Bringing Automation to the Wine Industry

When it comes to the wine industry, Agustin Santi has seen a thing or two. Originally from Argentina, where he earned his agronomy degree from the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Faculdad de Ciencias Agrarias, Santi ventured beyond the borders of his home country to vineyards in New Zealand, China, Switzerland, and the U.S.

Throughout his travels, Santi experienced everything from extremely low-tech growing in China, where even vineyard chemical applications are still completed using a backpack sprayer, to high-tech operations in New Zealand where robots automate the spraying process with millimeter-level accuracy. During his time in New Zealand, Santi helped with the early development of one such autonomous sprayer.

“It wasn’t a robot that we were driving, but we had mapped out the vineyards perfectly down to the millimeter, and ideally, when you were driving the tractor, you would go down the black, and the sprayer would turn on automatically,” Santi says. “At the time, a lot of people were having trouble turning the sprayers off when they finished a block and needed to turn around to go to the next one. So, this was a big step up.”

But the wine-industry nomad decided that he liked working with his hands. He eventually returned to California’s Napa Valley, where the viticulture tends to be more hand-labor focused, in April of 2022. He’s been in his current role as vineyard operations project manager at Domaine Chandon since January of this year.

Santi’s experiences have put him in a unique position to understand how agricultural technologies can make the job of growing wine grapes easier and more efficient. His love of working in the vineyards aside, Santi sees plenty of opportunities for robotics to assist farmers in the most laborious and monotonous parts of the job. After all, the widespread labor shortages suggest that not everyone is as keen to work hard in the fields.

“What we’re looking for now are machines that can automate some of the easiest vineyard tasks like mowing,” Santi says, while recognizing that California’s difficult regulations around self-propelled vehicles without drivers can make this hard to achieve.

“The biggest interest in robotics is around having a machine that can be efficient, doesn’t have to be surveilled all the time, and can achieve an easy task in a difficult way that allows people who have more skills to do more difficult tasks.”

Aside from mowing, Santi believes automation in the vineyard should focus on under-vine management and precision water applications. There are a couple reasons for this. The first is that most vineyards have moved away from using herbicide applications to control their weeds.

At Domaine Chandon, there’s only a small portion of the vineyard that uses herbicides, and it is the section where the vines are in the earliest stages of development. For everywhere else, automation could help manage the under-vine areas in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way. The current challenge is finding a machine that can navigate trellises and rows with narrow spacing. Any machine that works in the vineyard needs to be extremely precise.

With water applications, the same rules apply. Robots would need to navigate the same tight spaces, but Santi can imagine a world where complex, AI-driven algorithms allow farmers to use water as efficiently as possible. This will be essential as water restrictions tighten in California and other key wine-producing regions around the world. In the absence of such a robot, laborers will continue to manage most of these tasks manually.

Fortunately, change is on the horizon. While farmers will always need good people to help them run their operations, the next generation of workers will work alongside the latest agtech innovations. Santi thinks it’s important for farms to be prepared for whatever comes their way.

“You can’t just believe that robots are going to take over and people aren’t going to have jobs anymore,” he says. “You have to train people and make sure they’re learning the skills they need to keep working with different tools. We need to be able to adapt with the flow of changing technologies, and companies need to be able to share that information with their people.”

At Domaine Chandon, there’s a precedent for doing this. Santi says the operation already does a lot of safety training to prevent workplace accidents. Farming is a notoriously dangerous industry. Knowing and practicing the proper precautions can make all the difference. The same goes for robotics training. Knowing what to do doesn’t just improve on-the-job safety. This knowledge also empowers workers to keep growing and improving.

“We have to ensure people are learning what they need to do to operate the machines that are going to be used on our operation or elsewhere,” Santi says. “Agriculture is for producing. We need to continue to look at the ways in which people and technology work together to achieve this goal.”

To learn more about technology in the wine industry, check out FIRA USA’s discussion on the topic on Thursday, October 24th at 11:30 am. Agustin Santi will be one of four total panelists speaking about his experiences. Visit fira-usa.com for more information.