Research Summary: How many hours does it take to operate a vertical farm?

From seeding to maintenance, how many hours per week does it really take to grow produce year-round?

When we got down to timing individual tasks with a good old fashioned stopwatch, we used a diverse team with varying degrees of horticulture experience to mimic customers of all experiences.

The Why

Those of us in the vertical farming industry know that labour is one of the largest operating expenses. While there are fancy robots being made to make harvesting more efficient, there are still short term solutions that can help reduce labour hours in the meantime.

Growcer’s R&D team needed to quantify: How many hours does it actually take to grow year-round in a Growcer farm?

With a benchmark of hours, we could better understand

• Where can we save time?

• Are there any tasks we can do more efficiently?

• Does it take more or less time than what we communicate (25-30 hours/week)?

The What

We used two models to calculate the work required to operate one of our farms:

1. The “Annual” model calculates the annual, monthly, and weekly predicted labour requirements for a farm growing a single crop type (for example, only lettuce).

2. The “Raft” model calculates the incremental addition of labour required for adding one raft of a specific crop into our farm. This model allows for a customized production schedule (who only wants lettuce?) and a better understanding of the labour required for our standard crop mix (most customers choose to grow 5 to 6 different varieties in their farms).

Each model has fixed and variable labour tasks.

• Fixed tasks: Tasks that occur irrespective of the number of rafts in the farm. An example would be weekly system maintenance, like calibrating sensors.

• Variable tasks: Tasks that scale with the number of rafts, and are further estimated based on the required output. An example would be packaging time required for a crop based on its projected yields.

We broke our model down into 5 main tasks, each with a number of sub-tasks to accurately reflect daily system operation. It is the equivalent of breaking down your work day based on every action - from typing an email to making a phone call.

When we got down to timing individual tasks with a good old fashioned stopwatch, we used a diverse team with varying degrees of horticulture experience.

This is important because we know our customers range from green thumb enthusiasts to people with farming experience. Having a diverse team for our labour timing trials ensures we have accurate representation of how much time it will take. Plus, it gives us more confidence when communicating with customers of all skill levels