Harvesting now takes minutes instead of days

Christos Yiannakakis, from Imathia, talked about new technologies for seedlings on the Macedonian plain. «We have our own weather stations hooked up to computers, so we know the humidity and temperature at any given moment. We have software to predict diseases, so we can activate the spray system we have installed to deal with them.» The old practice of climbing up into trees to prune and harvest is dying out, he explained. «Instead of the old ladders, we use hydraulically operated platforms.» And now there is a special machine that picks grapes from the vines. In four minutes it can harvest a row of vines that once took two workers two days to pick. «If you don’t use the new technology, you aren’t competitive,» said Yiannakakis.