HAYWARD, CA – October 17, 2022 – Verdant Robotics today announced a joint research project with the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) to quantify the economic, sociological, and agroecological value created through the adoption of next generation precision agriculture technologies, including autonomous farm management robotics.

A grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will fund this study to evaluate the economic value to farms of all sizes looking to use digital farming technologies to improve productivity while reducing labor costs and offering a solution to the diminishing supply of farm laborers. The study aligns with the USDA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative’s mission to improve rural communities and the USDA’s strategic goals to maximize American farm productivity and prosperity, and ensuring access to a safe, nutritious, and secure food supply.

Throughout history, farm labor shortages have spurred technical innovation in agriculture. In a 2019 California Farm Bureau Federation survey, 56% of participating farmers indicated that at some point in the previous five years they had difficulty hiring the number of employees they needed for production of their main crop.

“Given the many risks to the food supply chain, including labor shortages and climate change, increasing productivity of farms of all sizes serves to mitigate the risk of food shortages globally,” said Dr. Aaron Smith, DeLoach chair of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California – Davis and co-principal investigator on the project. “Digital farming technologies, like Verdant’s, have the potential to transform agricultural systems making them more productive, resilient, and sustainable. This study will help us measure that impact.” 

The use of robotics to synthesize big data to improve farm productivity and ultimately, profitability, also gives all farmers access to data previously limited to large, corporate farms. Historical weather data, satellite and drone images, and soil types have been successfully combined into algorithms to predict crop yields. Large databases of plant images have been collated to identify weeds and disease. This study aims to build upon these concepts to evaluate the value of robotic interpretation and application for real-time actions in the field.

“We are pleased to partner with UC Davis on this important study to test the mathematical farm production models against real-world use cases to see the impact of Agriculture 4.0 in black and white,” said Dr. Gabe Sibley, co-founder and CEO of Verdant Robotics. “The rise of digital farming technologies and the potential disruptive impacts – both positive and negative – make it particularly important to have a full picture of the macro- and farm-level outcomes of differential adoption of information technologies.”

Agriculture 4.0 covers a broad spectrum of technologies, from small mobile apps to in-field industrial IoT to fully autonomous robots and drones for automation of numerous farm processes. Full adopters of Ag 4.0 are expected to have distinct market advantages due to enhanced yield, profitability, sustainability, and resilience to climate change. Communities that host adopters of digital farming are expected to reap similar benefits to their local economies and ecologies. These communities need tools to understand how to best take advantage of Ag 4.0 tools while balancing potential risk with the socioeconomic benefits from more efficient and sustainable crop management. 

Sibley added, “Our mission is to use the techniques of modern data science, deep learning, and robotics to create improved economics and environmental stewardship in agriculture while securing the agricultural production base against future disruption. This is strategically important for the U.S., to the future of the American farmer and our environment, and for the food security of billions of people around the world.” 

The scope of the end-use study will include certain high-value horticultural applications, such as carrots and apples, and the model is expected to be applicable for oil and grain, fiber, and other root or tuber crops. 

About Verdant Robotics:

Together with growers, we are building sustainable, high-fidelity farming: spatially, temporally, and physically working the farm at a precision, accuracy, frequency and scale never before possible. At Verdant we believe environmentally conscientious robotic farming is the future of agriculture. Our goal is to transform how food is grown while improving the lives of farmers, workers and rural communities. By digitizing the farm at sub-millimeter scale, indexing it, and taking actions that unlock new value, we are providing our customers with superhuman farming tools. To learn more, visit www.VerdantRobotics.com.         

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