In the UK it’s often labelled as a side effect of Brexit, which has had an impact on farmhand labour supply, but finding the staff to work farms has become a global problem. And one that’s only expected to get worse. As the global population spirals to almost 10 billion by 2050 it will require a 70% increase in the calories that will be needed to feed everyone.
Food production already accounts for over a third (37%) of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. That will also have to be drastically reduced, while production is massively expanded if we are to come even close to reaching 2050 emissions reduction targets.
Farming is also the source of other pollutants such as nutrient pollution resulting from fertilisers and other runoffs that enter the soil and waterways. And the vast swathes of land needed for farming have and continue to devastate the Earth’s forest cover and other carbon sinks such as wetlands. Aside from the contribution to climate change that has also had a catastrophic impact on biodiversity.
We somehow need to find a way to produce 70% more calories without using any more, and preferably considerably less, land to do so. And less water. The World Bank estimates that as much as 70% of the Earth’s freshwater is used for agriculture and that 15% more withdrawals will be needed by 2050 to meet increased food production.
Luckily, farming and food production is big business. And farmhands an expensive drain on profit. As are inefficiencies in general. The more efficient farming becomes, the more profitable it can be. Our definition of more efficient farming must also mean an industry with less environmental impact.
Where a global market of consumers exists, and there is no more global or universally demanded product as food, Silicon Valley’s billions will never be far behind. And as the labour shortage problem affecting farms grows alongside the need to increase efficiency and production, investors are spotting an opportunity.
Startup data company Pitchbook says around $7.8 billion (£5.7 billion) was invested in 598 “agtech” or “farmtech” companies in 2021. That’s growth of nearly 400% on the $2 billion raised by farmtech startups five years ago.
The ultimate goals of the venture capital being ploughed into farmtech are to:
- Automate as much of the farming process as possible
- Minimise the need for paid, human labour and input
- Optimise output, and;
- Minimise environmental impact.
The mechanisation of farming through inventions such as the combine harvester has already transformed the sector over the past several decades, allowing for much larger scale production. Biotechnology and modern chemical engineering have also had a huge impact. For example the development of nitrogen fixation techniques that produce cheap, highly effective fertilisers.
But scientific understanding and technological development are developing at a faster pace than ever and farming is set to be revolutionised once more through a combination of new technologies such as cheap but miniature and robust cameras, artificial intelligence and biotechnology. Reducing the carbon emissions and other pollutants that are a side effect of farming is another priority.
Farmtech examples – the cutting edge tech and biotech changing the farming landscape
Automation through a combination of robotics and AI/machine learning is one of the main directions of farmtech innovation. Examples of new farmtech currently being developed or recently commercially available include:
Driverless tractors
Driverless cars, buses, trams, trains, cargo ships and trucks have been big news and attracted billions in investment over recent years. Someone should have thought of driverless tractors earlier given there’s generally a limit to what can go wrong in the middle of a field compared to a busy city centre junction. And the best thing about an autonomous tractor is that it doesn’t even carry passengers. It just does its job out in the fields.
John Deere, the American company that is one of the biggest farm equipment and vehicles makers in the world, has now developed a driverless tractor that can till fields through the night for the farmer to wake up to. Anyone who has watched Clarkson’s Farm, Amazon’s reality TV show that follows the former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson’s stab at running the farm he owns and lives on, will be able to appreciate the market for that bit of equipment.
However, with a host of cameras, sensors, computer processing power and sophisticated software running it all, there will be a price to pay for farmers who would like to enjoy a lie-in during seeding and harvesting seasons. The vehicle is due to go on sale later this year and while the price hasn’t been announced yet it will inevitably be pricey given the company’s standard, manually driven tractors can cost up to $600,000.
The company says it is still working on how best to price the new driverless tractor and one option being considered is a subscription model dubbed “farming as a service”.
Investors in other forms of expensive new farmtech might consider a similar approach. Venture capital loves the recurring revenue of subscription models and it is an obvious solution to the bottleneck of farms having to make huge upfront capital investments to upgrade their technology.
Fruit and veg picking robots
Of all the many aspects of farming that currently require significant human labour, picking fruit and veg is among the most back-breaking. And difficult to replace with robotics. The combine harvester is hugely effective and revolutionised grain harvests. But it is not a subtle machine.
A very different kind of automation is needed when it comes to picking fruit and veg, which is both fragile, unevenly distributed, and should often avoid damage to the main plant. But developments in machine learning, autonomous vehicles and robotics are now, literally, bearing fruit.
There will be bumps along the way, such as Californian start-up Abundant Robotics, which raised $12 billion to create an apple-picking robot able to pluck ripe fruit from trees by combining computer vision with vacuum tubes. The company failed last year after admitting it “was unable to develop the market traction necessary to support its business”.
Abundant’s main issue appears to have been failing to raise additional funds following a $10 million series A investment round in 2017. The company estimated its machine could reach between 50-90% of the fruit on trees and could allegedly pick apples every two seconds. A rate of 1.5 seconds was targeted for the commercialised version and plans to broaden the range of the fruits that could be picked.
But there is farmtech progress even in failure. Wavemaker Labs, a corporate venture studio and product development incubator, acquired Abundant’s intellectual property, including vacuum manipulation patents (and patent applications), a patented sensory system to allow the vacuum to navigate obstruction, a patented world-class vision system for identifying fruits and their quality, and several software patents for the machine’s automated operations (including a solution to solve for “doubles” that enables the machine to pick multiple fruits at once.
It’s potentially a huge market. Abundant estimated the market value for orchard fruit production is about $200 billion, about $40-60 billion of which is specific to apple production.
As such it will come as no surprise to learn there are other companies picking up the baton from Abundant, including the Australian start-up Ripe Robotivs, and the Israeli companies FFRobotics and Tevel Aerobotics. Tevel has raised $20 million for its fruit picking system based on drones and mechanical arms.
San Diego start-up Vision Robotics is tackling an even trickier farm automation challenge – lettuce thinning. The back-breaking chore is necessary to maximise revenues from lettuce farming, with thinned leaves going into salad bags but the delicacy of the work makes it labour intensive. Vision says its automated lettuce thinner can replace up to 50 human lettuce thinners and the company is now working on a weed removal robot.
Biotechnology
Robots, especially those able to pull off more subtle, complex tasks are attention-grabbing and will be a huge part of farming’s future. But there are also big developments around the biological engineering of plants and core industry processes.
Another Californian start-up, Pivot Bio has raised $600 billion in investment capital that will be spent on trying to genetically engineer microbes for the production of nitrogen fertiliser. Farming has relied on the Haber Bosch chemical process of nitrogen fixation, which is energy-intensive and notoriously polluting. If fertilisers can be created through bio rather than chemical engineering, it will be a major breakthrough.
Just as fascinating is Apeel Sciences, again from California, which has raised $640 million to fund the continued development of vegetable-based coatings that act as an invisible alloy applied to fruit and veg. The fine film which coats the produce is extracted from organic waste and helps regulate how much water is allowed to evaporate from fruit and veg and how much oxygen can be absorbed. That can significantly prolong the life of the crop while it is still in the ground, reducing waste without the use of synthetic chemicals.
These are just some examples of the farmtech breakthroughs innovative companies and their investors are chasing. They will form a new agricultural revolution that will hopefully not only solve the farm labour shortages facing developed economies but allow us to grow much more food and crucially, using fewer resources.