MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA - While we are jumping new and unanticipated hurdles this year, the ones that awaited us still exist, such as future operations, labor, and—essentially—what the future of farming looks like. Google’s parent company Alphabet has its eyes on such challenges with goals for a prototype that would look to roboticize farming, working with items ranging from strawberry fields in California to soybean fields in Illinois.
“Alongside experts in the field—literally and figuratively—we’ve been developing and testing a range of software and hardware prototypes based on breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, simulation, sensors, robotics, and more,” Dr. Elliott Grant, who leads an early stage project focused on sustainable food production at X Moonshot Factory, wrote in a blog post. “We’ve been learning about crops from sprout to harvest, so we can find new ways to help breeders and growers understand how plants grow and interact with their environment.”
Grant announced in the post a new project he’s working on called “Mineral”—a name that encompasses the entire suite of hardware and software tools that analyze the “complexity of the plant world” for farming.
While Grant held back on specific goals for the technology his team is working on, focusing more on the innovation goals and the process of that innovation, he added a newly launched website that poses more of the questions the team is asking and working to answer in the next chapter for farming technology. To explore these projects, click here.
With the power of Alphabet focused on investing in such a vast array of aspects in growing, what can we expect to see in solution opportunities for ag in the coming years? Our team will be sure to share as soon as we know.
