he
said. Steep slopes are also a
concern, he said.
Some 160 miles to the
south, Rob Valicoff, president
of Valicoff Fruit Co., Wapato,
relies on 200 H-2A and 15
domestic workers to harvest
his crops. He tested a non-ro-
botic Cyclone in the fall of
2018 but said he’s too small
an operator to buy one.
He said he would hire a
contract robotic apple picking
service if it were priced right.
“I hope robotics take hold.
We need to take some pressure
off manual labor and costs,”
Valicoff said. “I don’t know if
a robot will be much cheaper
at first, but there should be no
injuries and L&I (state Labor
& Industries) claims.”
Campaign: ‘There’s a lot of misinformation and lack of understanding about the river’
Continued from Page 1
ONLINE
citing their impacts on fed-
erally protected salmon and,
more recently, orcas.
“There’s a lot of misin-
formation and lack of under-
standing about the river and
all of the different, amaz-
ing things it delivers to our
region and to the nation,”
said Kristin Meira, executive
director of the association.
Ads are running in maga-
zines throughout Washington
state and on Facebook.
Meira said the cam-
paign will run through early
January.
The abundance of misin-
formation is “really unfortu-
Faces of the Snake River
https://www.snakeriver-
faces.com/
Washington survey
https://www.surveymon-
key.com/r/VG5S8Z5
nate,” she said.
“It ends up doing a disser-
vice to the very species we’re
all interested in helping,
whether it’s salmon or orca,”
she said. “The idea you can
do one action in one area and
have those species recover is
unfortunately just not how
it works. But unfortunately,
those very simplistic mes-
sages are being delivered all
around the region, including
to our decision makers.”
The association relies
on information from fed-
eral agencies, particularly
NOAA Fisheries, on species
recovery and to highlight the
impact of the dams.
Meira said a colleague
put out a call for informa-
tion about the number of jobs
the dams provide over the
summer.
Fairfield, Wash., wheat
farmer Marci Green is fea-
tured in the campaign.
“Just like every farmer in
Eastern Washington, most of
our wheat is exported,” Green
said. “The most fuel-efficient
and cost-effective way for us
to get our crops to the ports in
Portland and Vancouver is by
truck and barge on the Snake
and Columbia River.”
Barges using locks at the
Snake River dams move
nearly 10% of all U.S. wheat
exports to international mar-
kets most years.
“Anything we can do as
the agricultural industry to
get the word out and commu-
nicate why the river system is
important to our industry and
to the economy of the whole
state and the Pacific North-
west, we need to do,” Green
said.
The association also asks
residents to provide com-
ments to an online ques-
tionnaire offered by consul-
tants hired by the office of
Washington Gov. Jay Ins-
lee to gather and summa-
rize the effects of retaining
or removing the four dams.
Responses will go into a
report to Inslee.
Meira said it’s too early
to tell whether efforts to
combat the misinformation
are making a dent.
“We’re hopeful these
will be eye-opening pieces
that will help better connect
people to parts of the region
where they may have heard
a little bit, but don’t really
understand (or) don’t know
the connection that all of us
have,” she said.
Green hopes to get the
public to consider science
and not respond solely to
emotion. She isn’t sure how
to measure the effectiveness
of ag’s messaging.
“I have to hope that we’re
making some kind of an
impact,” she said. “It’s one
of those things that always
comes up, it’s one of those
issues that we are constantly
up against. I don’t see the
issue going away any time
soon. It’s going to take a lot
of perseverance and telling
our side of the story over and
over and over again.”