Tanimura & Antle expands technology

SALINAS, Calif. — Tanimura & Antle is addressing labor shortages with expanded technology, including a planting system, PlantTape USA, a machine that weeds, called Robovator, and upgraded technologies on harvesting machinery.

PlantTape USA technology allows more plants to be grown in a smaller area. They are connected in a long strip, which is then fed straight into a machine that will plant them in rows. The tape disintegrates in the soil.

“Now we can grow the plant during the really critical stage, germination to two weeks, in a greenhouse instead of a field,” Brian Antle, president of PlantTape USA, said. “You have a much hardier plant to put in the field, and we use 66% less seed doing it this way.”

The machine requires much less labor, too.

“The labor side, when you look at the two styles of planting, that machine will do twice the amount of acres with three people instead of 16. It’ll save 80% of our labor, we get quicker crops, so we can turn the ground quicker and get more crops per year in the ground.”

PlantTape, which is owned by Tanimura & Antle, began commercially selling the machine in February, and is showed it off during Spreckels Field Days in July. The field tours allowed current and potential buyers to see the company’s operations and products.

“We’re showing it off here, and hopefully getting some orders out the door,” Antle said. “It’s pretty limitless. Corn is the only thing that doesn’t work, but I don’t know why you’d want to transplant corn.”

Although the process requires less labor, they do require more skilled labor. For instance, the Robovator, which is primarily managed by farm support supervisor John Louie, operates with a camera that requires a skilled hand.

“There’s a certain light wave that plants reflect that the soil absorbs,” Louie said. “That’s how the computers are determining what’s plant material and what’s soil. The next step is based on size. What the machine is doing is identifying what is plant matter and then determines the diameter of the plants individually, and chooses what is a plant and is a weed.”

The Robovator works well with items planted with the PlantTape process, because of the uniformity the plant’s more mature root system.

“There’s a few different reasons PlantTape works so well with the Robovator,” Louie said. “The consistent spacing is so important, that works well with the machine, and then the uniformity of the plants helps the machine determine what is plant and what is weed.”

“This isn’t about getting rid of jobs,” vice president of brand marketing and communications Samantha Cabaluna said. “This is about how do you grow this stuff with reduced availability of labor and elevating those roles to someone like John Louie.”

Louie agreed that agriculture technology education is increasingly valuable.

“On the farm, there are mechanical jobs these days,” he said. “We’re trying to find the operators and provide more opportunity in complex technologies like this.”