It's getting harder to find people to work on farms in the US – robo-farmers are shifting plants and could soon be picking strawberries in their place

Horticultural helpers (Image: Harvest Automation)

HACKNEY Nursery in northern Florida has just hired its first fleet of robots.

The nursery specialises in woody ornamentals and perennials, heavy plants that grow in large tubs across several hundred hectares of land. A typical day at the nursery might require carrying as many as 5000 of these plants around. In the past, this tedious and back-breaking work took four men the better part of a working day.

Now, four HV100s – nicknamed Harveys by Harvest Automation, the Boston company that makes them – work just nine hours a day. The robots zip autonomously around the nursery, spacing plants farther apart as they grow and then scooping them back together when it’s time for a sale. A person monitors their work.


Hackney is one of 20 nurseries and greenhouses in the US that have started using Harveys this year. It’s another example of agriculture’s enthusiastic shift towards automation. While other sectors are concerned that robots might take their jobs, many farmers are greeting technology with open arms.

“Our experience has been fantastic. I think it’s the way of the future,” says Joseph Hackney, who works at the nursery. “The robots are doing jobs that people don’t want to do.”

“Our experience of working with robots has been fantastic – they are doing jobs no one wants to do”

In the past, agricultural work in the US was generally carried out by low-paid immigrants. But their numbers have dwindled, a shift that’s been attributed in part to stricter border enforcement, but also an improving economy in Mexico, where most immigrants are from. This shortage will worsen over the coming years, suggests a 2012 study by Edward Taylor and colleagues at the University of California-Davis and The College of Mexico in Mexico City.

Enter the robot farmers. Last year, the US Department of Agriculture spent $4.5 million funding research on automated farm work. The projects will create robots that can harvest berries and citrus fruits, drones that can sample water in remote areas, and sensors to detect early signs of plant disease.

One team, headed by Manoj Karkee at Washington State University, will spend the next five years developing an apple-picking robot. The state of Washington alone produces 17 billion apples a year, each one picked by a human. “That’s 17 billion times somebody has to move their hand,” says Karkee. “In 10 years, because of decreasing labour supply and increasing labour cost, it will be really difficult to harvest apples this way.”

One challenge is making the robots cost-effective. Agrobot, a start-up based in Huelva, Spain, has created a device about the size of a tractor that can spot and pick ripe strawberries. But before the robot can hit the fields, it needs to be much cheaper to produce, says founder Juan Bravo.

These improvements can’t come soon enough. In December, the United Nations said that the world will need to produce about 70 per cent more food by the year 2050 to feed a growing population. Robot farmers may be able to help us produce better and faster, says John Kawola, CEO of Harvest Automation.

“We can see this as the standard way things will be done in this industry a few years from now,” he says.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Green robo-fingers”