Experimental tool · Nursery inventory
What's a miscount
actually costing you?
Explore the arithmetic behind count uncertainty and counting labor using your own assumptions. The aerial-cost comparison is experimental; it does not demonstrate that a drone can count your plants reliably.
Your Operation
What It Costs You
Inventory value exposed to count error
$9,000
Inventory position error at your miscount rate. Overcounts sell plants you don't have — failed orders and make-goods. Undercounts hide plants that never get sold at all.
The clipboard, per year
$3,500
192 crew-hours a year spent counting instead of growing, loading, and selling.
Illustrative aerial-counting cost
$1,100–$1,650
An illustrative aerial-counting scenario. Feasibility depends on visible plants, overlap and field validation.
The comparison depends on counting feasibility and your assumptions.
Scenario calculator only. Your inputs drive the arithmetic; the drone-cost range is illustrative. Inventory counting is a specialist feasibility request, not a standard Atlas offer or a guaranteed replacement for ground counts.
Context, since labor is the line that moves in this industry: for nursery and greenhouse operations it runs about 34% of gross cash farm income, against roughly 10% for US farms generally — and it has climbed steadily from 29% since 1999 (Bampasidou & Fields, Choices Magazine, AAEA, on USDA-NASS data). Counting is part of that line, not separate from it — a McMinnville nursery's federal H-2A filing lists “taking inventory and grading plants” among the duties it hires seasonal crews for, at $15.14/hour for the 2024 season (US Dept. of Labor job order). Warren County alone certified 195 H-2A workers in FY2024, the highest concentration in Tennessee (UT Extension W1331). And knowing what's actually in the ground is the planning basis for labor, space, and supplies (Texas A&M AgriLife). The miscount rate above is yours to set — we don't invent your numbers.
Discuss whether counting is feasible.
Tell us about the plants, spacing, canopy and how you currently validate counts. We need to assess visibility and ground checking before considering an aerial inventory project.
Discuss inventory feasibility or just ask us directly