Lettuce is a valuable crop in Europe and the United States. But labor shortages make it difficult to harvest; finding sufficient seasonal labor to meet harvesting commitments is one of the sector’s biggest challenges. Moreover, with wages rising faster than producer prices, margins are tight.

In the United Kingdom, agricultural technology and machinery experts are working with IDS Imaging Development Systems in Obersulm, Germany, to develop a robotic solution to automate lettuce harvesting. The team is working on a project funded by Innovate UK and includes experts from the Grimme agricultural machinery factory, the Agri-EPI Centre (Edinburgh), Harper Adams University (Newport), the Centre for Machine Vision at the University of the West of England (Bristol) and two of the UK’s largest salad producers, G’s Fresh and PDM Produce.

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