By Jon Chown
SEASIDE — Artificial intelligence and robotics are coming to Monterey County farms, but high costs and the need for dependable equipment will prevent the technology from spreading overnight, agricultural technology leader Timothy Koide said Thursday.
“Adoption in ag is inevitable, but slow,” said Koide, Reservoir Farm’s head of industry partnerships. Reservoir is a venture capital fund and operating company with operations in Salinas, the Central Valley, Arizona and elsewhere.
Koide spoke during the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership’s “AI & the Future of Our Region” summit at California State University, Monterey Bay. He joined Stanford economist Erika McEntarfer for a panel on AI’s effect on jobs, wages and the workforce.
Agricultural automation is not being driven solely by a desire to eliminate jobs, Koide said. Growers face recurring labor shortages during narrow planting and harvesting periods, creating a genuine need for equipment to do jobs that a workforce isn’t there to do.
“The rosy picture for the adoption of AI is not so much driven by the idea of disruption and job destruction,” Koide said. “It’s driven by a very sincere and real need for automation.”
Reservoir Farms in Salinas provides working farmland and technical facilities where agricultural technology companies can test robots and other equipment under real-world conditions. Agriculture works on tights margins and Koide said growers cannot afford to invest in expensive, experimental machines that frequently break down. The shift toward AI-assisted agriculture has begun, Koide said, but the technology must first prove it can survive the dust, heat, long hours and strict production schedules of a working farm.
“Farmers, they need essentially a John Deere tractor,” he said. “They need something that works 95% of the time. They don’t need a prototype that breaks.”
Agricultural equipment also needs service crews and readily available replacement parts, he said. Harvesting, planting, irrigation and crop-monitoring windows can be extremely tight, leaving growers little time to wait for repairs.
Much of the technology has a long ways to go before being ready for regular use, but Koide said interest is growing. He said Reservoir’s Ruggedize recent conference in Salinas drew agricultural and technology leaders from across the country. One machine being tested is SAMI, a robotic platform that uses artificial intelligence, cameras and multiple arms to identify and harvest vegetables.
Koide said the equipment can replace an entire lettuce or brassica harvesting crew, but the technology comes with a major obstacle: Koide said the machine costs about $2.5 million.
“From a capital-outlay perspective, these are not trivial pieces of machinery,” he said.
Even when automation lowers labor costs, farms must be able to afford the initial investment. Leasing, shared-use arrangements and other distribution models may wind up being as important as the machinery itself, Koide said.