From seeds to tomatoes: Intel and partners help shape the future of sustainable agriculture

Intel technology helps farms get fresh produce to consumers faster and more sustainably

By using Intel technology, Nature Fresh Farms can monitor the entire growth cycle of agricultural products from "seed" to "commodity".

In life, many things are common to everyone, such as walking into a supermarket and buying a box of fresh strawberries.

But getting fresh produce to consumers is increasingly difficult due to climate change, supply chain complexity, and rising costs. More than $1 trillion of perishable food goes directly from farms to landfills each year, the equivalent of about 130 billion meals. And that number continues to rise.

From planting to displaying on the shelf, a series of processes are required to deliver delicious berries to consumers. A company called Nature Fresh Farms ® is paying close attention to every step of the process.

Nature Fresh Farm's headquarters and its greenhouse cover an area of ​​about 910 acres. The agricultural products grown include bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, etc. The annual retail sales volume is as high as 325 million pounds, or about 3 billion yuan.

Nature Fresh Farms, powered by Intel technology, helps growers make real-time decisions using sensors, cameras, computers, and AI

As one of Canada's largest independent greenhouse produce growers, Nature Fresh Farms grows crops year-round and provides consumers with fresh produce. How do they do it?

Thanks to the support of Intel technology, Nature Fresh Farms helps growers make real-time decisions through precise planting methods, such as the frequency and amount of irrigation, monitoring the optimal freshness of crops and harvesting time, all of which are based on sensors, cameras, computers and AI.

Healthy products, green environment, responsible business

Keith Bradley, vice president of information technology at Nature Fresh Farms, cleverly compares the growth patterns of plants to the growth patterns of humans . "For an average person, in order to stay in top shape, he needs to eat three meals a day at regular times. The same is true for plant growth. They need nutrients at specific times and in specific ways to achieve optimal growth." However, unlike humans, plants cannot directly express their needs. Therefore, the key to helping them grow is to observe and interpret the subtle clues in the plant's growth process to understand what conditions they need at any given moment.

Bradley stressed that a major challenge in agricultural production is to cope with the uncertainty of climate change. So how does Nature Fresh Farms solve this problem? They deploy more than 2,000 sensors and cameras to monitor every plant from sowing to the product leaving the factory. Every detail of the plant's growth process, including temperature, sunlight, plant size and shape and other key data, is fully recorded.

These massive amounts of data are transformed into valuable insights to help growers decide on data such as irrigation amounts, ensuring optimal plant growth while also saving costs by saving water resources. All of this is inseparable from the support of Intel technology. Intel® Xeon® processors provide the computing power needed to process data, while the OpenVINO toolkit uses the built-in accelerators of Xeon processors for efficient inference of AI models. The greenhouse data collection, processing, and analysis work that used to take two to three hours to complete can now be completed in just 30 minutes at Nature Fresh Farms.

Bradley said the technology enables farms to "optimize the entire growth cycle, allowing farms to grow plants that are healthier from the root to the base, which not only significantly increases yields, but also makes the produce taste better."

AI takes good care of every tomato

AI plays a key role in Nature Fresh Farms’ end-to-end solution.

Take tomato planting as an example. When tomato seeds are planted, sensors begin to monitor the growth of plants. At the same time, AI algorithms optimized by OpenVINO can predict the diverse needs of plants at any given moment. For example, if AI predicts that the weather will warm up significantly, it will provide customized irrigation for plants during the hottest period of the day. Through careful monitoring of the environment, the first tomato will mature in six weeks. Once the AI-driven sensor detects that the size and color of the tomato meet the standards, it will send a harvesting instruction.

Once tomatoes are harvested, getting them to store shelves quickly is key to maintaining their freshness and quality. Instead of manual inspection during packaging, an AI sorting system analyzes images of produce to assess quality and ensure maturity standards are met. Using an Intel-powered system, Nature Fresh Farms has reduced pre-sorting and packaging time from 45 seconds to 8 seconds, and can deliver fresh produce to grocery stores within 24 to 48 hours, much faster than the industry average of four to ten days. Bradley explains that Nature Fresh Farms' technology application "not only ensures that produce like strawberries are delicious, but also ensures that these products remain fresh from picking to enjoying them. We need to ensure that these produce grows healthily on the vine so that when they are picked from the vine, they are just as healthy and delicious to eat."

The benefit of fully monitoring the greenhouse environment is that growers can trace the entire process from crop sowing to store shelves, such as who picked each plant, which row it grew in, how much water and light it received, etc. Once a problem occurs, growers can quickly locate the source without shutting down the entire farm or recalling an entire batch of agricultural products. This optimized process benefits from the efficient reasoning capabilities of the AI ​​model provided by Intel Xeon processors, providing faster and smarter insights for greenhouse operations, and ultimately helping farms save time and costs.

Using technology to grow tomatoes

Agriculture might not traditionally be a field that people would associate with technology.

Bradley said that the founding philosophy of Nature Fresh Farms is to constantly explore and think, such as "How can we do better with the help of technology? We are never afraid of failure." In order to maintain this active and healthy mindset, Nature Fresh Farms has specially allocated a part of the greenhouse for research and development, where growers can test new leading technologies.

Nature Fresh Farm’s R&D also involves innovation and experimentation with different types of produce. “When testing 20 different tomato varieties, we can find the one that tastes the best, but the data tells us it won’t last long on the shelf. So, it all comes back to the data itself, which helps us make better decisions.”

Technology helps farming

Although Nature Fresh Farms embraces technology with a positive attitude, not all growers are the same. Bradley said that many growers are hesitant to accept technology, fearing that it will take them away from traditional field work and turn them to computer screens, which is inconsistent with their expectations and love for farming. But he said that many people were surprised to find that technology actually made their work easier rather than replacing their important role in the field.

Bradley said that with the help of AI and technology, "growers can go back to the greenhouse and see the plants, feel the environment they are growing in, and touch them with their hands," ultimately, technology takes over the tedious and complicated work.

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