How Farm Inventory Management Has Evolved with Agritech Solutions

Managing inventory is a challenging process for fruit and crop businesses. The traditional approach of manually tallying and monitoring inventory across diverse storage facilities is not only labour-intensive but also susceptible to counting errors. These inaccuracies frequently result in logistical bottlenecks, compromising operational efficiency and leading to product deterioration and supply chain disruptions.

Counting Mistakes Cost Money

Manual counting often leads to mistakes. When workers experience counting fatigue or are rushed, they might count wrongly, leading to problems that increase cost and wastage. Examples of this include:

• Setting aside too much or too little storage space
• Miscalculating how much fruit to sell
• Not knowing when fruit need to be moved or sold

Human Labour is Evolving

Young people are increasingly moving to cities, and farms will find it harder to find workers. The value of workers lie in their judgement and ability to make decisions in a context that is unique to each business. As farms move towards towards a knowledge-based approach, routine tasks like inventory counting are increasingly being outsourced to technology.

Image: Farmer counting pineapples manually

How AI Systems Count Farm Inventory

Farms have turned to agritech solutions using computer vision AI for their agriculture inventory management needs. This approach typically uses cost-effective camera systems strategically positioned throughout storage facilities to monitor inventory. AI analyses these visual inputs to deliver precise stock counts and monitoring information. An alternative to this approach is running photos taken by humans through AI models to get the inventory count.

The Benefits of Tech-Assisted Inventory Tracking

Beyond inventory counting, the same set-up can also be used to track other areas of farm and agriculture operations, such as

• Spotting signs of fruit going bad early
• Tracking the batches of fruit that need to be sold first
• Monitoring storage conditions like temperature

Making Better Business Decisions

Having accurate inventory counts helps farm operations managers and owners make smarter decisions about:

• Determining the optimal harvest time for fruit
• Estimating required storage space
• Scheduling the sale of different produce batches
• Planning future growing seasons effectively

While utilising agritech solutions helps with the routine counting work, farm managers and workers can focus on making important decisions using this accurate information. This combination of human expertise and agriculture technology helps farms run more efficiently and profitably.

For farms looking to modernise their operations, AI inventory counting systems offer a practical way to better use labour while improving accuracy and reducing waste.

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