The Expanding 2024 Crop Robotics Landscape, Navigating To Commercialization

Written By Michael Rose

Introduction to the Crop Robotics Landscape

In late 2022, we at The Mixing Bowl published our inaugural market landscape on crop robotics, featuring nearly 250 companies creating robotic solutions for growing food crops. (We recommend reviewing its accompanying article, as it provides background on the space and our methodology)  As the sector continues to develop, we have updated the landscape, adding nearly 100 companies in the 2024 Crop Robotics Landscape.

So, what has changed in the past two years? Have the macro forces that fostered a need for greater automation in agriculture evolved? Did entrepreneurs continue to respond to those forces and continue to advance their crop robotic solutions? Did investors back these efforts? Have some of the crop robotic companies fallen by the wayside? Were there crop types or applications that attracted more innovation or gained more traction than others?    

Growing Need for Robotics in the Food Chain

Over the past two years since we published our initial crop robotics landscape, the forces driving the opportunity for agricultural robotics have only strengthened. The ongoing challenges of labor availability, regulation, and cost continue to affect the sector. At the same time, consumers are increasingly concerned with the healthiness of their food and how sustainably it is grown. Adding to the pressure are expected increases in future demand, climate change impacts, and rising production costs.

It is clear that further mechanization and automation will be essential to keeping the agrifood system productive, profitable and aligned with consumer demand and preference. Fortunately, technologies used to create autonomous solutions have advanced rapidly, and robotic systems are now emerging across industries, including throughout the agrifood value chain such as in post harvest processing, food prep, retail and food delivery. In our 2024 Crop Robotics Landscape, we continue to focus specifically on the front-end of this food system and the potential for autonomous robotics in growing food crops.

Changes and Challenges in the Crop Robotics Industry

How has the landscape of these crop robotic companies changed since 2022? New companies have started, and many have progressed along their path to commercialization. Overall, the number of companies that made the landscape increased by almost 100. At the same time, a number of companies have closed their doors or quietly slipped away. We suspect there might be a fair number of “zombie” ag robot startup companies, and our hunch is that we will likely see more down-rounds and shutdowns in the coming year. However, the drivers for increased automation in agriculture remain strong and opportunity in the sector continues.

Overall funding remains available for crop robotic startup companies with robust products and good market fit. Funding may take longer to secure and “flat may be the new up” in valuation, but companies are still attracting investment. These companies are a component of AgFunders’ Farm Tech: Farm Robotics, Mechanization & Other Farm Equipment category in their annual Global AgriFoodTech Investment Report. While the category also captures farm technology such as lighting, refrigeration, and irrigation, in 2022 and 2023 $709 million and $751 million respectively was invested in the sector globally. AgFunder has reported that companies in this category have raised approximately $399 million in the first half of 2024. Embedded in those numbers are numerous examples of companies raising investments for autonomous robotics since our 2022 Landscape:

Additionally, Carbon Robotics recently raised a $70 million Series D which included ongoing investment from NVIDIA‘s venture capital arm, NVentures. And spanning the investment spectrum Orbiba Robotics from Turkey raised $220,000 in seed funding while Monarch Tractor closed their $133M Series C Funding, the largest-ever funding in crop robotics to date.

In the year prior to our 2022 Landscape there were a number of M&A deals in the sector with John Deere buying Bear Flag Robotics and Case New Holland spending $2.1 billion for Raven Industries. Since that time AGCO and Trimble closed on their joint venture, PTx Trimble, that focuses on precision ag hardware and software and Kubota North America acquired Bloomfield Robotics for their AI-driven plant imaging technology targeting specialty crops. As we have seen in other AgTech sectors, traditional equipment manufacturers and other established players need to be part of the playbook whether through partnership, investment or acquisition to evolve this marketplace. Tim Bucher, co-founder and CEO of Agtonomy, recently made a strong argument that this type of collaboration between startups and OEMs and IEMs (integrated equipment manufacturers) is needed to scale the deployments of crop robotics.

The 2024 Crop Robotics Landscape

In the writeup accompanying the 2022 Crop Robotics Landscape we explored the challenge of defining a “robot” in detail. For the purpose of this 2024 analysis and landscape, we continue to characterize robots as machines that use hardware and software to perceive surroundings, analyze data and take real-time action on information related to an agricultural crop-related function without human intervention.

In many instances repetitive mechanization or pre-determined automation can get a task completed in an efficient and cost effective manner. Much of the existing and indispensable agricultural machinery and automation used on farms today is of this type. However, we wanted to look specifically at robotic technologies that can take more unplanned, appropriate and timely action in the dynamic, unpredictable, and unstructured environments that exist in agricultural production.

The 2024 Crop Robotics Landscape includes more than 330 companies that are developing crop robotic systems today and have reached at least the demonstrable-prototype stage in their product development. This landscape's scope is focused on robotic solutions utilized in producing food crops. There are highly automated solutions commercially available for pre-production nursery and post-harvest segments of the agrifood value chain, but they, and robotics for animal farming and cannabis production are excluded.  

In general, the systems need to offer autonomous navigation or vision-aided precision or a combination to appear on the landscape. We only included companies that are providing their robotic systems commercially to others. Academic or consortium research projects are not included unless they appear to be heading to a commercial offering. Also, companies appear on the landscape only once, even though some may offer multiple or multi-function robotic solutions. We have made a best effort to place companies appropriately according to their primary function and crop system, but logo positions are not necessarily exact. 

The landscape is segmented vertically by crop production system: orchard and vineyard, field-grown specialty, broadacre row crops, and indoor. The Landscape is also segmented horizontally by functional area: autonomous movement, crop management, and harvest. Within those functional areas are the more specific task/product segments described here:

Autonomous Movement 

Navigation & Autonomy - more sophisticated autosteer systems with headland turning capability and autonomous navigation systems

Tractor - autonomous tractors and implement carriers, i.e., machines that primarily provide motive power and towing capability; partially redefined from 2022

Platform/Carrier - multi-use autonomous platforms and tool carriers that might perform multiple tasks and/or support various tools; partially redefined from 2022  

Orchard-Vineyard Tractor & Platform - autonomous tractors and multi-use platforms specifically targeting vineyards and orchards; this category was added for 2024, splitting off from the Tractors and Platforms/Carriers segments

Indoor Platform - smaller multi-use autonomous carriers specifically for indoor farms

Crop Management

Scouting - autonomous mapping and scouting robots and aerial drones; note that robots appearing in other task/product categories may have scouting capabilities in addition to their primary function

Preparation & Planting - autonomous field preparation and planting robots; note that a number of robots in the Application segments have seeding capability as well

Indoor Scouting - autonomous mapping and scouting within an indoor environment

Drone Application - spraying and spreading aerial drones

Indoor Application and Protection - autonomous and/or vision-guided input application and pest management systems

Orchard-Vineyard Application - autonomous input application for orchard and vineyards; this category was added for 2024, splitting off from the Smart Spraying & Other Application segment

Smart Spraying & Other Application - autonomous and/or vision-guided spray weeding and thinning and other input application, including vision-based application control systems 

Indoor Deleafing - autonomous indoor vine-crop deleafing robots

Orchard-Vineyard Canopy/Floor Management - autonomous and/or vision-guided maintenance of the plant canopy and ground in vineyards and orchards

Physical Weeding - autonomous and/or vision-guided physical weeding and thinning using  mechanical, laser, heat or electrical systems

Harvest

Harvesting - crop sector-specific autonomous and/or precision harvesting robots for orchards and vineyards, specialty field and indoor

We continue to see tremendous diversity in crop robotic solutions and also a significant increase in the number of companies represented on our 2024 Landscape. Gains were distributed across the functional areas, with Application and Autonomous Movement segments leading the growth. 

A Case for Crop Robotics

We have seen more companies make it to the 2024 Landscape and many are securing funding, but are they finding traction with their target audience? Can they solve a clear problem, demonstrate a positive ROI, and add value for their potential customer? Assessing adoption and customer traction in a nascent and developing market like crop robotics can be challenging. As McKinsey notes in their comprehensive analysis of AgTech adoption, automation and robotics are still in their infancy. 

While adoption seems to be happening incrementally, the Western Growers Association sees crop robotics starting to achieve product-market fit and provide value to customers in the specialty crop sector. In their second annual Specialty Crop Automation Report, upwards of 70% of growers surveyed said they had invested in automation (not only robotic) during 2022 with weeding being of particular focus. A recent 2024 Western Growers’ case study explored how producers were able to address their labor challenges and reduce their weeding costs. The specialty farmers in the study faced labor availability issues and annual cost increases of 7-15% for hand-weeding crops such as spinach, baby kale, arugula, romaine, and mizuna. With the use of robotics, these farms were able to reduce their weeding costs for these high-density crops by 40%. Farmers in the case study and those interviewed for this analysis stated that automation allowed them to reallocate workers to other critical farmwork, like harvesting, where they were experiencing labor shortages. As Walt Duflock, VP of Innovation at Western Growers, recently noted: "This is how specialty crop growers think about automation - it's a complement to the labor they have trouble finding and continues to go up in cost every year, whether it's domestic labor with new regulatory costs or international H-2A labor."

It’s Still Early, Optimism Moving Forward

While this market may still be in its early stages, the long-term trends driving crop automation and robotics will likely intensify in the coming years. A large opportunity exists for robotic solutions that can help farmers mitigate their production challenges. The desire for a more sustainable approach to farming and the reduction in available labor may be addressed by robotic solutions as they continue to improve in the real world of commercial farm operations. 

It is clear that funding in the broader Agtech sector is fluctuating and is down from previous years. However, as with any new area of innovation, funding is available for startup companies that can demonstrate value for the customer and have a good product/market fit. Increasingly, there is government support, particularly in the EU, through incentives and research funding, encouraging the development and adoption of innovative farming technologies to enhance food security and sustainability, robotics included.

Despite significant investment and development effort to date, adoption of crop robotic solutions has been gradual, which is not unusual when introducing new growing practices or technologies in agriculture. When a producer tries something new, they are putting their crop at risk. Some have advocated for a safe-space or neutral production location where startups can test their solutions and not impact commercial production. Currently, a robotic sale will typically require a pilot program or extended demo of the product on each producer’s acreage, with their specific crop, potentially over multiple seasons. By definition, this will determine the speed of adoption, which will vary by region and type of agriculture. However, we remain optimistic as we continue to see an increasing diversity in robotic solutions and growth in the number of companies represented on our 2024 Landscape. 

We are encouraged to see robotics gaining traction in high-value crop sectors like specialty field, vine and orchard crops, where tasks like weeding and spraying can increasingly be automated. A handful of robotic companies—such as GUSS, Burro, Carbon, Stout, Monarch, Ecorobotix, Farm-ng and FarmDroid, amongst others—appear to have collectively reached the promising milestone of selling and deploying more than a thousand machines. As agriculture moves towards greater automation, the continued advancement and refinement of robotics will likely catalyze even broader adoption across various crop sectors and farming scales in the coming years.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Walt Duflock of Western Growers Association for sharing his detailed perspective on the ag robotics sector. Most importantly we would like to acknowledge all the startups and innovators who are working tirelessly to make crop robotics a much needed reality. A special thanks to those entrepreneurs and investors that spoke with us and provided a unique view into the challenges and excitement of a crop robotic business. 

Bios

Michael Rose is a Partner at Better Food Ventures and The Mixing Bowl where he brings more than 25 years immersed in new venture creation and innovation as an operating executive and investor across the Food Tech, AgTech, restaurant, Internet, and mobile sectors.

 Chris Taylor is a Partner at The Mixing Bowl, where he leverages 25 years of experience in market discovery and solutions innovation across design and manufacturing, healthcare, and agricultural technology to help clients navigate the evolving landscape of food and agriculture.

Rob Trice founded Better Food Ventures to invest in startups harnessing IT for positive impact in Agrifoodtech and The Mixing Bowl to connect food, agriculture and IT innovators for thought and action leadership. 

Michael Rose
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