Harvest technology provider AgPick Technology’s picking app has evolved to help growers, including tree crop producers identify and act on productivity peaks and troughs to gain control over labour expenses.

Chief executive officer Henrietta Child said the app captured specific data to provide real-time productivity and quality issues in a rolling dashboard.

“It has always been our mission to help growers take control of their harvest data. Productivity data is not always available nor transparent from labour hire providers. With the introduction of more demanding piece-rate regulations in 2022, growers need to see who the fastest and slowest pickers are and respond during the harvest.

“They also need to know who picked produce with defects so they can provide immediate support or take other action,” she said.

“All pickers start off fast but, by the end of the day, some slow down. If growers can easily see picking performance, they can decide who to send home early, who to keep on and how to move people to other jobs. Ignoring poor productivity at the mandatory rates is at their farm’s cost. Growers want the best performance out of pickers.

Feedback from AgPick’s productivity table includes frequency and severity of picking errors. Its piece-rate calculator and recording feature captures all activities such as harvest start, stop and break times and crop work outside harvest periods.

“With apples picked into bins for instance, AgPick now recognises the bin as an ‘asset’ in the system. We can report what’s in the bin, the quality of the produce and where it’s stored. This information can be scanned in the field or the packhouse,” Ms Child said.

AgPick records different piece-rates for different jobs on multiple blocks, all of which can be exported to payroll. The system supports hourly and piece-rate operations and allows workers to easily move between hourly, 76-hour rule and piece-rates as they gained experience.

“It’s no longer enough for any system to simply count bins or rely on labour hire companies to manage labour,” Ms Child said.

“AgPick is easy to use and intuitive, flexible and enables the grower to manage different crops that have different picking processes within the same system. It can easily be configured for any fresh produce setting where hand picking is involved.

AgPick Technology was established in South Australia in 2017 in response to a need for harvesting efficiency and accountability in the horticultural sector. Its AgPick app is at the forefront of global picking technologies and the agtech revolution.