An automated lettuce thinner designed by Brawley grower Mike Sudduth and his partner works a field in Salinas. - Photo provided by Sudduth Farms Inc.
Crop Thinning
Automation
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to manually thin a lettuce crop, but apparently being inventive can make the process much more efficient. That is why one local grower and his Salinas-based partner developed a computercontrolled, robotic system that gets the job done faster, cheaper and, as a bonus, improves the yields. Mike Sudduth of Brawley came up with the idea for the system now used on his farm and that of his partner, Costa and Sons, in Salinas after the mechanical, or automated thinners, he tried didn’t adequately do the job. So, he did what he said farmers routinely do. “Farmers here are pretty notorious for inventing what they need on the farm when they need it,” said Sudduth, who is an Imperial Valley Vegetable Growers Association Advisory Board member. Typically, lettuce seeds are planted close together to ensure enough seedlings sprout for the crop. When seedlings grow, they are thinned to about a foot apart so there is enough space for the lettuce to mature. The thinning is commonly done manually with a hoe. Yet there has been a proliferation of automated thinners coming to market because the cost of labor has skyrocketed while farm labor is becoming more difficult to find. Early mechanical lettuce thinners tried to replicate the motion of a hoe cutting out unwanted seedlings. However, Sudduth found they had a tendency to nick or damage the remaining plants. And worse, he said, mechanical thinners were worthless after a storm or on wet ground. So, he decided to come up with something he could design specifically for his fields. The partners’ idea was an automated system to burn out unwanted plants with a heavy dose of fertilizer. “Nobody was making anything like it,” Sudduth said, so he experimented by walking through his fields with a backpack sprayer to determine the amount of fertilizer needed, how long to spray and other field specifics. Then, Sudduth and Costa worked with San Diego tech CONTINUED | PAGE 37
30
Spring 2019