Vegetable Growers Gaining Speed to Plant Faster Than They Can Sell It
PlantTape brought their demo automated transplanter system to southern New Jersey and growers were amazed and excited, but some were concerned, writes Richard VanVranken at Growing Produce. Host Andy Pagnini said his reaction when he first saw videos of the system was, “This is a game changer!” and immediately reached out to the company.
Most transplanters cannot plant seedlings so young and small, and especially as close together as Pagnini wanted for his leeks. The PlantTape machine can. The biggest challenge faced on his operation in the middle of the City of Vineland was the small size of the fields, which meant the transplanting crew spent more time turning around at the ends of the short rows that barely allowed them to reach half their full speed potential.
That didn’t bother Pagnini. While he might not use it on those small fields on the home farm, those demo rows were tucked in behind his new investment in state-of-the-art greenhouses where he’s growing out the seedlings in the plant tape for himself and other growers.
On the other hand, there is legitimate concern about fewer buyers wanting produce from independent farms typical of the Vineland area. Typically, buyer-shippers in the region would co-mingle produce purchased from multiple farmers each day during the season. A couple dozen of them would compete for each grower’s produce at “the block,” the Vineland Produce Cooperative auction. Growers receive good prices when product is in short supply. Not so good when the crop is heavy.
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