Data investment proving increasingly vital at G's Fresh

Founded in 1952 and originally selling earth-covered celery to wholesalers, the company became known as G’s shortly after its founder, Guy Shropshire, invested in a purpose-built packhouse to wash and pack its product allowing it to sell to supermarkets soon after.

Now, more than half a century later, the company manages about 17,500 hectares of crops across the UK, mainland Europe and Senegal – although it is still a family-owned business at its heart.

G’s Fresh supplies a wide range of quality salads, vegetables, and added-value produce to major retailers in the UK, Europe, and North America. The company prides itself on its approach, managing the entire process from seed to shelf, ensuring high standards of quality and sustainability.

We spoke to James Green, G’s Fresh Group Director of Agriculture, to find out more about the technology they use today, the challenges this technology can bring and how the organisation is working hard to ensure this technology will continue to breed success for the company in the future. 

With more than 20 years of experience in the business, James has a background in both farming and finance. And just as the company has evolved as it has grown, so has James’ role, as he now oversees organisation’s data and modelling team, which has been instrumental in improving crop availability and managing digital activities in the growing and packing operations.

Growing successes with technology

As you might expect from a large producer, G’s Fresh already works with a lot of technology, sourcing a lot of data on its crop from a variety of sensors. Weather stations and soil moisture sensors are all a part of their set up and they already use geospatial data from their GPS-equipped tractors, but they are also investing in more pro-active technologies too.

Most recently, the company has added a Carbon Robotics laser weeder to their toolbox. This advanced piece of equipment is designed to address weed control challenges, especially in organic farming where herbicides are not used. This technology represents a significant investment but offers substantial returns by reducing manual labour and improving crop yields.

James Green explains: “We’ve been wrestling with weed control and weed pressure as there are fewer active substances available. We know herbicides are under challenge and we would like to use less of them anyway.

“We took a long time over that decision - it's an extremely big number to invest in for one piece of equipment. We spend a lot of money on capital expenditure on a very big business, but that's just mentally a very big decision. And I can imagine that's a very big decision for many growers and farmers to adopt something that may be uncertain.”

Clearly, James and the team did a lot of research before making the decision to buy the machine. James explains that they were able to visit other growing sites in Europe that were using the machines, see them in action and pore over the results those growers had seen in similar conditions.

“They shared a lot of performance data with us that gave us confidence. We could see where it doesn't work as well in some situations. So, you know, eyes open sort of situation. So I think that helped because we were able to go and see it in action.”

Getting an understanding of the machine’s strengths and weaknesses has allowed James to concentrate on how he might be able to get the most out of their investment by moving it between their sites in the UK and Spain.

Evaluating new technologies: A strategic approach

James is pretty clear on the need to have a systematic approach to assessing new technologies. His first step is to clearly define the problem that needs to be solved – and being sure that the technology that he’s considering specifically addresses that need.

“It's about focusing on that problem and then kind of trying to work out exactly how much of a solution each ‘solution’ is. How well is it going against that exact benchmark?”

After that, simplicity, robustness, and the ability to generate actionable insights from data the technology provides can all be crucial factors in the decision-making process.

“Data is just a bit of a commodity, but actually you’ve got to convert it into something you can use and actual insights. What am I going to do differently because I’ve got this data? To put it simply, what’s the action I can take because I’ve got some straightforward data?”

With all these factors considered, attention then turns to the potential return on investment, ensuring that the technology will deliver tangible benefits in terms of cost savings, yield improvements, or labour reduction.

The role of data in modern farming

Many farmers and growers know how difficult it can be to use data effectively when there are so many different platforms, tools and providers. 

But James says his team have worked hard to ensure they can turn this data into knowledge and get actionable insights from those tools by investing in their own ‘data lake’ – a centralised data storage facility which consolidates information from various sources, making it easier to analyse data and derive insights. 

“We very much see data as an investment. We’re privileged to be able to put resource into that as a large organisation, but we expect to invest in that just like investing into machinery because we think this will drive benefits in the future to understand what we’re doing and what creates the best crop, what creates the best timing, the best quality over time.” 

Practical advice for farmers and growers

Clearly, G’s Fresh believes that data can be a powerful tool when harnessed effectively, but James believes all farmers and growers can stand to benefit from collecting data at some level. 

“Just start recording any basic data. Just having yield by variety by crop, whether it’s an arable crop or cereal crop and how that relates to things like fertiliser. There’s actually quite a lot of unsophisticated data that is still very powerful when it’s been organised by being able to filter it, find similar fields, similar varieties, different performances.” 

Starting with basic data collection, such as yield by variety and crop, can be an effective place to start, allowing farmers and growers to gradually build up to more complex data sets, including more information on inputs, field performance and weather effects. By building these layers onto your own data monitoring and bringing that together, farmers and growers can improve the accuracy of their predictions for crop performance over time. And this can lead to real savings when looking to buy inputs.

Having a systematic approach to procuring new technology – focusing on the problem at hand, whether that be handling weeds in organic crops or bringing data together to improve the accuracy of insights – is clearly proving to be a successful approach for James and the team.

G’s Fresh is tackling labour availability and cost issues while improving crop performance through the adoption of new technologies in their business and working to optimise return on investment of those purchases, too.

And while the scale of their investments may be vastly different to that of many other farming and growing businesses, farmers and growers should definitely take confidence in James’ sentiment that it’s not impossible to benefit from the new opportunities afforded by data.

“You can start off with monitoring one thing and each year evolve and then see the next thing and then you expand it again. So, I think it’s evolution – not revolution.”