Tanimura & Antle’s has become one of the largest specialty crop grower in California and the U.S., thanks in part to the hard work of farmers and a tech-forward mindset that brought agtech advancements into the field to improve operations and cut costs, representatives shared during a visit to the farm’s headquarters.
Tanimura & Antle’s headquarters is located in Salinas, California, where the grower produces lettuce, cilantro, parsley, and other specialty crops. The headquarters was the first stop as part of the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit’s Innovation in Action tour, which also included a visit to Reservoir Farms’ Salinas agtech incubator.
During the tour, Tanimura & Antle demonstrated of its PlantTape planting technology and machines from laser-weeding company Carbon Robotics and precision cultivator and weeder Stout.
While it has leaned into agtech innovation, the specialty crop grower also invested in traditional agriculture technology like drip irrigation to manage input costs, explained Scott Grabau, president and CEO of Tanimura & Antle.
“We saved about 70% of our fertiliser inputs by just drip irrigation. So, when we talk about technology, that is a technology. It is just like the rubber on your tires,” he elaborated.
From agtech user to supplier: Inside PlantTape
Tanimura & Antle is not only an agtech user — the grower is also an agtech provider.
The grower purchased the planting technology company PlantTape in 2014, after discovering the technology in Spain. Over the years, Tanimura & Antle developed the tech to the point where it has “customers all around the world,” and is now used on roughly 5,000 acres of the growers’ farms, explained Erik Heacox, senior director of farm support services for Tanimura & Antle.
PlantTape is a semi-automated planter, which takes plants from the nursery to the open fields, Heacox explained. A traditional carousel planter would require a crew of approximately 25 people, with a person feeding the carousel and farm workers walking behind the carousel to correct planting errors, he added.
“A traditional transplanter could do about an acre an hour on a good day with those 25 people. PlantTape, with each one of these machines, I can do about an acre and a half,” Heacox elaborated.
Digital platforms to improve machinery uptime
The specialty crop grower also partnered with Canadian digital farming company Intelliculture, which helps managers respond to machine and labour challenges, said Alfred Eaton, farm manager for Tanimura & Antle.
The technology works with a series of GPS devices that attach to ag vehicles that tracks performance data and feeds it into a dashboard, Eaton explained. Additionally, Tanimura & Antle are working with Intelliculture to create reports tailored to specific farm managers, sharing information that is most relevant to their job role.
“Intelliculture provides live feedback to farm managers to be able to know when there is an issue with the machinery. [The issue] can be reported directly from the operators to our shop manager and mechanics, as well as the farm manager, so they can work together to make sure we decrease machinery downtime when there [are] breakdowns or issues,” he elaborated.
