📈 Unlocking the Secrets of Successful Strawberry Farming
Bridging the Gap Between Technology and Agriculture | FruitCast
Farmers worldwide have always needed to be prepared for unexpected environmental and operational changes that affect their crops.
FruitCast is aiming to solve one of the largest and pivotal problems the industry is facing today; Yield Forecasting. It's yet to be solved by growers over the UK due to its complexity. The sheer number of variables involved, the scale of the crop and the unmovable timelines set by factors such as crop perishability all contribute to an unpredictable harvest estimate.
On top of all of these issues, we're all left at the mercy of the weather forecast. Temperature and light play a big role in the growth of a crop. For strawberries, these growth factors have significant impact on harvestable yield weeks ahead of occurrence. These are just a few of the factors that play a part in yield forecasting, it's obvious why it remains a difficult problem to solve through traditional approaches.
Accurately forecasting yields has been a challenge for generations of farmers, as the complexities of large-scale farming are deeply intertwined with the unpredictable nature of biology and the impact of the environments they are grown in. At FruitCast, we've spent years refining our software to bridge the gap between technology and the realities of the crops being grown. Through numerous iterations, we recognized that creating a truly effective solution required more than just sophisticated algorithms - it needed to adapt and respond to the living systems at its core. This commitment to aligning our technology with the biologies in the growing environments and providing personal feedback to our customers has been central to our approach and has helped us unlock large-scale forecasting for growers.
Insights from One of Our Trusted Farmers
"FruitCast is the most advanced strawberry forecasting platform available in the Soft Fruit Industry. It is exceptionally user-friendly, and the team is remarkably responsive to changes.
- UK Strawberry Grower
Navigating the Complexities of Strawberry Production
The agricultural community is experiencing a significant shift from traditional farming methods to a more tech-driven approach. Moving forward, we will see this more and more as the requirement to improve our processes increases.
This evolution has been fuelled by the pressures of lower margins, rising labour costs, and increasingly unpredictable seasons, which have pushed the need for innovation. These challenges have strengthened the synergy between human expertise and digital tools. Leading to farming practices that are not only more productive but also more sustainable, driving greater efficiency across the industry.
Farmers have faced an overwhelming influx of technology promising to simplify their harvest and boost yields, but many solutions have fallen short. At FruitCast, we understand the need for real, impactful change. Our software is designed to deliver real value by fixing a real world issue. Ensuring that you see tangible improvements in your crop yield and farming practices.
Traditionally, farmers have relied on historical weather data and manually recording the number of berries by physically walking through polytunnels. FruitCast honours traditional approaches and accelerates them with scale, by looking at millions of crops per day instead of hundreds, bringing traditional methods into the modern age.
FruitCast is the Key 🔑
For generations, farmers have used these labour-intensive methods because no commercial solution was available. Accurate yield forecasts are difficult to achieve, often leading to financial losses if the timing is off. Manual data capture is time-consuming and prone to high variability. FruitCast is the only solution that addresses these challenges comprehensively after listening to UK farmer's specific issues and pain points.
"The existing yield forecasting system, which relies on growers, is extremely inaccurate across the industry, and it requires substantial improvement. Forecasting is crucial to the reduction of physical and financial waste and is singularly the largest challenge the industry currently faces."
- UK Marketing Desk
Scale is the key. With the FruitCast system, you create a digital twin of your farm. Once created, any action you take on farm can be monitored and collaboratively viewed. Before each harvest, recording a simple video and uploading it to the dashboard unlocks AI-driven assessment. That digitalises the number and maturity of each berry from flower to ripeness, predicting yield on a berry-by-berry basis. Our advanced computer vision systems analyse every pixel, and our in house experts work with you to achieve the most accurate forecasts. The harmony of AI and human expertise enables new insights to be generated.
We combine these figures with the most accurate weather forecasting available to growers, predicting the temperatures your berries will face throughout the season, inside and outside the growing environments.
We understand the issues farmers are facing today, working with our early access partners, we're optimising the development of features that add value and optimise day-to-day processes. Yield forecasts are fundamental to the day-to-day operation of a farm, utilising more accurate forecasts, growers can better optimise the distribution of labour, ensure good governance and safety practices, up-skill current workforces to guarantee a level of service, reduce waste and increase margins.
This process predicts the optimal harvest time, assesses plant health, and estimates the yield ready for market. This precise data is essential for increasing your revenue and reducing waste. If you're interested in learning more, or signing up as one of our early access partners, please contact us via https://fruitcast.co.uk.
