Hello everyone! I’m Shohei.
This column is about what I felt and experienced at a plant factory in Japan.
When you’ve been in the field for over 10 years, a lot of things happen. I write freely about what I remember.
Please feel free to read it while thinking, “Wow, that’s how Japanese plant factories work.”
The hidden horror of tipburn for plant factory staff
When tipburn occurs, the product value decreases.
However, tipburn is a fine line between improving productivity and improving productivity. If you are constantly trying to increase your yield through trial and error, things will inevitably happen.
However, when you find yourself in a situation where the number of tipburns increases day by day,
“Wow…that’s the worst…”
It’s an indescribably depressing feeling.
As a producer in the field, I think the real fear of tipburn is the length of time it will take to work.
For example, let’s say you’re growing 10,000 plants and 800%, or 8,000 of them, have tipburn. The most impactful task is trimming, which adds about 5 seconds per plant to remove tipburn.
This means approximately 11 hours of additional work.
Approximately two additional personnel will be required, but it is not easy to arrange them.
In most cases, you will be temporarily working with full-time employees who have low hurdles for working overtime.
However, it would be the worst if you were forced to deal with tipburn every day and it became a regular occurrence.
Your various tasks may become stagnant and you may not be able to focus on your original role, which is to improve your tipburn and increase productivity. That’s all I want to avoid.
On the other hand, it is not healthy to be too afraid of tipburn and not be able to make aggressive growth improvements.
Therefore, you will be more sensitive to tipburn on a daily basis.
The most panicky thing is when you don’t really understand why tipburns are increasing.
When you are changing the cultivation environment to be more aggressive with the aim of increasing Yield, you can respond calmly even if tipburn appears, thinking, “I guess it just happened.”
However, if tipburn starts appearing at an unexpected time, it is a big deal. If you don’t know the reason, your response may be delayed.
Knowing the fear, when something like that happens, you have to rush to find out the cause.
This column was published in a collection of know-how to improve on-site skills.
This column is included in the Plant Factory Know-How Collection below.
This know-how collection is packed with useful tips to help you increase profitability, regardless of the specifications or equipment on-site.
This is a must-read for those operating plant factories or indoor farms. Implement the know-how to increase profitability.
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