FoA 271: Ag Robotics Roundtable

Future of Agriculture

SWARMFarm Robotics https://www.swarmfarm.com/

Burro https://burro.ai/

Farmwise https://farmwise.io/

ZTractor https://ztractor.com/

Carbon Robotics https://carbonrobotics.com/

TerraClear https://www.terraclear.com/

Today’s episode is going to be a highlight reel from a virtual event I hosted for the FoA community. That event was an ag robotics roundtable, which featured six robotics companies to have a discussion about the challenges and opportunities of bringing more automation to agriculture. The event lasted every bit of the 90 minutes we had scheduled, and it was even more enlightening than I had anticipated.

So today, I’m going to bring you some of the highlights from that event in a condensed format, and make sure that You’re going to get a chance to hear more about:

• What’s driving the robotics revolution?

• • Labor costs
  
  

• • Non-chemical options
  
  

• • Precision agriculture
  
  

• • Tech advancements and cheaper materials (generally)
  
  

• How they’re setting up their business models to both lower the upfront costs, but also improve the ROI over time.

• How they are handling the upfront costs to customers of autonomous equipment

• How these robots can become more than just replacements for machinery or labor, and truly realize their potential as the central “brains” of the farming operation.

• How they’re setting up distribution, support, and supply chains to manufacture these machines

• A brief conversation about raising capital and how they’re thinking about exits in this robotics space.

We’re not going to get too far into the weeds about the technical aspects of each of the robots represented here, but I’ll do my best to introduce you to these six ag robotics leaders and their companies along the way. Just as a preview, you’re going to hear from (in order of appearance):

• Andrew Bate, founder of SwarmFarm Robotics

• Charlie Andersen, CEO of Burro or you might know them as Augean Robotics

• Thomas Palomares, co-founder and CTO of Farmwise

• Bakur Kvezereli, CEO of ZTractor

• Paul Mikesell, CEO and co-founder of Carbon Robotics

• Trevor Thompson, president of TerraClear