Driving Operational Efficiency: Robotics, Automation, and Data Integration in Speciality Crops

Three crops, three realities, one shared challenge

The session opened with a simple but revealing observation: robotics and automation do not land the same way across different crops.

Moderated by José Luis Molina, CEO of Hispatec Agrointeligencia, the panel brought together three executives whose operations could hardly be more different.

Miguel Ángel López Peña, COO of ISFA, oversees thousands of hectares of almonds, pistachios, and blueberries designed from the outset around mechanisation.
Antonio Domene, CEO of Moyca Grapes, runs Europe's largest seedless table grape operation, with 2,300 hectares in southeast Spain, six packing facilities, and warehouses running 24/7 through the summer harvest.
José Luis Escobar, manager of Verdea, operates a smaller but highly specialized greenhouse business producing courgettes and aubergines, where even the packing line remains manual by deliberate choice.

Each came to the discussion with a different starting point. What united them was a shared conviction that the technology question is, at root, a management question.

Where automation has already taken hold, and where it hasn't

All three companies have made significant investments in digitalisation and automation, but the distribution across their operations tells an instructive story.

At Moyca, the transformation happened first and most completely in the warehouse. Processing 80,000 tons of grapes per season across three shifts requires a level of throughput that manual operations alone cannot sustain. Automation in the packing lines was not a strategic experiment; it was an operational necessity. In the field, the picture is more complex. Grape harvesting and bunch cleaning remain largely manual, and Antonio Domene was direct about why: “The technology exists, it is developing, it is promising, but it is not yet ready to be implemented at scale with the quality we need.” Promising, he made clear, is not the same as ready.

At ISFA, the starting point was different. Tree fruit and nut crops grown in two-dimensional, high-density structures lend themselves to mechanisation in ways that other crops do not. Miguel Angel Lopez Peña described how the geometry of the orchard itself becomes a design decision, with row spacing and canopy architecture chosen partly to accommodate the machines that will eventually work within them. “We design the farm thinking about the mechanisation from the beginning,” he explained, “because if you don't, you close doors that are very difficult to reopen later.”

At Verdea, the calculus is different again. José Luis Escobar described a business where automation has transformed back-end operations, from traceability systems to resource management, but where the packing line stays manual. “We have looked at it seriously,” he said, “but the investment does not yet justify itself for our volumes and our product.” The decision is not ideological. It is financial, and it is reviewed regularly.

What the data actually needs to do

Behind each of these investment decisions lies a more fundamental challenge: making sense of the data that modern agricultural operations generate, and connecting it in ways that actually support decisions.

Antonio Domene described Moyca's approach as a progressive integration, building toward a system where field data, warehouse throughput, and commercial planning speak to each other in real time. “We want to know at any moment what is happening in the field, what is arriving at the pack house, and what our clients need, all connected.” The ambition is not data for its own sake, but decision-making that is faster, better informed, and less dependent on information that arrives too late to act on.

Miguel Angel Lopez Peña made a related point about the cost of disconnection. When a tractor operator runs out of product mid-application and continues spraying empty for two more rows, the problem is not discovered until the following day. “That is a quality failure, a cost, and a wasted intervention,” he said. Automation that communicates in real time does not just improve efficiency, it changes the quality of decisions that managers can make.

For José Luis Escobar, the data question is inseparable from the question of what a smaller, specialised operation actually needs. “We don't need everything,” he said. “We need the right information, connected to the decisions we actually make every day.” At Verdea, that has meant being selective, investing deeply in traceability and resource management while resisting the pull toward systems that generate data without generating insight.

Labour, autonomy, and the decisions that technology could unlock

One thread that ran through the entire conversation was labour, not just as a cost to be reduced, but as a constraint that shapes decisions far upstream of the harvest.

Miguel Angel Lopez Peña described a situation familiar to many growers: one of the most critical agricultural decisions, when to plant, is sometimes shaped less by agronomy than by workforce availability. “We sometimes plant on a date that is not the most suitable from an agronomic standpoint because we know we will not have workers at the optimal moment,” he said. Autonomous planting systems would not just reduce labour costs. They would give growers back control over a decision that is currently constrained by factors that have nothing to do with the crop.

Antonio Domene echoed the point from a different angle. At Moyca, the harvest window for table grapes is narrow and unforgiving, and the pressure on labour during peak weeks is intense. “When you are moving 80,000 tonnes in a few months, every bottleneck is expensive,” he said. Technology that can absorb some of that pressure, even partially, changes the economics of the entire operation.

José Luis Escobar was more measured. At Verdea, the greenhouse environment creates its own constraints: conditions that are ideal for the crop are often difficult for workers, and the physical demands of harvest and packing are real. “We are not automating to replace people,” he said. “We are trying to make the work more sustainable, for the people doing it and for the business.”

Three principles for managing technology adoption

Closing the session, each panellist offered a short, direct piece of advice.

Miguel Angel Lopez Peña kept it simple: do not be dazzled. “Neither by technology, nor by automation, nor by anything else. Ask what it delivers, measure it, and decide on that basis.” Adopt what delivers measurable return. Leave the rest.

Antonio Domene focused on the model of engagement. “Stop accepting a relationship where you pay to validate technology that is then sold back to you,” he said. Producers who open their fields, their data, and their operations to technology developers deserve more than a commercial transaction. He called for co-development, shared risk, and solutions built to scale from the beginning, not pilots that never graduate.

José Luis Escobar urged strategic clarity before investment. “Know where your business is going before you decide what technology it needs,” he said. Be creative enough to imagine how current tools could transform your operation, including decisions as fundamental as planting dates or field layouts. And be ruthless about discarding what does not fit, because the opportunity cost of a bad technology investment in agriculture is high.

José Luis Molina closed with a reflection that cut against the grain of most agri-tech events: technology sits below people, and always will. “We are beekeepers,” he said, managers of swarms of robots and data systems, directing them toward ends we define. “Empathy, judgement, creativity, vision: these are not threatened by automation. They are what makes automation worth having.”

Panel: “Driving Operational Efficiency: Robotics, Automation, and Data Integration in Specialty Crops” — Field Day Spain, GOFAR | Moderator: José Luis Molina (Hispatec Agrointeligencia) | Panellists: Miguel Ángel López Peña (ISFA), Antonio Domene (Moyca Grapes), José Luis Escobar (Verdea)

Listen to this episode on our podcast [Spanish only]