Ag Robotics Gain Early Traction in Specialty Crops

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

High-value crops may enjoy the income that comes with that category name, but they also come with more labor costs than other commodities, like soybeans, wheat, and corn. For this reason, many robotics companies target the growing systems of these specialty crops. AgTonomy co-founder and CEO Tim Bucher, says robots do especially well with delicate crops and repetitious tasks.

Bucher… “We are, as a company, AgTonomy, very focused on specialty crops. Some people call them permanent crops, some people call them high-value crops. And there's a reason for that. Number one, there's more labor needed in those markets than in big ag, than in row crops, right? The two of us could farm probably a thousand acres of row crops, but the two of us could barely farm a hundred acres of specialty crops. So there's a lot more labor intensity and a lot more labor pressure there. And that's ultimately why we started there. It's also where precision ag is actually needed. So if you and I did a GPS-based tractor on cornfields and we took out, you know, 100 corn stalks, it would be a bummer. But if we did something where we took out one citrus tree, it would be a bigger bummer. You know, so these are much more valuable types of crops and you got to be a lot more careful around them and it really hasn't been until recently that technology has advanced to the point where we can do these kinds of things in these very, very tight spacing, very precious crops around us as we're navigating through and doing those pre and post-harvest work.”

That’s AgTonomy’s co-founder and CEO, Tim Bucher.