Western Growers Association is committed to supporting innovations that have transformative potential in specialty crop farming. WGA’s new Crop Optimization program is focused on scouting, vetting, and commercializing innovations that help solve real crop protection and production problems.
Transformation is the key word. From Latin, trans means across or beyond. Forma means form or shape. As a verb, transformation means taking on a new shape. A transformational innovation in agriculture is one that changes, for the better, the way an entire agricultural system is organized or the way a particular farming activity is carried out.
Historically, big transformational innovations in agriculture have included refrigerated transportation, synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, and drip irrigation. But smaller transformations in operational processes or a farming practice can accumulate significant improvements to growers’ bottom line.
The WGA Innovation team is taking a hard look at Harpe Bio as a potential transformative innovation for sucker thinning in organic raspberries.
Today, sucker thinning in raspberries is done manually. Multi-person labor crews pass through the field about two or three times per season using knives or hand shears to remove suckers. Growers tell me that manual sucker removal comes at a cost of roughly $2,000 to $3,000 per acre per season. The work is laborious and slow. The job is often delayed because field crews are needed on more urgent tasks, which means when they do get to the job the suckers are larger and harder to remove.
Contrast this to sucker thinning in conventional raspberries, which is done chemically. Growers apply herbicide, commonly Shark, to the crown of the plant using a small tractor-mounted spray boom. This task is executed by one individual to mix the tank and drive the tractor. Managing suckers in this relatively labor-efficient way is only possible because a suitable herbicide is available. I have not collected economics on chemical sucker removal, but I expect this to run growers about $300 per acre for herbicide product, tractor fuel, and wages for the tractor driver.
A high-efficacy organic herbicide would be transformative in that sucker management tomorrow would look completely different to what it does today. Can Harpe unlock significant cost savings by bringing sucker thinning costs down to $300 per acre? If yes, this would be a $1,700 to $2,700 per acre budget relief.
Hape Bio is a new organic contact herbicide that will soon be on the market in California. The team recently received OMRI listening and Harpe is working its way through EPA and CDPR registration. EPA places Harpe’s active ingredients in the 25(b) category as a minimum risk pesticide so registration is expected to be quick. Daniel Pepitone, COO and Co-Founder, says Harpe should be commercially available in California in the first quarter of 2027.
Why is Harpe noteworthy when there are other organic herbicides already available? Suppress and Homeplate are the two options in California. Both are contact herbicides that share the same active ingredients and proportions: caprylic acid (~45%) and capric acid (~35%). Interestingly, even though both have similar formulations, only Homeplate is allowed for sucker removal in California. In my conversations with raspberry growers, Homeplate is not commonly used for sucker removal due to unsatisfactory efficacy. Harpe Bio’s active ingredients are different. The primary ingredient is menthol derived from corn mint. Carvone is derived from spearmint and central from lemongrass. So, Harpe is completely different chemically which makes it worth testing. But most importantly, Harpe may just kill weeds and suckers better than the other options. One third-party weed efficacy trial showed Harpe definitively outperformed Suppress. After 20 days, Harpe burndown was 98% while Suppress burndown was 44% across five seed species. Having a new herbicide on the market, with truly new active ingredients and strong third-party efficacy data, is reason to investigate.
Let’s assume Harpe is exceptionally good at sucker burn down and growers adopt the innovation. What is the economic benefit to California organic raspberry growers? The USDA Certified Organic Survey 2021 reported 2,294 acres of organic raspberries planted in that year. Let’s assume that acreage is now up to 2,500 in 2026. My rough math, based on grower conversations, suggests that organic chemical sucker removal would put about $1,700 to $2,700 per acre back in growers’ pockets. Simple multiplication puts the total economic gain for California raspberry growers at $4.25 and $6.75 million, assuming 100% replacement of manual sucker removal with chemical sucker removal.