4 ms·

“Apples, citrus, strawberries, leafy greens, grapes”—those are the five big enough to justify automation. Some questionable assumptions there.

tathougies 8y ago
Right, for one thing, with automation, it's also reasonable to produce many smaller crops and make up for what you lose in individual crop volume with combined varietal volume. Or, more likely, produce another, lesser-known fruit or vegetable and market the hell out of it.
- contingencies 8y ago
  Sure. Or for example intercrop in ways infeasible with traditional harvesting methodologies to achieve higher density and support more heterogeneous and nutrition-dense farmland ecosystems. Or perhaps remove current needs for transport, processing, sorting, washing, distribution loss, packaging. Or even relocate a plant or set of plants to an alternate location for picking instead of picking in-place.
kolchinski 8y ago
I'm working an an agricultural robotics startup and can confirm that if anything, it's challenging to find robotics use cases in specialty crops that have a large enough market to justify the R&D investment necessary to get the product working in the first place. Corn and soy add up to hundreds of billions of dollars of market value a year, while even a huge specialty crop like strawberries is ~1/100 of that. There's an argument to be made for building out a robotics platform in a crop with higher value per acre (i.e. a specialty crop), then moving to the larger markets (i.e. row crops), but the degree of specialization real world robotics requires is a counterpoint to that - making the jump is often nontrivial. PS - if anyone reading this is a roboticist/mechanical engineer in the Bay Area and interested in working on something like this or even just talking more, let me know! My email is my username (at) stanford.edu
- Qworg 8y ago
  While strawberries are a smaller market, they're also high value and under threat from decreased labor immigration and terrible conditions. If I were working on truck crop robotics, that'd be my first crop to look at (especially because the strawberry industry realizes they're in trouble). Which are you working on now?
- contingencies 8y ago
  I run a robotics company in China myself. Would be very interested to chat further and will send you an email.
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  I've mostly been under the impression that the big wins for machine intelligence in farming is weed and pest control. Although a Mexican friend of mine said strawberry harvesting is utterly brutal. He also said harvesting grapes is easy work compared to anything else.
- nradov 8y ago
  Annual strawberry sales are $3B in California alone. That's a heck of a specialty crop. https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/ https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/

tathougies 8y ago

Right, for one thing, with automation, it's also reasonable to produce many smaller crops and make up for what you lose in individual crop volume with combined varietal volume. Or, more likely, produce another, lesser-known fruit or vegetable and market the hell out of it.

contingencies 8y ago
Sure. Or for example intercrop in ways infeasible with traditional harvesting methodologies to achieve higher density and support more heterogeneous and nutrition-dense farmland ecosystems. Or perhaps remove current needs for transport, processing, sorting, washing, distribution loss, packaging. Or even relocate a plant or set of plants to an alternate location for picking instead of picking in-place.

kolchinski 8y ago

I'm working an an agricultural robotics startup and can confirm that if anything, it's challenging to find robotics use cases in specialty crops that have a large enough market to justify the R&D investment necessary to get the product working in the first place. Corn and soy add up to hundreds of billions of dollars of market value a year, while even a huge specialty crop like strawberries is ~1/100 of that. There's an argument to be made for building out a robotics platform in a crop with higher value per acre (i.e. a specialty crop), then moving to the larger markets (i.e. row crops), but the degree of specialization real world robotics requires is a counterpoint to that - making the jump is often nontrivial. PS - if anyone reading this is a roboticist/mechanical engineer in the Bay Area and interested in working on something like this or even just talking more, let me know! My email is my username (at) stanford.edu

Qworg 8y ago
While strawberries are a smaller market, they're also high value and under threat from decreased labor immigration and terrible conditions. If I were working on truck crop robotics, that'd be my first crop to look at (especially because the strawberry industry realizes they're in trouble). Which are you working on now?
contingencies 8y ago
I run a robotics company in China myself. Would be very interested to chat further and will send you an email.
Gibbon1 8y ago
I've mostly been under the impression that the big wins for machine intelligence in farming is weed and pest control. Although a Mexican friend of mine said strawberry harvesting is utterly brutal. He also said harvesting grapes is easy work compared to anything else.
nradov 8y ago
Annual strawberry sales are $3B in California alone. That's a heck of a specialty crop. https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/ https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/