Bryan Madden - Leading the Mushroom Growing Industry with Automation, Robotics and Mycionics

Agriculture is not as desirable as it once was. So labor issues are definitely forefront in everybody's minds these days. Hello everyone and welcome to the Robot Industry podcast. It's my honor to have Brian Madden from South Mill Champs from British Columbia on the podcast. Brian, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me Jim. Happy to be here. Brian, how did you get into mushroom farming? Honestly, I think mushroom farming probably found me versus me finding mushroom farming. But I grew up in a very rural area, but even then agriculture wasn't really something that I sought for myself. I spent 15 years in the hospitality industry and having the privilege to travel and work alongside some great leaders along the way as well. And it was more through marriage that I had personal connections to the mushroom industry, never professionally. But when my wife and I, we had our first child, my perspective and priorities kind of changed. I was sitting at my desk in a hotel in Whistler, British Columbia. And I got a phone call that ended up being a great opportunity for a career change. So that was almost 12 years ago now. Wow, that's great. Can you tell our audience a little bit about Apex and South Mill Champs? Yeah, Apex to the farm that we're going to concentrate on. It's just one of 12 farms that produce mushrooms for champs locally in BC. We have division, Winnipeg, Love Day mushrooms, and then we've got South Mill down in Kenneth Square, Pennsylvania as well. We started building Apex 2 specifically through COVID. And we eventually opened in June of 2021. The design and operation of this farm, it was one of the most advanced technological farms in the world when we put it in. And we're still pushing through with that today. Still similar growing practices to a traditional setup. But the technology kind of allowed us to increase our efficiencies and production output further based on those successes that we already were having at our traditional sites. Ryan, can you share the output of the farm like how many mushrooms and how many employees do you have? At this farm specifically, we do about 275,000 pounds a week, around 14 million pounds a year. Locally, we'd been total between 1.4 and 1.5 million pounds every week in total with all of our sites. That's a lot of mushrooms. It is. It is. People get surprised the amount of mushrooms that come out and still have the ability to be consumed. We've got at this site just over 100 employees. I say we're probably pushing closer to a thousand in total, including our pack house and logistics operations in BC. What Brian, what is a drawer farm and why is that important to this conversation? If you start with the traditional farm, there are Dutch rack systems that are all stacked on top of each other. So when I say I have a mushroom farm within that farm, there may be 18, 20, 24 barns. Every barn is isolated at a different phase of the cycle and as its own climate control, everything from the growing process to the harvesting process happens in that one barn. When you have a drawer farm, you split the farm in half and you spend the first 14 days in what we call a pinning room where our growing team is creating the crop. Then we open the doors and we pull all that product into a harvesting side and then close the doors up. So you have a clean side of the farm and then the harvesting side is isolated where all of your production happens. And then those mushroom beds become drawers that go back and forth and the picker stays isolated and goes up and down to each bed. We're at a traditional farm. They're on a ladder. They're cranking themselves out, cutting by hand. The drawer farm is much more automated. Brian, in our warm-up call, you talked to me about back in 2014 that everybody from Europe was coming here to teach you about mushroom farming and how has that changed? Back in 2014, the knowledge and efficiencies that we had in BC were still in the early days. We were doing great with production, but there was definitely opportunity and the Europeans kind of set the standard of what the market was around the world. As we continued to grow and now I have colleagues that I work with every day from Europe, we've been able to increase our output and our efficiencies on some of the modern technology as we develop that here. Now we're starting to have people come to see what we're doing and to see how they can improve over there, which is an interesting turn in the industry where a lot of Europeans never saw that coming. The mushroom community is really tight knit, right? Like it's small. It is a small world, for sure. It's funny, the grand scheme of things, people are all around the world growing mushrooms, but you meet those people in isolated areas and then you're interconnecting and sharing data and growing processes to the end of the day, the goal is to lift the mushroom industry as a whole, increase consumption and people understand the health benefits of what mushrooms are for you. Hicking mushrooms is a really difficult job. It gets hard to learn and it's very challenging. It is because if you consider we're picking 1.5 million pounds a week and every single mushroom is picked by hand. So you've got mushrooms in one hand, a knife in the other, and that's what's going out to the consumer. So everything you see in the grocery store has been hand harvested by our employees or those of our competitors. Yeah, and it's a complex conversation to do with like Canada's temporary foreign workers program. That's one of the reasons I think we're having this conversation is to talk a little bit about automation and about the work you're doing. And it's a labor though still is a complex variable on the farm. It definitely is. In agriculture alone, you've got rising costs, especially nowadays, what's going on around the world. You've got regulatory restrictions. You have environmental oversight, but labor availability is one of the most important things that's affecting the industry around North America and Europe as well. So because of that lack of desire to work in agriculture, we have to find ourselves in a position to work with automation. So the consumer can still get the freshest product they can without being affected by any labor shortages that may happen. Brian, beyond the labor challenge, you're going to get a lot of other things like data. Yeah, I think that's what we're starting to understand. The amount of data that is behind the development with machine learning and AI and everything that's going on within the robotics industry over the past few years, we're getting a lot closer to finding a solution. The data that is sitting inside these machines can not only be utilized to drive the automation and robots themselves, we're able to use that to some of the other areas of the growing process so we can find efficiencies in those areas as well. So you become better growers. The tools that we have right now giving us the ability to compare robotics to human labor, find the efficiencies in that process where we don't have to have so many boots on the ground in every area, especially when labor shortages are an issue. But could you tell our audience a little bit about mushrooms about how quickly they grow? Because to me, it was fascinating to find some of these numbers out. We're a phase three mushroom growing operation, one of the largest phase three mushroom growing operations in North America. So from the point we get the compost, which we make ourselves and it's all castoffs from other industries. So we use wheat from the wheat industry. So we take the straw after the wheat has been harvested. We use chicken manure for the nitrogen content. We use sugar beet lime from the sugar industry. So we use all these castoffs that would otherwise may not have a purpose and we produce mushrooms out of them. From the point it gets to the farm, stimulating the environment based on basically how it happens in nature. And within 15 days, we're starting to harvest the first product. Now those mushrooms, they'll double in size every 24 hours. And our job as harvesters and growers is to maximize the amount of yield that is coming out of that crop. By yield, you kind of also mean like the size of the mushroom has to be perfect for your customers. Yeah, perfection these days is kind of the name of the game. High quality product is what everyone wants to see. They want to keep the bruising away. So we've had develop the harvesting process. So we can make sure the mushrooms are sizing up in different stages. So we have a perfect stag or in order to crop the large mushrooms, but leave room for the next range to go because the first crop of mushrooms is usually harvesting in a five to six day period. And if everything came up at the same time, it would be glued together like cauliflower. You want them to slowly come up behind each other. So you can maximize the amount of production that's coming off of that one bed. What are the interesting things as well that I've learned is that you know, you can have like 100 robots, you actually need people too, right? Yeah, it's going to be a hybrid process, whether no matter how you look at it, people are always going to be needed from the filling standpoint. You have your laborers that are preparing everything. Your growers are going to be going into the room. And yes, we can use technology to bring the benefits to improve the product that we're putting onto the beds. But you need human eyes in the room, same with harvesting. A robot doesn't have the full dexterity and function of a human. So it's a hybrid process that you're always going to be working with. - Well, what are the interesting things about you and your leadership at the farm is you're positioning South Mill champs to be one of the most technologically advanced automated mushroom growing operations in North America, or can I say the world? - Yeah, it's exciting times for sure with the advancements in robotics and all the learning and everything, we're definitely closer to finding a solution. Luckily, I work with a team that's always been very forward thinking from the start and they love to dive into those challenges head on. And I think that's the key to the success that we've been pushing for, so that we, you have a like-minded team, we know we need to find a solution. So let's work closer with the robotics industry and gain the data and results together so we can mutually benefit. - What did you learn about myseonics? - Four or five years ago, we had a couple people go and visit Stefan and his team in Ontario. We kind of stayed in touch while we were opening Apex 2, which is our drawer farm. And then we really started diving in two years ago after the initial roll out of their first robot that was designed specifically for the drawer farm. And then our relationship just kind of built through them. - Well, when you think about like from a mushroom farmer, this is a perfect conversation for an automator to a mushroom farmer. - Oh, what's the ROI of automation from your perspective? - You know, it's still early days to really hammer down the solid ROI right now, because while we're close, we're still working on building a data set to prove that this is the right solution. And there's not only one solution, there's multiple companies out there that are all gunning for the same thing and they all have their own intricacies. Obviously we're looking for labor efficiencies. You're looking to prove that robots can do as much as a human working alongside, but they're able to and produce a high quality product at the same time. - Mushrooms are tricky to pick. You can't damage them, right? - Exactly, they don't have a skin. So even the salts on your hand will bruise a mushroom. So everything has to be done in a very clean environment. They're very susceptible to disease. So you have to be careful and have a very hygiene-focused farming area in order to make sure you're growing the highest quality product. Anything from dust to flies can affect your yield and then there is a domino effect going down as the summer progresses and more flies and more dust comes. - So how do you roll out automation in a farm? Is it like room by room or how does that work in your in for ad South Milchamps? - Yeah, it starts one room at a time. As I said before, we're working with multiple different industry partners trying to see how we can push this forward and what the final solution is going to be. But you start with one room on one farm at a traditional farm and then you've got myseonux in one room at the more modern, technologically advanced drawer farm and because of the intricacies that each industry partner is focusing on their own area. We start there, we see what works for us, what doesn't and then we work together to find that solution. - I know that you've purchased a myseonux crop scout and also a robot harvester picking device, like a robotic picker. Can you tell our audience maybe first talk a little bit of a crop scout and what's kind of included in a crop scout and maybe why you bought it? - You know, I can still remember standing in the mezzanine at the farm in the early days when Stephanie and his guys, they were coding and they were working with the machine learning side of the robot so we could build for the AI to kind of take over. And I could see the data that was mapping the robot was using for its decision making process on the beds that were down below us. And we started talking about the value add that that could bring to the industry outside of the robotic harvesting itself. Because that's where this started. Stephanie has been working on this robot for a number of years trying to perfect it. The crop scout in itself is basically the brains of the robot. Once we saw what the brains were seeing, we realized there was a lot more functionality that we could use that for. So now we've turned on with the lighting system. The harvester's are able to identify which mushrooms may need to be picked in order to optimize the crop yields in that room. And then it also has a reporting system for the amount of data that it has. So we'll get an email every 12 hours that monitors growth rates over time and mushroom sizing, mushroom density on the beds. And then we use this reporting to go back all the way to the initial casing and pinning phases of the growing process. Because maybe we need to reposition our water trees. Because you can tell, if you know a little bit mushrooms, you can tell the growth rate on the bed if it's stronger on one side versus the other. Sometimes your water tree is angled at the wrong angle. So we're getting closer to the point where we can be comparing even forecasting numbers and pin counting versus the actual feed on the ground and everywhere as well. - And this helps you with labor, right? Because if you know tomorrow morning at 10 a.m., we've got to have more feed on the street or we've got to put on more robot pickers or whatever, that's really important data for you. - Exactly. The whole intention of this drawer farm was to maximize the amount of picking time. So you work in shifts, you know, you could work 24 hours a day if it gets to the point where the robotics are successful. Our farm runs right now anywhere from 16 to 20 hours a day. And with the crops go, they can arrive for their shift three, four in the morning. They already have a report on the desk that they can review. And then they know where to focus their teams before they've even gone out into the farm. Traditionally, you're going out inspecting every bed in every room and trying to forecast where that labor is needed. Actually, that job is probably called a crop scout, is it? - Yeah, crop scouts, runners, it depends on the farm. - Oh, just because people are listening and they're walking their dog or whatever. So what's kind of interesting about, so this camera system scans the mushrooms and follows them along. And then when they're getting optimized to be picked, it actually shines a light for your pickers because the pickers have, they have thousands of decisions to make a day, right? - Exactly, so the pickers are sometimes making thousands of decisions within an hour because they're trying to analyze the beds based on their experience in harvesting mushrooms to know which mushrooms to pick and which mushrooms to leave on the bed. 'Cause your mushroom is growing 4% every hour. So you need to know, do I pick this now or do I leave it for four or eight hours? Based on the learning that the crop scout has been able to build and with the data that we have, now the crop scout is pointing at the mushrooms that we need to prioritize in order to continue those efficiencies with the harvesting process. We're seeing sometimes 4%, 7%, 10% yield increases with the lighting systems on at this point versus just traditional picking without the lights. - I'm kind of interested in your workers too. Like how does this make them feel? Like I know you've probably been messing around with some stuff but you're getting things installed right now. Are they excited about this? - Yeah, the team that we have working on it, again, it's only in one room at this point but the team that we have working on it is excited for what it is and they're excited to be involved in the rollout of a new project. At the end of the day, automation is not going to replace the people. It's just going to improve what we're doing and then it creates labor availability that we can put into the areas that are lacking. Maybe you end up with a farm full of robotics and you can scale down the amount of labor needed at that site but then you can repurpose that labor to another site or build a new farm so you can continue your production increases into the future. - Yeah, so it's not really about replacing labor. It's about controlling them and optimizing the labor for the best things. - And also reducing risks because if you get into a point where you do have labor shortages, you have the automation that you're able to work with but it's not for the purpose of completely replacing people. - So you're also considering a more robot, multi-arm robots and I know you've had some initial success with prototypes and how is that experience going? - It's exciting days. We've seen some of the videos of the new robot that's going to be coming in the very near future. So the initial robot that we were working with had a two-arm approach, a claw approach that was able to have similar dexterity to a human wrist and place it on our harvesting disk. The next generation of robot that's coming is going to be a forearm robot, much more heavy duty and then we're also going to be getting a forearm packer. So we're going to be having eight arms on that platform for the initial roll-up. - What do you have to do to get ready for that automation? - Preparing the team for what's coming and just being available and focused on what this is. Obviously we can't have myseonics on site 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The mushrooms don't stop growing. So we need to be there and focused on what we need to do to work in unison with myseonics. So we're both successful together. 'Cause at the end of the day, we need each other to be successful. And that's, it's an important part that people need to realize. I can't tell you a robotics engineer that knows much about mushrooms and I can't tell you a mushroom grower who is a robotics engineer. So we need to work in unison to be able to find this and you just need to have people focused on that. And you've been very. upfront and transparent with my Sionics about, hey, here's some things missing or hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could do this to your robot or to your, to your crop scout units correct? Yeah, very much so and I think that's kind of how the crop scout really came to be like I was saying, standing in the ceiling, seeing the data they're reviewing to help the robot improve its efficiency, we saw the value that was in that data itself and that's kind of how the crop scout birthed to what it is today, you know, I'm not taking anything away from Stefan here. Obviously he already had all that developed, but again, it takes eyes from the mushroom industry to help him understand the value and then you work together to bring that bring it to life. And my, my Sionic has been very responsive to you, right, for all your needs. Very much so they're, they're all only a call away where we have weekly meetings. They're on site right now installing the next gen of the crop scout. So we'll do the initial calibration over this next cycle and then over the next six to eight weeks, we're going to have 18 of them in use across the farm and then that gives us the ability to compare the crop scout data and the improved yields that it's bringing versus what human harvesters are picking without the crop scout in itself, we can compare those across every filling and every compost batch and every different spawn type that we use to continue building that data and efficiencies throughout the process. I keep thinking you're going to be buried in data, but it's all going to be good data, right? Yeah, right now, of course, there's a lot of noise because you have to look at everything to understand what you will use. You know, at the end of the day, you don't want this to be a make-work project where you're creating all this stuff, but it already exists right now. So you have to review everything and then pull out the pieces that you need that are going to bring value to your operation. And this is really transformational for the industry, right? So it's, it really is exciting. It is exciting times. You know, robotics aren't new to the industry. They've been around 30 plus years where people are trying to get into automation to be able to solve this problem, but it really feels we're closer today than we ever have. Again, I've only been in the industry 12 years, so that's young in perspective, but I know my colleagues have been in here 35, 40 years and they're just as excited as I am being a relative newcomer. And you're kind of in a unique position as well with bicionics because you're also testing other automation, other robots. And so you're going to be able to kind of cut through the noise a bit yourself, right? To say, hey, are these pick times the right pick times? And are we, which system is a better system? Correct? Exactly. It's, it's important that we do that because we all need to come and find a solution. The, the other automation companies we're working with, they have their intricacies in different areas. So mycyonics is focusing specifically on the drawer farm at this point, maybe in the future they can roll out further. Some of their competitors are focusing on traditional farms, which have a bit larger of a market. You've got different lighting systems and automation companies, but it honestly, one of the more exciting standpoints is the automation companies that we're working with are all proudly Canadian or at least of Canadian heritage now living in Europe. So you're helping build a Canadian automation industry while solving a worldwide automation problem. You know, it's kind of funny because I did have a question for you, like why Canada and why now and why mushrooms? But yeah, we've got, I think a lot of very smart people and very aggressive timelines. Our closest automation partner is three and a half hours away in in British Columbia. And then you've got Stefan and his team in Ontario. So only a flight away. It's exciting times and it's, it's good to be working within the Canadian industry to solve this problem because you can all be proud of that together. One of the things I like about mycyonics is I like about, I like their transparency. Like I like their management team and the fact that they're actively helping you share information and become better. 100% and I think one of the biggest things that attracted us to them in the beginning, they're humble at what they do and they're honest. So if they're struggling with something, they're honest with that, they share that with you and then you try and solve a problem together. That's the best way to getting to the final solution. So we've had a great working relationship with mycyonics and Stefan and I think that's important if you want to build something together. At the end of the day, you need a good working relationship and honesty to be able to get it over and push it over the final phase. It is kind of the wild, wild west right now. So we do have to keep suppliers honest and we have to make sure we double check all the all the specs like the OEEs and the pick times and all these things. So that's kind of, I guess that's kind of your job. Yeah, our job is reviewing the data they're giving us. If they can't prove what they're saying at the end of the day, we're failing together and maybe we're investing our time and money into something that's not successful. So you need to make sure that we're honest together and if there's something we need more from them, we're honest and we tell them this isn't working, this is what we need. And there it's the same fluidity back and forth. If they need assistance at the farm, even from a maintenance perspective, having people at the farm that are being able to understand what's happening from a robotic standpoint, you need to have that honesty on all sides. Well, it's an automation or not like perfected in a lab, right? It's in the farm. It's in the barn, right? 100%. Everything can be hypothetically perfect, but unless it's applied in the industry and it's doing what you say it's going to do, it's not successful. So that's why it's important that we're working with multiple automation companies so we can see where we need to be. Is this going to work and what do we need to do together to get there? Yeah, there was one question I was going to ask. Oh, is there anything that separates myseonix or have they done some special innovation for South Mill Chaps? Well, the crop scout in itself, it's something that is exciting, but also the robot style, they work with a claw versus more traditional suction cup that you've seen with other companies over the years. So it's got more dexterity, like similar to a human wrist, where it's able to rotate around and find the correct angle in order to harvest. So I think that's their niche that we they're building that success upon. But the crop scout in itself, it's exciting because you can utilize all that data outside of the harvesting process. It's not just solely focused on robotic harvesting. You can take that into the growing and maintenance side of the farm and continue building all of your successes from the beginning versus just from harvesting it itself. Yeah, that data must be it's just I'm sure that you're just like come on guys, get that installed quickly quick. Well, luckily we've been working with one that the prototype has been on for six, eight months now where we've got it to the functionality that it is. But again, it's the brain of the robot. So when we installed that robot a year and a half, two years ago, technically the crop scout was there. We've just worked with them to further develop what it could do, repositioned it and now bringing it into the more professional model in what it is today. Well, I'm excited to get you back onto the podcast when all your automation is included. And then you can tell me about all the millions and millions of picks that you're being better because you're using my sonics products. So that's very exciting. It is. So now you're going to put Stefan and Ryan on the spot that they need to make this work. So I have something to say when I come back. Ryan, thanks for coming out to the podcast and thank you for all you're doing for the industry. This is not small. This is heavy lifting. Yeah, I appreciate it, Jim. It's fun. It's exciting times. It's good to be a part of because, you know, every day in the mushroom world is a different day, even though you're staring at the same product. So it's, it's really good to be doing this right now and seeing it through to the end. And mushrooms, I don't, if I forgot to mention or maybe you did, mushrooms don't really have a season, right? Like it's a year round crop and it's not dependent on weather. So that's kind of one of the fun things about the industry. Not dependent on weather. 365 days a year. There are no mushroom holidays, anything like that. So all the product that you're getting is as fresh as it possibly can. It's not going in a fridge and waiting to, to be delivered. Mushrooms that are harvested today could be in the grocery store this evening and on the shelves tomorrow morning. So it's a very quick process. I was going to say mushrooms are relentless, right? They don't stop. They don't stop growing. But that, that was the basis of, of our world, right? My ceilium came first. Ryan, did we forget to talk about anything? We had a great conversation. Yeah, I think we had a good conversation. I'm excited to see where this goes. It's, it's exciting times for the industry. Thanks for having me on, Jim. Thank you. And Brian, if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to find out more about Brian Madden or South Mill Champs? Yeah, they can look on our website. Just you can Google South Mill Champs and pop up and you can see our sites and all around North America where you can find me on LinkedIn if you have specific questions on the robot or the drawer system. Ryan, I look forward to our next conversation and thanks again for coming on. Thanks, Jim. Have a great day. You might know that I run a marketing consultancy called customer traction where we focus on marketing, branding, strategy, and content creation. We do a lot of project work and help you with your marketing challenges and focus on automation, integration, and robotics. We welcome new customers and projects to help you get your marketing back on track, fix your website or even perform a marketing audit. And I'd like to thank an EG3, the Association for Advancing Automation. They're the leading automation trade associations for robotic vision and imaging, motion, control, and motors in the artificial intelligence technologies. Visit automate.org, Tor and more. And if you'd like to get in talk with us at the robot industry podcast you can find me just like Brian. My name's Jim Beretta on LinkedIn. And today's podcast was produced by customer attraction industrial marketing. I'd like to thank my team Chris Gray for the music, Jeffrey Bremner for audio production and my business partner Janet. Thanks Brian.