Case study: How King City Nursery is combatting its labor issues

When Jeff Pereira graduated from California Polytechnic State University in the early 1990s, he had already spent seven years working for Rio Farms, the parent company of King City Nursery in King City, California. So when the company offered a full-time position upon graduation, he jumped at the opportunity.

“I knew it was a good opportunity, so I took it," he says.

Almost 30 years later, Pereira is still with the business as the Greenhouse Manager and is helping to shepherd it into its next phase. King City, located in the Salinas Valley, is one of the leading vegetable transplant businesses in the United States with 50 greenhouses and more than 1.5 million square feet of production space. Primarily, the company grows celery, cabbage, peppers and other crops as transplants for its parent company, Rio Farms, as well as for other farmers from Salinas valley to Yuma valley.

According to Pereira, water is an on-going issue for the business, as is the overall climate. The market is changing too, with organic products becoming more and more in demand. But, for right now and the future of the business, he says there is no bigger issue than labor.

"Labor, by far, is the biggest issue, we all face," Pereira says. “Our focus is figuring it out.”

A day in the life

According to Pereira, a "normal" workday for him is arriving at 5:45 a.m. and leaving around 6 p.m. He does this six days a week, year-round apart from a few days off here and there. Pereira, who grew up in and around agriculture because his father worked in the industry, says it's a grinding lifestyle that doesn't appeal to many people. But for those that it does, Pereira says has nothing but respect.

"I just try and create a family atmosphere where all of my employees want to be here. It’s hard work and I am lucky to have such a great team here." It's a productive group too; Pereira says the nursery sold 950 million plants in 2019, up from around 300 million five years prior.

To become more efficient, Greenhouse Manager Jeff Pereira says King City primarily uses a 234-cell tray from Proptek, as well as the 456-cell tray. The 456-cell tray improves efficiency because the higher cell count fits in the same space in the greenhouse.

Over the last few years, Pereira says, the number of migrant workers has dropped and cut into an already shrinking labor pool. Additionally, he says increases in the minimum wage are hurting the business. California has a $13 per hour minimum wage - $4.75 higher than the federal minimum wage. By 2022 the minimum wage will increase to $15/ per hour in California. Those changes, working hand-in-hand with the company ramping up production to meet demand, are what have driven King City to embrace automation.

"We have to look at automation," Pereira says. "We can't afford to do it the way we've been doing it, which is throwing people at the problem."

Incorporating new technologies

Pereira says that when automation was first introduced, he and the rest of King City's ownership recognized that it could be an essential tool in the on-going quest to become more productive with less labor.

"I love it," he says. "We are forward-looking and I'm here, every day, looking for ways to improve what we are doing. Maybe 10 years ago, that wasn't the case. We said 'we're doing OK and relying on the labor force. But as the labor force has decreased and the cost gets higher, we've adapted.”

Through Proptek, Pereira was introduced to the Dutch company Tolenaars Transplanting Services and consultant Rob Tolenaars a few years back. Tolenaars had been working in Europe, where automation in horticulture has been embraced for about 20 years and best practices had been established. Through a partnership with TTS, Pereira says key nursery tasks like cleaning trays and mowing down plants have become automated. His next project is fully automating the seedline, which Pereira ranks among the most labor-intensive tasks at the nursery. Proptek’s injection molded stacking trays facilitate the transition to automation due to their rigidity and design features which allow mechanical handling.   

King City and TTS have also partnered to design an automatic field transplanter for single and double row vegetable transplants. Mechanical transplanting is very labor-intensive, and the TTS double row machine can reduce the labor by 8-10 people per machine while planting at a comparable speed.

TTS is a leading provider of innovative, high quality and reliable automatic field transplanters for the horticultural and forestry industries. For many years, TTS has been delivering ground-breaking solutions for automatic transplanting for customers all over the world, which now includes the U.S. and Canada. With large savings and relatively low investment, it is possible to transplant efficiently with an indicative production of up to 6,000 plants per row per hour. 

The unique element within the machines is the patented integrated system. Each seedling can be removed from the propagation tray with a specially designed gripping head and then placed in a cup, ready for planting. A variety of crops can be planted, including vegetables, trees and sugarcane. With an automatic plant distance and easy depth control, the distances in the row can be easily adjusted. This means growers have an automatic transplanter that is very simple to use, compact, efficient and reliable. 

“TTS feels strongly about equipment innovation, flexibility and commitment to service. Our machines ensure great comfort for the worker,” Tolenaars says. “At TTS, it’s all about making things as easy as possible. We are very proud of working together with Proptek and King City to achieve this result for our customers.” To find out more, visit Go-automatic.com

"It's a huge investment for us, and it's going to be big for our company," Pereira says.

Right now, Pereira says automation is still in its beginning stages at the company. But the early changes have him excited as to what's next.