In-field Food Waste in California Strawberry Production: An Analysis of Harvester Extraction Rates

In this paper, we report on the collection and analysis of two years of “harvest efficiency” data from commercial strawberry farms in California. Harvest efficiency refers to the percentage of total ripe berries that are successfully harvested from the field and has implications for assessing food waste, the relative attractiveness of robotic harvest innovations, and management decisions related to field sanitation and pest management. Results indicate that within the sampled farms, between 12% and 39% of the total strawberries produced were left in the field, with production practices and the time of year significantly affecting this rate.