'Autonomous growing is here to stay at Agrigar'

Eduardo Ordaz has been responsible for all the tomatoes for about twelve years, where he manages both production and packaging activities at Agrigar. The company is located in central Mexico and produces tomatoes for the American company Mastronardi, which sells the tomatoes in the United States and Canada. “Both the owner and I love working with new technologies to increase and improve production,” says Ordaz. “That is how we came across Autonomous Growing.”

Six-month trial
At the end of 2023, Ronald Hoek, CEO of Blue Radix visited Agrigar, where he introduced Crop Controller and talked more about Autonomous Growing. Ordaz was immediately interested, he says. “We are always busy here at the company. There are around 150 employees working here, but I never really have the time to visit them and see and hear how things are going. This is where Autonomous Growing offers a solution. If I don't have to spend so much time setting and adjusting the climate computer, I can focus more on the people and the crop.” Agrigar therefore decided to start with a six-month trial period. “We wanted to find out whether the system really had added value for us.”

Ordaz had not worked with Artificial Intelligence before, he says. “It was really new for me, and I didn't really know what to expect. In the beginning I had quite a lot of questions and I was afraid that I would do something wrong. But Blue Radix gave me good support and pointed out the things I should pay attention to. This guidance is very valuable, because you know that someone with a lot of knowledge and experience is watching over your shoulder. As a result, I started to trust the system more and more and noticed that very little can actually go wrong.”

All doubts disappeared
According to Ordaz, that trust is very important to be able to work successfully with Crop Controller. “The trust has to grow; you have to get used to the new way of working. I always checked if everything was in order and working properly and now suddenly, I had to leave that to an AI-software solution. But when I saw that it actually worked and that the system did what it was supposed to do, all doubts disappeared and I knew that I could leave a lot of my work to Crop Controller without having to worry about it. It now really feels like we are a team together with Blue Radix. And two people always make better decisions than one.” After a few months of testing, Ordaz is now convinced that Autonomous Growing is here to stay within the company.

“It feels good to work with the system and fewer mistakes are made. And at the same time, I have more time for other things. So, we have decided to definitely continue with it and I actually expect it to only get better. It is a learning system, so the more data Crop Controller processes, the better the decisions become.”

Light and crop protection
Although Agrigar has only been working with Crop Controller for a few months, Ordaz is already looking forward to additions to the system. “We will certainly use the new Autonomous Irrigation Control. I also hope for features on crop protection. We will try out any development that improves our tomato production. I also see we will be able to make very accurate harvest forecasts, so that we can manage production even better.”

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