Costa turns to AI to reduce the guesswork in growing fruit

Costa Group is turning to artificial intelligence to fight drought and negotiate better deals with Australia’s biggest super­market chains.

Costa Group chief executive Harry Debney. Picture: Aaron Francis

Costa Group, the nation’s leading grower, packer and marketer of fresh fruit and vegetables, is turning to artificial intelligence to fight drought and negotiate better deals with Australia’s biggest super­market chains.

Costa has partnered with agtech company The Yield Technology Solutions to introduce AI systems across eight berry farms in NSW, Queensland and Tasmania.

The technology, called Sensing+, combines sensors and analytics to provide information and predictions via apps to assist farmers on when to irrigate, feed, plant, protect and harvest.

Costa chief executive Harry Debney said the partnership was a key step in the company becoming a data-driven business, which would help it negotiate better prices for its produce with Australia’s major supermarkets such as Coles and Woolworths.

“Accurate yield prediction allows us to optimise our costs and achieve better prices when negotiating with our customers,” Mr Debney said, adding that Costa supplied all the major Australian supermarket chains and independent grocers.

“We aim to better understand and manage the specific growing conditions that improve the quantity and quality of our yields. Our berries are grown in tunnels and Sensing+ measures the growing conditions in our microclimates and uses AI to give us in-tunnel weather predictions.

“We are also rolling out the Sensing+ Yield Predictions module which predicts our berry yields using AI and data from both our harvest management systems and the microclimate weather. We have been impressed with the ­accuracy achieved to date compared with our current manual ­approach.”

Costa’s adoption of AI technology follows it bringing forward prunings and the removal of some blueberry and raspberry crops last month to protect the harvest and put a clamp on water use to combat drought at its berry farm in ­Corindi on NSW’s north coast.

Ros Harvey, founder and managing director of The Yield, expected the use of AI to strengthen Costa’s bottom line.

“Using Costa’s extensive data sets, our platform enables us to quickly and efficiently combine data to create AI models for things like Yield Predictions that will drive significant commercial benefit for Costa Group,” she said.

At Corindi, Costa said it was ­focusing on protecting its perennial blueberry crop, which would be pruned and require less water, while a portion of the raspberry crop would be pulled out.

“The continuing ­severe dry and hot conditions in northern NSW had required careful crop management at Costa’s Corindi berry farm for a number of months,” the company said at the time. “With no significant rainfall during spring and early summer, prudent use of available water from our network of dams, ­including our largest dam, which in recent years had its capacity ­expanded to circa 900ml, until now allowed the company to maintain near normal production and harvest patterns.”

Despite the Corindi farm facing earnings losses, the company has maintained its overall forecasts for the 2020 calendar year.