Specialty Crop Automation — Weeding, spraying, and harvest assist robots gaining traction as they meet grower economic targets.

It’s Q4 2022 and it’s time to take stock of one of the key challenges for specialty crop (fruits, nuts, and vegetables) agriculture — labor. Labor has been a top 3 problem for the segment for decades (right along side water and food safety). There are two parts to the labor challenge — availability and cost. The best solution to the labor challenge is automation. Creating robots that can help increase the efficiency of farming operations, help laborers become more efficient, or perform some of the work that is required can all help contribute to reducing some of the challenges around labor.

Let’s put some numbers behind the labor challenge on both parts above. First, availability is getting significantly worse for both family farm labor and hired farm labor in the US. The lost 70% of the farm workforce over the 50 years (1950–2000) and that trend has continued since 2000. Much of the drop has come from family farms selling to larger operators for multiple reasons — death, divorce, and cost structure being 3 of the largest causes. When this happens, the family farm workers that worked on the ranch stop doing the work and the farm worker count decreases. As the US farm count numbers have declined, the family farm worker count has declined with it. On the other side, the domestic labor force has declined as well. The next generation of farm workers is increasingly saying no to the jobs the prior…