Around the globe, growers are looking for new technologies to make fruit production more labor-efficient.
This week, a tour group of growers, crop advisors and technology developers from the Netherlands visited Washington to compare notes. The trip, coordinated by the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission, is part of its ongoing collaboration with the Dutch fruit industry.
The tour included visits to Washington State University research farms, progressive growers and equipment manufacturers.
At an Allan Bros. ranch in the Yakima Valley, process improvement manager Matt Miles hosted the group to talk about forays into precision crop load management and how vision technologies are developing tools to help.
“We’re all trying to solve the same things,” said Miles, a member of the research commission board.
While technology was the primary focus, growers also compared notes on pear psylla management, a top challenge in both countries, and on soil health research, which is emerging as an important issue in both regions.
“It’s good to take in a different environment and see different things,” said Peter Frans de Jong, a horticulture researcher at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands. “We can learn from each other, that’s the cool thing about this collaboration.”
Check out our pear issue in September for more coverage of the tour and its horticultural and technology exchange.
—by Kate Prengaman
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