Revolutionizing Agriculture: How Farm-ng Uses Robotics to Support Farmers and Drive Innovation

In the United States alone, there are approximately 2 million farms. While this may seem like a lot, this number has actually been declining since the 1980s as farms have gotten larger, more consolidated, or gone completely out of business. The agricultural sector has been facing a number of challenges, including climate change, rising input costs, and labor shortages. The cost of equipment to establish and maintain an agricultural farm such as tractors, not to mention, the maintenance and repair of such machinery, is astounding, to say the least. Tractors range from $20,000 to upwards of $600,000 and finding people to help with labor is difficult and costly.

It’s clear that the things are changing drastically year after year and more and more farmers are looking at new ways to approach farming, especially if they want to continue to grow food in a productive, sustainable, and profitable way to survive. One startup headquartered in Watsonville, CA has developed new technology to help farmers to reduce costs and accelerate further progress in agriculture.

Farm-ng is a startup founded by Ethan Rublee, an experienced roboticist who has worked at Google and created several other automation companies like Industrial Perception, Inc., and Arraiy, a Machine Learning platform company which was acquired by Matterport. 

Although originally from the East Coast, Ethan travelled to Silicon Valley to learn from and work with his mentor Gary Bradski (now also on the Farm-ng team). Ethan left Silicon Valley to raise his family in Watsonville where he built friendships with his neighbors around him who were farmers. Ethan connected with several farmers and saw the opportunity to help them turn their largest obstacles into opportunities.

Farm-ng is building general purpose off-road robotics hardware and software products to help upskill workers and reduce the back-breaking aspects of farming. Farm-ng's flagship product is the Amiga, a modular, affordable electric vehicle system for farms big and small that looks like something you’d see on the surface of Mars (or rather the Moon). The Amiga is designed to help with mowing, towing, seeding, hauling, compost spreading, and much more. Rather than having to lift and bend up and down constantly to haul heavy totes, the Amiga can help a worker transport and carry a heavy payload of up to 1000lbs. It is also a versatile platform for research, and is used by academic and industry researchers to collect data on a variety of agricultural topics.

Farm-ng aims to transform the food system by democratizing access to cutting-edge robotics technology for even the smallest of farms. The Farm-ng team is made up of experienced engineers and scientists who are committed to making robotic technology accessible to all farmers. These are not just buzzwords. While many startups are all about maximizing profit, they are about maximizing produce and innovation.

Unlike a lot of startups who are focused on harboring their ideas and keeping secrets hush hush, the company is highly collaborative, actively involved in the open source community, and contributes to a number of open source robotics projects designed to get their technologies to the people who have ideas that can make a difference in agriculture.

Farm-ng’s creation is not just a product for farmers, but can also act as a starting point for facilitating new ideas in agriculture. Recently the startup hosted the Farm Robotics Challenge where an interdisciplinary team from UC Santa Cruz won a small farm prize for their creation using Farm-ng robot for removing weeds and keeping produce untouched. Farm-ng plans to get their technology into more universities and schools so that students, youth, and innovators can get valuable hands on science, robotics, engineering, and technology experience. They also welcome other startups to utilize, transform, and build off of their tech.

Farm-ng sprouted from conversations with neighbors, and has blossomed into what it is today because of a humble and talented team, mentors like Larry Jacobs and Sandra Belin (Jacob’s Farm), and last, but not least, the hardworking people who work sunrise to sunset to grow the food that we eat.

Farm-ng appears to be leading a new generation of agricultural innovation…one that keeps community, and collaboration at the forefront. We are excited to see what they’re growing next! Are you interested in learning more or touring Farm-ng? Leave us a comment below or send us an email to let us know!