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Tag: robotic agriculture

  • Robotic Farming- The Upcoming Revolution In The Agriculture Sector

    The collaboration of agriculture with technology might be the most revolutionary one that’s ever been. Agriculture is an industry that accounts for a major portion of a country’s growth and economic stability.

    The evolution of the agricultural industry from a basic occupation to a full-fledged high-tech industry has altered the parameters of development and the standards keep on rising. Let us get a complete insight into robotics agriculture and its impact.

    Need of Robotics in the Farming Industry
    History of Agricultural Robots
    Demand in The Market
    What Can Agricultural Robots Do?
    Application of Robotics in Agriculture
    Benefits of Robotic Farming
    Agricultural Robotics Companies

    Need of Robotics in the Farming Industry

    The world is growing at a supersonic speed and predictions say that a number as high as 9 billion would represent the human population by 2050. To cater to a world so big, a striking growth in agricultural production is required. This might justify why farmers’ are taking assistance from the robotic world. This gives a hint about Robotic Farming and Its Impact.

    Customer service, manufacturing, mining, packaging, shipping and transportation are all industries that are already using robots to increase their outputs and aim to double the involvement.

    The boom in the artificial intelligence sector, the rising population, and the invention of more and more utilitarian robots have caused agriculture to open its gates to innovation. The Verified Market Research, says that the agricultural robots market is expected to touch $11.58 billion by 2025, becoming one of the well-invested markets in the upcoming decade.

    History of Agricultural Robots

    The first vision of robotics was visible in the agriculture scenario, which can be traced back to the 1920s while doing research-related work i.e. use of automatic vehicle guidance. This landed the advancements between the 1950s and 60s of automated agricultural vehicles. Other developments in this field over the years include the harvesting of oranges using a robot both in France and the US.

    The indoor industrial settings had used robots for decades, outdoor robots for the use of agriculture are considered a little more complicated and difficult to furnish. Concerns over safety, over the complexity of picking crops subject to different environmental factors and unpredictability, make the process a little more demanding.

    Demand in The Market

    There is a looming fear related to the dearth of labour and increasing demands. With a majority population of ageing manpower, countries like Japan are failing to meet the labour market’s clamour. Similarly, in the US, this sector mainly depends on immigrant workers, but the decline in seasonal farmworkers and the country’s notion to stop immigration makes it difficult to meet the bars.

    What Can Agricultural Robots Do?

    Agricultural robots usually come in handy to perform tasks that are slow, repetitive, and dull for farmers. Robotic farming can help the farmers to focus more on improving the overall yield.

    The common duties that agricultural robots can perform are:

    • Soil analysis
    • Phenotyping
    • Weed Control
    • Sorting and packing
    • Harvesting and picking
    • Environmental Monitoring
    • Automated mowing, pruning, seeding, spraying

    Caring and harvesting crops are some of the most common activities for which many robotic farming companies are developing robots. For instance, Fendt’s Xaver robot, expected to hit the market this year, can execute tasks such as planting and fertilizing crops like corn, weed control, and scouting operations.

    Vision Robotics from San Diego is working on robots that will perform “thinning,” which ensures that seeds have sufficient space apart during planting, fastening their growth.

    Application of Robotics in Agriculture

    Robots have also played a crucial role in preventing losses as big as $43 billion due to weeds resistant to herbicides. They are also set to help farmers by preventing some of the $43 billion losses created by herbicide-resistant weeds. Later, many robotic farming companies like Blue River Technology has introduced a See & Spray robot in the market and marketed it as an effective weed-spraying machine.

    Monitoring huge agricultural fields is a humongous task. New sensor and geo-mapping technologies allow farmers to get a much-advanced level of data about their crops than they ever had. Drones and ground robots provide a way to collect this data autonomously.

    Another example is the TerraSentia robot, developed by EarthSense which can autonomously move through the fields and use sensors to monitor various plant parameters to analyze the crops without any need for human intervention. It can also be further developed to detect common plant ailments. The data will progressively help scientists to understand the optimal environment to nurture the best crops.

    Benefits of Robotic Farming

    Irrigating and fertilizing crops is one of the key steps in nurturing healthy crops. Evidently, this uses excess water decreasing efficiency. Inventions like Robot-Assisted Precision Irrigation can help in reducing wasted water by targeting specific plants. Ground robots autonomously navigate through the rows of crops and pour water directly at the base of each plant.

    Robots have an additional ability to access areas where other machines cannot. Robotic advancements will also help in filling the decreasing manpower in the agriculture sector. Robots that are being developed have a workload capacity equivalent to 30 human workers.

    This will allow the farmers to focus more on the entrepreneurial aspects rather than the manual work involved. These will lead to labour and time savings along with an increase in crop yield, proving that technological progress is prevailing in all aspects of our lives. It will empower the farmers to spend a little less time in the business and more time on the business.

    Agricultural Robotics Companies

    • Blue River Technology.
    • Harvest CROO Robotics.
    • PEAT.
    • Trace Genomics.
    • SkySquirrel Technologies Inc.
    • aWhere.
    • FarmShots.
    • Abundant Robotics.

    Conclusion

    Though the potential of these machines is extraordinary, they inevitably lead us to the archaic fear that robots will replace human manpower. The positive outlook can be that the farmworkers can function as the operators and managers supervising these automata.

    The demand for food is surpassing available land for growing crops and only farmers can fill the gap. Involving robotic power in the sector will not only enhance the agricultural process but will help in increasing the outputs manifold.

    We are still in beginner levels of the age of robotics agriculture with most of the inventions in the early trial phases and the R&D phase. These Agribots can create a massive altercation and prove that the future will witness an overpowering reliance on AI, steered by humans.

    FAQ

    What is the future of robotics in agriculture?

    The use of Agricultural Robots will lead to skilled jobs. It just means that the new generation of farmers will need more advanced skills to work alongside robots. Today’s farmworkers will become tomorrow’s fleet managers who oversee robotic farming systems and autonomous vehicles.

    What are the uses of robots in agriculture?

    Agricultural Robot Applications – Some of the most common robots in agriculture are used for harvesting and picking, weed control, autonomous mowing, pruning, seeding, spraying, and thinning.

    What is the future of the agricultural robots market?

    According to many researchers, the agricultural robot market should have an annual growth rate of over 20% until 2022. Today, a vast majority of robotics on farms are for milking cows or indoor machines. But soon, robots will start working outdoors in the future.

    Some of the popular robots in agriculture are, Ecorobotix, Nano Technologies, Energid Citrus Picking System, Agrobot E-Series, Blue River LettuceBot2, Agribotix, Vision Robotics, and RoBoPlant.

    How AI can help agriculture?

    AI-enabled agriculture bots help farmers to find more efficient ways to protect their crops from weeds. AI bots in the agriculture field can harvest crops at a higher volume and faster pace than human labourers. By leveraging computer vision, it helps to monitor the weed and spray them.

    What are agricultural robots?

    Agricultural robots automate slow, repetitive, and dull tasks for farmers, allowing them to focus more on improving overall production yields. Some of the most common robots in the agriculture sector are used for: Harvesting and picking, weed control, autonomous mowing, pruning, seeding, spraying and thinning.

  • Contribution of Agritech Startups Towards Rural Development in India?

    This article is contributed by Mr. Chattanathan Devarajan, Co-founder, Arya.ag

    Agriculture sector in India continues to be the backbone of rural economy employing almost 50 percent of the country’s population with a contribution of 19.9% on the GDP. There has been an increased focus on the growth of agriculture and the Government of India has been talking about doubling farm incomes. It is in this context, that it becomes crucial to understand the potential impact and change agritech could create in the country and how new age agri start-ups are contributing to income improvements in rural households especially within the farming community.

    Growth in AgriTech Industry
    Pricing Factor in AgriTech Industry
    Contributions of AgriTech Startups in Rural India
    Conclusion

    Growth in AgriTech Industry

    In the last few years, there has been a phenomenal growth in the agritech/agri-fintech space with substantial investments flowing in the sector. The pandemic allowed for a swift change and acceptance to digital technologies, and it is further anticipated that about USD 25 billion dollar investments need to flow into this sector. Also keeping in mind, the challenges of fragmentation, diversity and accessibility in the sector, the only way to bridge gaps is to overlay technology to the Indian agriculture ecosystem. Digital technologies led services that enable presence closer to farm markets can enable large scale irreversible positive change and the investments flowing  into the sector are precisely working towards building these much-required efficiencies, traceability and trust in the agri value chain.

    Pricing Factor in AgriTech Industry

    Furthermore as is widely known, price is a factor of demand and supply and in India, the price of end produce is not absolutely under control.  There is always a risk that continues to remain with some mitigation by way of MSP support by the Government. In this context, the ways in which farm incomes can be increased is through better yield and output. A farmer could work towards increasing productivity through high yielding varieties, the adoption of good agronomic practices and relevant inputs.

    The problem of low incomes is further aggravated by the number of intermediaries in the value chain. Lower transparency of market prices, non-availability of competitive services closer to the farmgate and inefficiencies keeping with smaller quantities, often reduce the bargaining power of the small and marginal farmers. With limited access and resources, the cost of production increases and so do logistical expenses from farm to market. Each step of the value chain and the reduced efficiency that goes along with small and marginal farmlands, eat into the profit margins of the farmers and often, a farmer receives only 25% of the actual value of the agri-commodity.

    Contributions of AgriTech Startups in Rural India

    Most agritechs are working to solve these systemic challenges, re-balancing the agri value chain and shifting the power economics back into the hands of the producer. They are primarily trying to address the inefficiencies in the value chain and increase transparency, removing intermediaries as well as enabling easy access to finance.

    We can broadly classify the agri startups contributions as follows:

    1. Increasing incomes through cost reduction:  There have been lot of new agriculture start-ups which have been trying to provide input market linkages through their respective tech interface innovations. They strive to effectively aggregate the needs at the farm level and enable direct supplies of inputs, tools and tech to effectively reduce costs.  
    2. Increasing productivity and optimisation of resources: By adopting information and technology-based farm management system more specifically called precision farming, and crop canopy management through satellite imagery, the use of better agronomic practices has led to appropriate usage of inputs and thereby increasing productivity and improving income of farmers.
    3. Storage solution and access to finance: Lack of farmgate storage and access to finance, often force farmers into distress sales. New-age agritech startups are looking at creating integrated solutions by enabling famers to store their produce through near farmgate storage solutions, digitising agri-commodities, triggering innovation in storage infrastructure and providing easy access to finance and leveraging the price differentials between off season and on season to improve rural farm incomes.
    4. Provision of higher price due to quality: Agritechs have had success with effective output quality management through AI and traceability due to technological advancements. This has had both reduction in food loss and better revenues.
    5. Providing efficient market linkages: Providing a good platform for increasing the optionality for sellers. Enabling more buyers for the same produce, ensures producers have both choice of whom to sell, when to sell and at what prices to sell at.

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    Conclusion

    While some agritech startups have focused on one specific benefit and improved revenues in that section of the value chain, others have layered multiple services. A few of the agri start-ups are in nascent stage, few have moved to the proof of concept and a few have established business models. With the emergence of integrated platform players, one can witness growth in access for services like never before. Access to competitive services, products and tools are no longer limited to the tertiary markets but have seamlessly shifted to the primary and secondary markets. The key benefit in this growth is to the producers in the rural spectrum. Technology advancements have allowed for the growth of efficient and transparent value chains and these interventions have benefitted farmers and other stakeholders with an increase in revenues anywhere between to 30%. Indeed the agritech sector has immense potential to enhance the overall socio-economic considerations of the country’s rural ecosystem.