“What happens if those devices fall into a competitor’s hands?” asks Jones. “Security is of paramount importance; if you have insecure or missing devices, that can be a very nasty situation.”
Another problem can be the occasional cellular dead zone. If there’s no cell tower in range—as happens in some remote areas—there won’t be a transmission. The good news is that IoT devices always store data, so the data is not lost. It’s simply transmitted as soon as the device connects to a cell phone tower.
Then there’s the problem of keeping everyone in the food chain, from growers to consumers, satisfied. As Hansen of SafetyChain puts it: “The downfall of IoT technology is that the easier it becomes to get this information in real time, the higher the expectations.”
An Interconnected Future
What lies ahead for the growing relationship between the produce industry and smart technology? Some say the next year or two will see accelerated adoption of IoT and investment in capital equipment that can report data.
“That’s why companies like ours need to be positioning ourselves with the right APIs [application programming interfaces] and communication infrastructure, and the right data storage and analytic tools to [manage] the data and make it valuable,” says Hansen.
Mascarenhas of Telus sees expanded usage of IoT technology and solutions, which will increase the data available for analysis. “This will help technology providers and companies derive insight,” he says. “And that will result in more automation and can predict events or equipment failures in advance.”
Others foresee massive growth over the next year or two, with non-IoT devices becoming the exception rather than the rule. “It’s hard to buy a TV today that isn’t Internet-ready. The same thing will happen with produce, from the grower all the way to the retailer,” believes LinkFresh’s Jones. “The snowball is already rolling, it’s just a question of how big it will get.”
There is an entire generation of digital natives who can’t imagine a world without the Internet, smartphones, or 24/7 connectivity. But it was just 26 years ago that a computer scientist unveiled the ultimate network, which he dubbed the World Wide Web, and made it available to the general public. Since then, technology has evolved at breakneck pace, with the Internet moving from dial-up to broadband and fiber, smartphones becoming the norm, and entire cities installing wireless hotspots so residents never have to feel disconnected or out of touch.
Among the more recent arrivals on this ever-changing technological scene is a concept known as the Internet of Things (IoT). Simply put, IoT is how connected or “smart” devices—smartphones, fitness devices and smart watches, thermostats, and cameras, to name a few—use cellular technology, software, sensors, and electronics to collect and share data.
Say, for example, you left the house in a hurry and don’t remember closing the garage door. With the swipe of a fingertip, your smartphone can access the control panel in your garage whether or not the door is open and then request the appropriate action. All without missing a single note of your son’s piano recital. These days, you can even use your smartphone to look inside the refrigerator and see if you have all the ingredients for Grandma’s famous marinara sauce. Why call home and ask someone to look when you can just peek for yourself?
Thanks to IoT technology, we can turn on the air conditioning, turn off the stove, or turn down the music from across the street or across town. There are smart homes, smart clothes, and smart cars. Even cities have jumped on the ‘smart’ bandwagon, using wireless technology and sensors to run traffic signals and streetlights, monitor air quality, and detect leaks in water mains, or send messages to drivers about parking and traffic issues and street closures. It’s the ‘smart’ era, and everyone, from small businesses to multinational players, is embracing it.
While the produce industry is often accused of being slow to adopt new technologies, it is proving to be among IoT’s biggest champions. Faced with ever-increasing consumer demand and a booming population, growers are looking at ways to boost productivity while also planting, harvesting, storing, and shipping more efficiently. In many cases, technology seems to be the solution; that’s where IoT comes in.
Automation In The Field
At Harvest CROO Robotics, the focus is on revolutionizing agriculture with automation. The Florida-based company is designing and building robots to pick strawberries, and after three years of prototyping is close to sending its first commercial alpha unit into the field.
The platforms that convey the robots will be enabled with IoT devices to map acreage with a GPS system so precise it can pinpoint the location of a plant down to a quarter of an inch. Moreover, every machine will be connected to the Internet and thus able to share harvest data—yields at the plant level and ripeness—on a daily basis. Even pest issues will be detected and reported.
“This technology will have the ability to report the exact GPS location of the pest, and the grower can then send predator mites, for example, to go out and target it,” says Gary Wishnatzki, co-founder of Harvest CROO and head of third-generation family-owned Wish Farms. “It’s an advantage that producers will find useful and economically beneficial.”
The lack of steady, available labor, Wishnatzki explains, is behind his exploration of robotics as a service. The produce industry has traditionally depended on migrant labor, mostly from Mexico, to do the picking. Between a rise in political wrangling and more opportunities at home, fewer Mexican laborers are crossing the border to work in U.S. fields. It also became clear that a tighter labor market would mean higher costs for growing operations, most of which already operate on thin margins.
“This labor trend isn’t going to reverse itself or stabilize, it’s going to get worse,” Wishnatzki says. “If we don’t figure this out with automation, we’re either not going to have the produce we want or we won’t be able to afford it.”
The answer, he says, is automation. As humans phase themselves out of many jobs in the field, the need for technicians to oversee the development and maintenance of this technology will grow. “The technology will evolve into other commodities beyond berries,” he predicts. “The future is becoming more automated and less manual.”
A Smarter Supply Chain
Other companies sell IoT solutions for functions throughout the food supply chain. LinkFresh, a Cambridge, England-based company, offers an ERP [enterprise resource planning] software system that gives its customers a single point of reference for their operations, providing data on perishability and traceability from harvest to shipment to retailer.
According to Richard Jones, LinkFresh’s chief technology officer, the company’s system not only covers inventory control, EDI, pallet tracking, and more, it also interfaces with a customer’s equipment, such as grading machines and forklifts. A grower using the LinkFresh system can make traceability data available from IoT devices—such as smartphones or tablets—to a packer, and a packer can make it available to the distributor and then to the retailer, and on down the chain.
“It’s a way of putting pertinent information about growing conditions and quality into the hands of the people who need it,” Jones explains. “And it adds a layer of transparency to all operations.”
Transparency is also important to SafetyChain Software’s mission. The San Francisco company’s management and monitoring solutions tackle food safety and quality management, compliance, and more, serving as the platform into which IoT data is reported, collected, and analyzed.
“We provide a repository for all that information and the tools for accessing it,” remarks Eric Hansen, director of technical solutions. “There’s a process, visibility, and rigor that hasn’t been there before.”
Before the introduction of technology and IoT, the corporate arm of a company often didn’t know what was happening out in the field or in the warehouse until it was, perhaps, too late. Now, as Hansen points out, decision makers can react to incidents—a delayed shipment, a cold chain malfunction—in real time, and this is a real benefit to the bottom line.
“Time is money,” Hansen asserts. “If you find a critical piece of monitoring equipment is down, you have to hold all the produce back to the last time it was functioning. That can be a lot of product; so, the shorter you can make that discovery-to-action loop, the more money you save your customers.”
Maintaining the Cold Chain Connection
Sensors are one of the most common ways to keep track of cargo as it makes its way along the cold chain. Emerson Cargo Solutions, formerly Locus Traxx, uses sensors to broadcast temperature, location, and other details, depending on the parameters, to the cloud. The data is then sent to the supplier or retailer.
Here’s an example: sensors determine the temperature has gone a few degrees too high in a perishables shipment, or the truck is stuck in traffic and won’t make its destination on time. With access to such information, the logistics company can be notified to reroute the shipment to a closer destination. These smart tracking devices can even detect whether a container has been breached.
As Amy Childress, vice president of marketing solutions, points out, refrigerated transport is key to delivering fresh produce all year long. “This is the Internet of perishables,” she says. “People are increasingly used to having access to information. We’ve seen interest not only from retailers who want to monitor inbound progress, but also from suppliers. Everyone is hungry for the data.”
Telus, a Canadian telecommunications company, is another player in the cold chain IoT world. Not only does it provide a dedicated cellular IoT network, it also partners with key technology providers to develop IoT solutions, like one that uses wireless sensors to monitor certain characteristics such as temperature and humidity, of perishable food. Anytime the temperature goes too high or low, the sensor sends out an alert to correct the situation.
This solution has been deployed up and down the supply chain to restaurants, supermarkets, warehouses, and logistics companies. Ultimately, it’s all about food safety, operational efficiency, and cost savings, according to Robin Mascarenhas, Telus’ business manager for IoT strategic solutions and partnerships. “The clear benefit to the supply chain is the ability to share important information in real time, since most IoT solutions are cloud based and access can be shared with every stakeholder.”
Hackers and Dead Zones
While there aren’t many downsides to the use of IoT technology in the produce industry, security is certainly one of them. As with any wireless device that connects to the cloud, the possibility of being hacked is always hovering in the shadows. And there’s the issue of manageability: where are all the company’s various devices at any given time?
“What happens if those devices fall into a competitor’s hands?” asks Jones. “Security is of paramount importance; if you have insecure or missing devices, that can be a very nasty situation.”
Another problem can be the occasional cellular dead zone. If there’s no cell tower in range—as happens in some remote areas—there won’t be a transmission. The good news is that IoT devices always store data, so the data is not lost. It’s simply transmitted as soon as the device connects to a cell phone tower.
Then there’s the problem of keeping everyone in the food chain, from growers to consumers, satisfied. As Hansen of SafetyChain puts it: “The downfall of IoT technology is that the easier it becomes to get this information in real time, the higher the expectations.”
An Interconnected Future
What lies ahead for the growing relationship between the produce industry and smart technology? Some say the next year or two will see accelerated adoption of IoT and investment in capital equipment that can report data.
“That’s why companies like ours need to be positioning ourselves with the right APIs [application programming interfaces] and communication infrastructure, and the right data storage and analytic tools to [manage] the data and make it valuable,” says Hansen.
Mascarenhas of Telus sees expanded usage of IoT technology and solutions, which will increase the data available for analysis. “This will help technology providers and companies derive insight,” he says. “And that will result in more automation and can predict events or equipment failures in advance.”
Others foresee massive growth over the next year or two, with non-IoT devices becoming the exception rather than the rule. “It’s hard to buy a TV today that isn’t Internet-ready. The same thing will happen with produce, from the grower all the way to the retailer,” believes LinkFresh’s Jones. “The snowball is already rolling, it’s just a question of how big it will get.”
Cristina Adams is a freelance writer and editor with more than twenty years of experience. She writes for a number of business publications and websites.
