Where growers really lose margin – and how to stop it

Walk into any glasshouse or vertical farm, and one thing is immediately clear – a hundred small decisions are sitting behind every row and tray. Temperatures swing, water availability fluctuates, plants move through different growing stages… these small shifts all compound to deliver either a net negative or a net positive – and, for growers, working to tilt the balance in their favour takes skill, precision, and an inordinate amount of decisions.

But what happens when something goes wrong?

Issues often begin quietly, and by the time they’re visible to manual scouts, the crop has already adjusted growth, lost uniformity, or drifted away from forecast.

That delay — the period where stress is present but not yet visible — is the visibility gap. And it can be costly.

Understanding the impact

The visibility gap isn’t about missing symptoms; it’s about missing the start of a problem. Small, unseen changes early on often become costly surprises later.

Class II produce typically sells at around 20% less than Class I, meaning even modest downgrades carry real financial impact. 

That early, invisible period also disrupts operations. If plants are experiencing unseen stress, decisions made on the assumption that everything is fine, whether that’s labour deployment or water use, become increasingly misaligned with what the crop actually needs. Forecasts drift, and time is wasted. When issues are spotted, they’ve often reached a point where interventions cost more and productivity is impacted. 

Closing the gap

Which is why shortening the time between a problem starting and it being recognised, the visibility gap, is critical for growers looking to maximise productivity and protect their margins. 

Our latest whitepaper explores how the visibility gap affects yield, labour, forecasting, and operational decisions — and where growers are already seeing measurable gains from closing it.

Download it here