A New Way To Pick Strawberries
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Talk to just about any farmer about their challenges, and labor will inevitably come up. This is especially true for growers of specialty crops like strawberries. Alex Gutierrez, founder of L5 Automation says he took his engineering skills from aerospace to agriculture because growers are experiencing a tsunami in labor costs.
Gutierrez… “Just in the last six years, labor costs have went up 50% for them. That's the adverse wage rate. It went from $13.12 or $13.13 an hour to $19.75 an hour today, and that's assuming you could even get the labor in the first place.”
Gutierrez and his team engineered a robot to pick strawberries. He says the response has been positive, but many growers have been down this road in the past.
Gutierrez… “Everyone's very excited about the potential, but they're also a little bit jaded because they've seen a lot of companies come in and they say they're gonna be the best thing since sliced bread, and they don't deliver. From that standpoint, they're very excited and want to support us, but they're aware that it's gonna be a duration to get there. Working with this grower in particular is that they know all the things not to do, and that's been helping me tremendously in avoiding common pitfalls that others have already fallen into.”
L5 Automation already has units operating in the field and they are currently taking on investors via the WeFunder platform. Their campaign is expected to be closing soon.
