Air-Way Farms Looks at Harvest Innovations to Reduce Dust

 

GM Fred Olmstead believes in addressing air quality and other environmental issues “head-on.”

 

By Marni Katz

Special to California Almond News

 

When Fred Olmstead watches harvested almonds as they transfer from the shuttle cart to the elevator, he is not just looking at the volume of the crop. He’s looking at the volume of dust. Olmstead, general manager of Air-Way Farms Inc., has become fixated on dirt and dust and his voice rises with excitement when he discusses his goal of reducing the amount of air emissions that result from Air-Way Farms’ almond harvesting and other farming operations.

 

While he acknowledges his passion borders on the fanatical, he also knows it takes this kind of enthusiasm and commitment to make the investment and changes that will have a long-term impact on the environment.

 

Olmstead believes in proactively addressing the air quality and other environmental issues facing almond growers and other farmers in California. He says it’s a major investment in both time and money, but one the industry needs to make.

Air-Way Farms General Manager Fred Olmstead says small changes, like using wider dirt chains with this Weiss McNair “California Special” pickup machine, can make a big difference in reducing dust in Air-Way’s harvesting operation. - - (Photo by Marni Katz)

 

 

“The Air-Way family has always prided themselves on being at the forefront in setting a good example,” Olmstead says. “It takes a lot of time and effort to do that and a big commitment on everyone’s part, not just at the ranch level. It’s a lot easier to do status quo. But we need to be good environmental stewards and if we are going to make the investment we have to approach it head-on.”

 

Since joining Air-Way Farms as general manager in 2000, Olmstead has overseen the inclusion of more environmentally sound practices over a good portion of Air-Way’s almond farming and harvesting operations.

 

Air-Way Farms has converted about one-fourth of the farm’s 1,300 acres of almonds to an experimental harvesting operation aimed at addressing air quality issues, refitting every aspect of the operation from its pickup machines and sweepers to its harvesters and prunings management, in an effort to reduce the air pollution emitted from the orchard. Air-Way grows six varieties of almonds in Fresno County on a 1997-planted orchard and another recently planted 150-acre block.

 

Olmstead estimates recent changes to the sweep, pickup machines and harvester on that experimental acreage have reduced the amount of dirt taken in to the huller during harvest by 25 to 30 percent.

 

“And if we can lower the amount of dirt taken in, we have lowered the amount of dirt lost to the air,” Olmstead says. “If we’re hauling less dirt, we’re moving more almonds.”

 

Acknowledging the transition is a work in progress, Olmstead says some of the methods are still experimental while others have proved so successful he hopes to continue investing in additional equipment to convert even more of the acreage toward these new practices.

 

The new practices including using the latest model Weiss McNair pickup machine with a 48-inch mesh dirt screen and adding similar screens to the shuttle express cart and reservoir cart to direct dirt away from the air and back into the ground. Air-Way also reduces the number of passes required to sweep the crop into windrows by using a single pass V-Sweep, which gathers harvested almonds in the orchard middle down to a 4-foot row, while also improving the driver’s visibility, so that he generates less dust during sweep operations.

 

The V-Sweep allows Air-Way to eliminate two passes to sweep almonds compared to a conventional sweep machine. The V-Sweep’s two large rotating brushes lightly remove nuts from berms while paddles and dozens of “fingers” then consolidate the harvested almonds in the 19-foot middle into a 48-inch row. The $30,000 Weiss McNair V-Sweep is set on the front of a conventional tractor with the driver sitting high in the seat and having excellent visibility over the operation.

 

“With the V-Sweep, the driver can see the tractor from any angle.  He doesn’t create the dust activity you do with a standard sweeper, yet he can still get close enough to get almost every nut,” Olmstead says.

 

This $30,000 Weiss McNair V-Sweep reduces from three to one the number of passes required to get harvested nuts into a windrow. Rotating brushes move nuts off berms while a series of paddles and “fingers” consolidate the nuts down into a single 48-inch row. (Photo by Marni Katz)

 

 

By comparison, in Air-Way’s conventionally harvested almonds, the sweep operation typically involves three passes, including a blow pass to remove nuts from the berm and two sweeps to gather nuts into a windrow.

 

“We can sweep the rows three times as fast,” Olmstead says. “And fewer passes means less dust because we are only moving over the dirt once. We don’t want to move the nuts more than we have to, because anytime we move nuts, we are also moving dirt.”

 

Air-Ways is also experimenting with various shakers to try and reduce the dust emissions involved in shaking. Recently, he has been modifying catch frame harvesters adapted from the conventional pistachio harvester to accommodate almond trees. The catch-frame harvesters catch harvested nuts into an upside-down umbrella that wraps around the trunk, rather than dropping them directly on to the orchard floor,

 

The harvesters cost more than $250,000 each and operate considerable slower than the standard almond shaker. The catch-frame harvesting system can shake only about three to four trees a minutes. But Olmstead believes that time can be nearly made up with the time savings he achieves by reducing sweep passes. He is also looking at modifying side-by-side shakers as a faster alternative to the umbrella type catch frame harvester.

 

Olmstead says the system has a long way to go before it is commercially viable, but he does see enough potential for the future to invest in an additional customized catch-frame harvester this year.

 

Olmstead believes that they have to concentrate their efforts in reducing dust generated during pickup from his $38,000 Weiss McNair “California Special” pickup machine. The pickup machine has a wide dirt chain, and Olmstead says additional modifications will probably include a series of rollers that agitate the chain to further drive dust back to the ground before it reaches the fan area in the harvester.

 

Shuttle express and reservoir carts have also been revamped with a focus on air quality, Olmstead says.  Air-Way opted for the larger capacity Kingsburg Cultivator Inc.  (KCI) shuttle express cart because it meant less travel in and out of the orchard.  Olmstead said that KCI has worked very closely with them in their goal of reducing dust.  “We had the Shuttle express and reservoir carts redone with dirt chains. We cut out the standard belt that moves the almonds and replaced it with a belt chain so loose dirt can settle through to the ground rather than moving with the almonds,”

 

Once harvest is finished, the focus on air quality continues. Prunings from the almond orchard are chipped with a Jackrabbit chipper and hauled with the reservoir cart to a nearby field where the chips are composted for fertilizing Air-Way’s row crops. Prunings are placed in three long rows of composting piles where they are cured for a year or more before they are broken down enough to be applied to their open ground.

 

Again, start up costs were expensive, and it still costs $35 to $40 to chip and haul the prunings. But Olmstead says the system does pay some dividends.  “That compost is worth $20 to $25 a ton compared to the cost of applying synthetic fertilizer,” Olmstead says.

Almond prunings are chipped and hauled into composting piles at Air-Way, providing a natural source of nitrogen for the diversified farming operation’s row crops. (Photo by Marni Katz)

 

 Olmstead says that with almonds being one of the few commodities fairing well in the ag arena, almond growers are now in an excellent position to make investments in equipment and operations that will help the industry address environmental issues such as air quality.

 

And he says he will continue to look at “every angle” of the Air-Way operation until he is satisfied it has exhausted all options for improvement.

 

“Every operation provides an opportunity to reduce the amount of dust we create. We won’t be through until I believe we’ve done everything we can to eliminate the problem. We’ll make mistakes along the way, but I believe we can do it much better if we truly commit ourselves to the process,” he says.