- READ TIME
- 3 MIN
- AUTHOR
- PACIFIC NORTHWEST HOP GROWER
- FILED UNDER
- SPECIALTY CROPS
This multi-ranch hop grower was losing margin to labor it couldn't see. Oxrow made the cost of every block, crew, and task visible while the season was still running.
Business Problem
With thousands of acres and hundreds of field workers in motion during peak season, this grower was stuck reconciling spreadsheets after decisions had already been made. They tried to make it work with a combination of field notes, monthly ERP exports, and management instinct — but they couldn’t break down the cost of each block, or see where the picking plan was slipping.
Without cost-per-block or cost-per-crew visibility, labor went where instinct said it should — not where the numbers said it would pay back. Crew incentives and training calls were judgement, not measurement. And every week the operations manager lost 2-5 hours rebuilding spreadsheets that were stale by Monday.
“Being able to take labor planning down to the microscopic level of what it should cost to prepare a new field for planting — this is the theme we’re constantly talking about here since we started using data.”
— Ranch Operations Manager
Root Causes
Three systemic gaps kept the grower reacting after the fact instead of managing labor in real time:
Fragmented data sources. Field notes, monthly labor app exports, and management instinct never reconciled into a single view of cost per field or per crew.
No cost drilldown capability. Without the ability to decompose labor cost by block, task, or crew, resource allocation relied on averages and individual judgement.
Manual data compilation. 2-5 operations-manager hours per week went to spreadsheet reconciliation — introducing reporting errors, slowing decisions, and pulling senior staff away from higher-value work.
Approach
Picktrace, Sage Intacct, and the field-notes spreadsheet were pulled into a single model — labor hours, costs, and block-level activity reconciled for the first time. Oxrow was chosen because it already spoke the language of the farm’s existing tools, so the integration was a configuration job, not a rebuild.
Almost immediately, data became central to operational and financial management. Weekly planning meetings focused on insights from Oxrow analyses, addressing how to optimize cost and quality based on historical performance and planned work. Historical job cost analysis provided a foundation for budgets and operational targets. Near real-time performance visibility allowed for quicker operational adjustments impacting costs.
Oxrow did more than report hours. The operations manager could analyze costs “down to a microscopic level,” enabling accurate cost projections for planning new plantings. Side-by-side crew comparisons informed work allocation decisions. Performance outliers surfaced quickly, so cost and quality issues could be addressed in hours, not weeks.
“Oxrow gives us different ways to see the data, depending on who I’m talking to. If I’m talking about efficiencies it’s acres-per-hour. If I’m talking to the owners then it’s the dollar labor cost-per-acre.”
— Ranch Operations Manager
Results
Loose pre-season estimates were replaced with budgets built from last year’s actual cost-per-block. Forecasts tightened. Variances showed up in days, not at month-end.
- They reduced total annual labor costs by 13% compared to the previous year, directly increasing profitability.
- They saved 2-5 hours per week of operations manager time previously dedicated to manual data handling.
Most hop growers price labor in retrospect — after the bines are down and the kiln is cold. This grower priced it while crews were still in the yard, and adjusted the plan the same week. That’s where the 13% came from.
“Every week we have new questions for the data, and it’s easy to answer them quickly.”
— Ranch Operations Manager
