Seedling Sessions: Agriculture Innovation
The role of robotics on farms
Agri-EPI Centre's Operations Manager Les Hurdiss spoke with Florian Richter, Founder & CEO & Muddy Machines about the role of robotics on farms, how they can help solve the crisis of labour shortages and bring young talent into the sector.
Muddy Machines are developing a new generation of field robots that help growers manage labour-intensive crops by conducting fieldwork. Initially, we are focused on developing selective harvesters with yield prediction.
Chris and Florian met at Entrepreneur First in London in early 2020. Florian's family owns a large farm in Portugal and was looking for a technical co-founder to help bring modern technologies to agriculture. Chris shared this vision and the pair started researching problems that farmers and growers face today.
Many interviews, zoom calls and online conferences later it became clear that reliable access to manual labour was a massive issue in agriculture. Furthermore, Covid-19 and Brexit were exacerbating the problem.
Britain requires 80,000 migrant workers every year during harvest season. Crops that need to be selectively harvested are particularly labour intensive because you need to carefully assess each plant to see if it/it's crop is ready for harvest and most of the time you also cannot simply rip out the plant but rather have to carefully remove the bit that you want to harvest.
Their machines will enable growers to grow more produce locally and ensure that the food we eat is fresher, more sustainable and resilient to future disruption in trade and labour.
Agri-EPI Centre's Operations Manager Les Hurdiss spoke with Florian Richter, Founder & CEO & Muddy Machines about the role of robotics on farms, how they can help solve the crisis of labour shortages and bring young talent into the sector.
Muddy Machines are developing a new generation of field robots that help growers manage labour-intensive crops by conducting fieldwork. Initially, we are focused on developing selective harvesters with yield prediction.
Chris and Florian met at Entrepreneur First in London in early 2020. Florian's family owns a large farm in Portugal and was looking for a technical co-founder to help bring modern technologies to agriculture. Chris shared this vision and the pair started researching problems that farmers and growers face today.
Many interviews, zoom calls and online conferences later it became clear that reliable access to manual labour was a massive issue in agriculture. Furthermore, Covid-19 and Brexit were exacerbating the problem.
Britain requires 80,000 migrant workers every year during harvest season. Crops that need to be selectively harvested are particularly labour intensive because you need to carefully assess each plant to see if it/it's crop is ready for harvest and most of the time you also cannot simply rip out the plant but rather have to carefully remove the bit that you want to harvest.
Their machines will enable growers to grow more produce locally and ensure that the food we eat is fresher, more sustainable and resilient to future disruption in trade and labour.