New tech alert: HarvestReplay uses labor data and audio podcasts to improve specialty crop management

What if your farm produced a daily podcast focused entirely on its own crops, employees and operations?

That’s the concept behind HarvestReplay, a new decision-support platform from Innov8.ag that transforms farm data into customized daily audio briefings for specialty crop growers.

Steve Mantle, founder of Innov8.ag, said the platform debuted in March and is currently being piloted by several commercial specialty crop operations. The pilot program is available for apple, cherry and blueberry growers and starts at $10,000 annually.

The platform’s initial focus is labor data, which Mantle said represents both the largest expense and one of the biggest management challenges facing specialty crop operations.

To reinforce the platform’s value to farm managers and crew leaders, HarvestReplay includes a money-back guarantee. Mantle said the company guarantees annual savings of at least $25,000 for farms with fewer than 100 employees, $100,000 for operations employing 100 to 999 workers and $250,000 for farms with more than 1,000 employees.

A labor-first approach

Data dashboards have long been part of modern farm management. Mantle said HarvestReplay differentiates itself from traditional farm management information software by focusing specifically on specialty crop operations and labor.

“Labor is growers’ biggest challenge and biggest cost, so that’s really the unlock,” Mantle said. “We’re also able to look at everything that happens on the farm through the lens of economics to determine how we can improve the grower’s top and bottom line.”

According to Mantle, growers can connect their labor management software to the platform and begin receiving podcast-style audio briefings within 30 minutes.

The daily audio reports, known as Replay Podcasts, can be tailored for owners, farm managers and crew leaders. Each briefing is delivered by text message and is designed to be consumed during a commute or before the workday begins.

The platform combines labor information with additional data sources, including weather models, university research and industry benchmarks, then synthesizes those inputs (and more) into a single audio summary.

“We start at the packhouse and work our way upstream with that labor-centricity,” Mantle said. “It’s all about how growers can get an extra row of cherries harvested or reduce decay in Honeycrisp apples. We see plenty of leaky buckets across operations, and growers often struggle to identify them because there are so many moving parts, especially on farms with hundreds or even thousands of employees.”

Why audio?

Mantle said audio delivery was chosen largely out of pure convenience.

“I don’t know if audio is the end-all, be-all, but it’s more consumable on the go, and most growers have a lot of windshield time,” he said. “Our belief is we put this information into a four- or five-minute podcast focused entirely on what’s happening on your farm.”

Mantle pointed to work with Ellie Norris of Norris Farms as one early example of the platform’s promise for time-crunched growers.

“We were able to look at six years of production using labor and piece-rate data,” Mantle said. “We identified several blocks where production had fallen by roughly 70%, while costs had increased. We discovered the berries were smaller, which required more labor to harvest.”

The analysis also highlighted blocks at Norris that had shifted from top-performing to lower-performing, providing management insight into potential replanting or mechanization decisions.

The grower perspective

RKJ Farms, a third-generation tree fruit and row crop operation near Quincy, Washington, manages more than 3,200 acres of production. The farm’s workforce typically consists of 60% to 70% H-2A employees, with the remainder filled by local workers.

Mitchell Karstetter operates the farm alongside his brother, Brady, and father, Kent. He said HarvestReplay has quickly become part of the management team’s daily routine.

“Because the briefings are driven off our labor data, I can easily see productivity trends from pruning and thinning through spraying and harvest,” Karstetter said. “HarvestReplay does the analytical work overnight, allowing me to start the day with a focused agenda.”

A significant benefit emerged when RKJ integrated crop scouting observations into the platform.

“We could actually see where our thinning productivity was lagging and which crews were really performing,” Karstetter said. “That led us to change our pay structure from essentially a minimum wage model to a more aggressive piece-rate system.”

The management team at RKJ is already thinking about additional uses for the platform, including irrigation scheduling and crop quality data.

“The goal is more precise crop coefficients and irrigation models that reduce decay and improve storability,” Karstetter said. “We’re also starting to connect disease pressure observations with our spray schedule.”

Looking ahead, Karstetter expects the platform to play a leading role in helping organize harvest logistics and pack-out decisions.

“I see HarvestReplay becoming a core tool well beyond just labor,” he said.

You can learn more about HarvestReplay and listen to sample podcasts at https://www.innov8.ag/products/harvestreplay.

-by Matthew J. Grassi, Managing Editor