Make Way! The Farm Bots Are Marching In
November 28, 2023 Robots for growers of fruits and vegetables are ‘just around the corner,’ the engineers told us year after year. However, many scientists made an unfortunate calculation that what would work in the lab could be transferred to the field. There’s a lot of dirt involved in farming, for one thing, something many machines inherently dislike. At certain times of the year the work is virtually nonstop, and the failure of a key machine can cost large growers thousands of dollars an hour. Unfortunately, too many did.
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But tech never works the first time, or even the first several times, straight out of the lab. We’ve all seen film of the first planes, trains, and automobiles and wondered what the inventors could have been thinking. My personal favorite was the plane that had a huge umbrella-like device on top that pumped feverishly, taking the plane up a few inches when it went up, and then slamming it down again.
So I, and all those like me who endorsed mechanization many years ago, deserve a little of the blame. Seeing that airplane video, I knew better than to think the dive into technology would be bracing, to say the least. My only defense is that part of my job is to help growers solve their problems, and many have said repeatedly in American Fruit Grower’s annual State of the Industry survey that labor is their biggest problem.
One look at the last few decades of Mexican birthrates showed the traditional source of ag labor was going to slow to a trickle in the future, exacerbating growers’ labor problems. Like many others, I believe mechanization was not only the best way for growers to go; it may well be their only way to stay in business.
Of course, one of the coolest and most useful machines is the robot, and thus, one I can endorse. Why do I believe the landscape has changed, that I can wholeheartedly believe in them? I’ve seen them work and, as they say, seeing is believing.
In September, more than 1,700 specialty crop growers, start-up engineers, investors, and others affiliated with the industry attended FIRA USA 2023 Sept. 19-21 in Salinas, CA, to see the latest robots for fruit and vegetable production in action. Scroll the photo slideshow above to see highlights from the industry event.
Much of the conference was devoted to demonstrations of the latest robots for specialty crops, and they were impressive. The difference from earlier years? As with the airplane, it takes time for the technology to mature as inventors build on each other’s achievements. Another change? Many units weren’t just for demonstrating. Companies were selling those very robots.
It’s not just the robotic technology itself that has improved. The coming of artificial intelligence, which no one can miss these days thanks to ChatGPT, shows how much that technology has improved in the last few years.
I wasn’t the only one at the conference who thought the ag robotics industry would have made bigger strides in past years. One attendee noted that some were saying the industry simply hasn’t delivered and couldn’t be considered a success story — a stance he considered ludicrous.
“If we weren’t successful, we wouldn’t all be here today,” he said. “We would be somewhere talking about something else.”
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