By Roland Piquepaille
Not only this article from the Jerusalem Post easily wins my 'Best Title of the Month' award, but it will teach you everything you ever wanted to know about lettuce. [Warning: you might be asked to register -- for free .] For example, did you now that California and Arizona produce more than 95% of U.S. lettuce? But even if the appetite of the market for lettuce is growing, the production season is still limited to a few months per year. This is where a small Israeli company, OrganiTECH, intervenes. Using robotics, farming software, and hydroponic and environmental systems, the company says that lettuce producers can now create the conditions of springtime all year around, meaning you'll always have a fresh salad at your local supermarket whatever the season. Read more...If you don't want to register on the Jerusalem site, you might be luckier with this printer-friendly page.
Now, let's start with some facts about the lettuce market.
The US produces more lettuce than any other country except China, says the USDA, and nearly all of it comes from Salinas Valley, California, known as the salad bowl of the world. Americans aren't the only ones eating lettuce, either. The US exported $226 million worth in 2002, primarily to Canada and Mexico, as well as to Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.
California and Arizona produce 96% of the country's commercial iceberg and romaine lettuce, and 98% of its leaf lettuce. In fact, US lettuce production has risen 16% since 1992, and the soaring popularity of romaine lettuce (a staple of Caesar salads and bagged salad mixes) has led to a 162% production increase in the past 12 years.
"Lettuce has become like bread," says Lior Hessel, a Technion-trained robotics engineer who has been applying his expertise to lettuce production. "It has to be on the supermarket shelves 12 months a year."
But it's not that easy to grow lettuce during all year. So Hessel and his brother, Ohad, started a few years ago to use hydroponics to grow salads.
What the Hessels discovered in their investigations was the use of hydroponics -- cultivating produce using water -- and a clever method for growing this watery vegetable. Using robotic concepts applied to agriculture, the Hessels created indoor fields, planting Styrofoam beds with plugs of lettuce that are rotated over recirculated, nutrient-filled water for four to five weeks. The crop beds, which are 35 meters long and 2.5 meters wide, are housed in an environmentally controlled, 40-foot container that uses artificial light, or a greenhouse that uses natural sunlight. Because all growth takes place indoors, the lettuce can be grown 12 months a year. Planting, harvesting and packaging are performed by intelligent robots, monitored by a computerized control center.
Here is an example of such a robotic bench used to grow lettuce (Credit: OrganiTECH).
Please read the rest of the article to discover more about the technology and let's look at some numbers about the market for this new technology.
At around $180,000 for a greenhouse version, and nearly double that for a container using artificial light, the hydroponic platforms can produce 150,000 to 400,000 heads of lettuce per year, which is also an expensive proposition, admits Hessel. Then again, the system can lead to a reduction of up to 80% in heating and labor costs -- two of the most serious expenditures in the greenhouse industry.
The company already received about $6 million from angel investors and the Nasdaq Stock Market. So far, it expects its sales will reach $1 to $2 million in 2004, and becoming profitable soon.
If you're interested in this 'field,' you might want to readtwo former related entries, "'Agrobots' Go to the Farm" or "Futuristic Farming."
Sources: Jessica Steinberg, The Jerusalem Post, November 4, 2004; and various websites
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