What the Future of Automation in Agriculture Might Look Like

At VISION Conference 2023 in Glendale, AZ, (from left): John Appel, Head of Commercial Sales, Biome Makers, moderates a discussion with panelists Gabe Sibley, Founder and CEO, Verdant Robotics; Michael Kohen, Founder and CEO, SparkAI; and Omar Gomez, Washington Lead Executive, Hectre, for the session titled “Making Autonomy Work in Agriculture.”

At VISION Conference 2023 in Glendale, AZ, (from left): John Appel, Head of Commercial Sales, Biome Makers, moderates a discussion with panelists Gabe Sibley, Founder and CEO, Verdant Robotics; Michael Kohen, Founder and CEO, SparkAI; and Omar Gomez, Washington Lead Executive, Hectre, for the session titled “Making Autonomy Work in Agriculture.” Photo courtesy of Meister Media Worldwide

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Editor’s note: Artificial intelligence (AI) offers growers greater efficiency, from self-driving technology to a multitude of applications in the field from planting to postharvest. But in the unstructured environments of agriculture nothing is ever as simple as it seems. This key topic was discussed at the recent VISION Conference during the session “Making Autonomy Work in Agriculture”. In this article from Growing Produce, Jan Johnson of Millennium Research shares insight from the session’s panelists.

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Technology has automated the simplest task in agriculture — driving a tractor, writes Jan Johnson at Growing Produce. But it hasn’t just replicated the ability of a human, it has improved the quality of the work and increased the productivity resulting from the task. So farmers are looking for even more progress. Why isn’t it here yet?

The challenge for autonomous implements or robots is that every other task and decision in agriculture is infinitely more complex than driving a tractor, and growers want simple solutions that make their lives easier and their farms more profitable, says Gabe Sibley, Founder and CEO of Verdant Robotics.

“We took about six months on the road talking with growers who said, ‘Do not give us more data, we have too much data. Tell us what to do with it, or better yet, go do it,’” Sibley says. “You have to perform an action that delivers. You actually have to do the work, not give them data or say this is going to be great one day, just go do a job. So that’s what we are delivering — automated weed control in specialty crops.”

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Concentrating development efforts on creating technology that actually solves a pain point for growers of all sizes makes for products that easily catch on, says Omar Gomez, Washington Lead Executive for Hectre. His company has simplified and vastly improved a key step in apple growers’ profitability — apple sizing. It meets growers’ criteria of simplicity and added value. Spectre allows growers or fieldmen to take a picture of the top layer of apples in a bin, and the artificial intelligence (AI) in the app predicts the sizes and distribution of all apples within the bin.

The technology works immediately without any special equipment. One photo and sizing is vastly more accurate than the old way. This allows growers to make more accurate decisions about their fruit and ultimately increase the value of each harvest.

“We’re able to predict what’s in that entire lot,” Gomez says. “So now you’re making a really good decision on what you have to sell and what you can store longer term. So then when Walmart calls you and says, ‘I want this specific size,’ you can say, ‘I know I can fill that order’ because of the accuracy and the inventory management software. And then ultimately that increases the bottom line for the grower, and the relationship between the wholesaler and the shipper is strong. So that’s what we’re seeing: the great value back for our customer at the moment.”

Read more at Growing Produce.

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