For a long time, cultivation manager Martijn van der Giessen of The Valley thought that Autonomous Growing was only something for growers outside the Netherlands. But since his introduction to Crop Controller from Blue Radix, he knows better. Although he is still discovering the system, his confidence has grown rapidly. “With Crop Controller, I have more time for other important things in the greenhouse.”
Martijn van der Giessen (36) is location manager at tomato nursery South Valley in Vierpolders (the Netherlands), which is part of The Valley. In total, The Valley has about 56 hectares where they grow tomatoes and cucumbers. Martijn is responsible for 8 hectares. “I am involved in all the ins and outs of what is happening at South Valley. I have to ensure that the budgets are met, the company functions optimally and the employees have sufficient challenge and can grow in their role.”
‘Supporting and optimization’
In articles in the trade media, Martijn and his colleagues at The Valley read about Blue Radix and Autonomous Growing. “At the time, I saw it mainly as a solution for growers abroad. In general, Dutch companies have a lot of knowledge and experience, which made me think that growers in other countries needed it more. But at The Valley, we are always very interested in new technology that can support us and, above all, make us better. That’s why we started to delve more into the topic of Autonomous Growing and ended up with Crop Controller.”
Blue Radix’s Crop Controller helps growers autonomously control the climate and irrigation in the greenhouse, using algorithms. The system ensures that about 80% of the repetitive manual actions on the climate computer are taken care of and are optimized based on the data from the greenhouse and local weather information. “After the first conversations with Blue Radix, we were immediately positive,” says Martijn. “Getting to know the people behind it was very nice and the program is very user-friendly. Moreover, there werent’ all kinds of promises being made, which is where we usually walk away. Blue Radix indicated that Crop Controller helps to make smarter choices, resulting in higher level of efficiency and time saving, among other things. But they also indicated that we had to experience that for ourselves. That approach appealed to us.”
Martijn had a critical mindset going in. “The system had to convince me. But of course, you hope that Crop Controller will do it better than you do and make the work easier. The idea that we could also achieve better production supported by data is interesting to us, the system will have to show us the end-results. We want to grow to more than 100 hectares in the coming years. Will that be possible with the people we have now? Yes, but that will be a challenge. With Crop Controller, I expect to be able to control multiple locations by myself. As a company, we welcome that support.”
Stay off the buttons
At South Valley, Crop Controller has been used for about five months now and Martijn is getting acquainted with the possibilities. “The biggest challenge was mainly to hand over tasks to the program and to stay away from the buttons as much as possible. I am a grower through and through. Sometimes you look at the computer and see that Crop Controller makes different choices than you would do yourself. Who is right in that situation? In the beginning I was inclined to manually change settings, but over time I have learned to let the system do its job. You have to gain experience with Crop Contoller to grow your confidence.”
The support of our Autonomous Greenhouse Manager Geert van der Wel also helped with that, says Martijn. “Sometimes I have questions about the settings, or I want to know why a certain choice is made. Geert helps with this and can also confirm that things are going well. It’s nice to have someone with technical knowledge and a background in cultivation to monitor the situation, especially in the beginning.” Martijn’s confidence in the system has grown. “I really like that we can look a few days ahead and see what the system is going to do. That gives me something to hold on to.”
Time savings
After the first few months, Martijn is satisfied with Crop Controller. “The system accurately implements our strategy and is running non-stop in one department. It has convinced us so far. We deliberately started slowly and see it as a solution that contributes to the further development of our company. We are going to expand that step by step.” Because Martijn is now responsible for one location, it saves him some time. “But if I have to manage several locations in the future, it will save me a lot more time, I’m certain of that.”
