Robots are coming to agriculture

Despite the high cost of robots, they are increasingly being used in agriculture. This could lead to big changes in how farming is done all over the world.

‍

“Currently robots often aren’t affordable — cost remains the most significant barrier to adoption. However, the costs of many systems are coming down, while wages rise due to labor shortages in some areas, and the benefits robots bring in the form of increased accuracy and precision will start to pay off in coming years,” said Sara Olson, Lux Research analyst and lead author of the report titled “Planting the Seeds of a Robot Revolution: How Autonomous Systems Are Integrating into Precision Agriculture”.

‍

The analysts at Lux Research studied automation in agriculture and the developers of robots. They found that:

• Robots are close to being as cheap as labor for corn farms. "Autosteer" systems for tractors and harvesters can be cost-effective for corn growers with large operations, and have achieved a nearly 10% market penetration. The gap between labor cost and Autosteer- or Edrive-assisted labor in U.S. corn farming is relatively small and will become negligible by 2020.
• In 2028, European lettuce growing will become autonomous. This means that the plants will weed themselves, and it will be cheaper to do this with robots than with people. Lettuce thinning (removing some plants so there is enough space for the others to grow) is still done by hand, but it is likely that robots will reach breakeven cost with human labor in 2028.
• Strawberry-picking robots are a good fit for Japanese strawberry fields. They are about as expensive as human labor, but they can be used by multiple farms. Strawberry picking is slow and labor-intensive, so the robot is likely to become the cheaper option.

‍

The report, called "Planting the Seeds of a Robot Revolution: How Autonomous Systems Are Integrating into Precision Agriculture" is part of a research project on agro innovation and autonomous systems.

‍