Mushrooms are a challenging crop to grow, doubling in size every day. There is a fine line between a mushroom that is ready to be picked and one that is past its prime, and this is where the potential for automation comes in, says Lewis Macleod, CEO of South Mill Champs.
Macleod joined “The Packer Podcast” to discuss automation in the mushroom industry.
“The challenge when it comes to picking mushrooms is making sure you pick the mushroom at the right time before it opens but also at the right time so it’s grown to be the optimum size that mushrooms are going to grow,” he says. “The challenge of growing mushrooms is every mushroom is different.”
He says it’s a fine line between the optimum time to pick a mushroom and one with gills that have opened and flattened out and has become too mature.
“Once it’s opened, the value of that crop is 20% to 25% of what it was beforehand,” he says. “The value of a product that’s become mature is below the cost to grow. So, it’s fundamental that you pick that crop at the right time. If you don’t have the labor, you’re really out of business.”
It’s this distinction between the optimum time to pick and too late that requires an incredibly skilled workforce.
“One of the challenges you have in the industry is this is not an unskilled labor job,” he says. “This is a job that requires nine, often 12, weeks of training to really require dexterity, and it’s also a repetitive job. It’s also a very difficult job.”
Labor is also a costly portion of growing mushrooms, he says, which can vary between 30% and 50%, and there’s also the ergonomics of picking, which can be harder for workers depending on the type of growing system.
While labor has been abundant in the U.S. in the last 20 to 30 years, it’s been a greater challenge in Canada and Europe, which has forced mushroom growers to modernize both infrastructure and automation.
Automation, Macleod says, increases efficiency and therefore helps reduce the overall cost of goods, which he says is critical as mushrooms compete against different commodities to fill consumers’ shopping carts.
“It’s simple math: When you’ve got labor as such a high percentage of your cost of goods and labor inflation exists, the cost of your product is increasing greater than maybe some of the competitive products that mushrooms compete against there on the shelf space,” he says. “This need to automate is really to allow it to compete against its alternative price on the shelf space.”
Macleod says the potential with artificial intelligence and machine learning with automation is high. Not only can automation allow for more fine-tuned picking of a bed more than once, but the robots will also pick continuously, which will boost quality.
“The opportunity to improve yield is really, really important when it comes to quality,” he says. “The great thing here is you can ensure the specification of what you committed to that customer is what goes into the pack.”
And coupled with cold-chain technology, the mushroom can be stored at the optimum temperature to provide the best product to the end consumer.
For the U.S. mushroom industry to reap those benefits, Macleod says, many growers need to upgrade to more modern production styles that are essentially more robot-ready. In Europe and Canada, more than 90% of growers use the Dutch production style, whereas in the U.S., that number is around 25% to 30%.
“There’s this transition that has to happen within the U.S. — to transition from old infrastructure to new infrastructure, to allow automation to happen in the U.S.,” he says.
