The Exciting, Surprising Nearterm Future of Agribotics

Tom Green notes at the beginning of a fascinating podcast on agribotics, in which he interviews Frank Tobe of TheRobotReport.com, that “Forecasts for the worldwide agribotics market predict a whopping increase from $3 billion in 2015 to $16.3 billion by 2020. The world’s population is expected to hit more than 9 billion by 2050. That’s a lot of mouths to feed. To grow all that food, the world’s farms will need to increase production by around 25 percent, according to a recent report from the World Resources Institute.” We highly recommend this podcast, which explores the various ways—some surprising—robotics technology will be used to feed the world in coming years.

Tom Greene’s introduction continues: “To make matters worse, experts expect shortages of water, fertilizer, and arable land to make it even more difficult to feed future generations. At the same time, the number of people involved in the often dangerous world of agricultural labor is decreasing… The solution to automate agriculture as quickly as possible and as extensively as possible holds out the possibility that technology can help avert worldwide shortages of food in the coming decades.”