U.S. Specialty Crops at a Crossroad

Resource, Sep 2008 by Burks, Thomas F, Schmoldt, Daniel L, Steiner, Jeffrey J

Hi-tech or else?

Numerous U.S. specialty crops are facing growing domestic and global market pressures that threaten their long-term viability. For instance, Brazilian citrus growers can produce, process, and ship juice to Floridian markets cheaper than Florida growers under the current tariff system. For many growers, labor expenses represent 40 to 60 percent of production costs. High labor costs, uncertain labor pools, limited access to international markets, and increased competition could eliminate numerous specialty crop industries within the next 10 years. This poses a serious threat to many rural communities and to national food security. Specialty crop production represents approximately 50 percent of the total value of U.S. crop production. For 2005, the retail value of U.S. specialty crops is estimated to have been around $60 billion.

Money matters

Most of these industries rely extensively on low-wage, seasonal, unskilled labor, which provides limited rural economic support. Socio-economic studies have firmly established that automation in any industrial sector creates more jobs for the overall economy than it eliminates. Automation reduces the number of repetitive-task, low-skill, and unsafe production jobs, while creating a whole new set of higher skill jobs in related manufacturing, support, service, and financial industries -and entirely new industries, in many cases, leading to greater economic prosperity.

Until late 1970s, land-grant universities and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) invested significant amounts of money in mechanization, robotics, and automation research and development (R&D). Since that time, federal support to improve production efficiency and farm safety through enhanced machine systems has greatly declined. Consequently, the R&D infrastructure for agricultural automation has significantly deteriorated over the past quarter century. It will take a serious commitment of resources to infuse U.S. research institutions with the personnel, facilities, and equipment to solve these labor problems.

Research needs

Because each individual segment of the specialty crop industry (e.g., wine/grape, potato, floriculture, etc.) represents only a relatively small portion of the overall specialty crop industry, many of their needs do not receive attention in national research programs. Consequently, they have organized during the past several years to collectively identify their common critical research needs. One area that has been identified by these industries is the need for tools and technologies that can improve production efficiency, product quality, and post-harvest operations, as well as reduce their environmental footprint from production and processing.

In April 2007, the USDA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) jointly sponsored a workshop on engineering-based solutions to bring together specialty crop leaders, technology providers, university faculty, federal research scientists, and numerous program leaders from various federal agencies. During the two-day event, grower groups identified crucial technology needs while the engineering community discussed science and technology readiness. Both fundamental and applied research needs were identified in addition to companion extension and education efforts (www.csrees.usda.gov/nea/ag_systems/ pdfs/specialty_crops_engineering.pdf):

1) New technologies for delivering and controlling the applications of chemicals and nutrients to improve efficacy, reduce cost, improve worker safety, and reduce environmental impacts.

2) Mechanization and robotic solutions, as appropriate, to improve worker productivity and thus minimize labor cost. (Such items as fruit thinning, pruning, spraying, and harvesting were identified by a number of commodities.)

3) Autonomous navigation systems that can be applied to harvesting, mowing, spraying, and utility vehicles.

4) Precision agriculture technologies for yield mapping, yield prediction, nutrient application, pesticide application, water management, etc.

5) Disease and pest monitoring and scouting by various approaches including space-based remote sensing, lowaltitude, and ground-based systems.

6) Nanotechnology-based sensors, biological sensors, and chemical-based sensors for monitoring plant health, nutrient/ moisture availability and uptake along with various forms of sensor networks.

7) Post-harvest operations, packaging, and food traceability and safety.

8) Value added by products, energy availability, conservation, and usage issues.

9) Data management, decision support systems, and diagnostic tools.

Multidisciplinary simpatico

Advances in automation, robotics, and instrumentation for the specialty crops industries will require multidisciplinary efforts across a wide range of scientific disciplines. Engineers, horticulturists, agronomists, pathologists, and economists will need to work in concert to produce specific solutions for vulnerable commodities while looking for broader applications across the entire agricultural sector. In addition to R&D efforts to create new machines and devices, there is also an urgent need to train a new cohort of agricultural and biological engineers in automation, sensing, and robotic technologies. Without an infusion of properly trained professionals and ongoing R&D, ultimately commercialization of newly developed technologies will falter.