Le 29/04/2025
Robots Gain Traction in Vegetable Farming, RaaS Model Addresses Cost Concerns
At World FIRA 2025, a farmer and agricultural robot expert discussed how farming robots can help vegetable growers become more resilient.
Agricultural robots have the potential to make vegetable farms more sustainable — both ecologically and economically. At World FIRA 2025, Thomas Beach of Autonomous AgriSolutions and organic farmer Florent Georges discussed using agricultural robots in vegetable farming.
Georges runs an organic farm with cereal crops, artichokes, onions, aromatic plants and squash. He doesn’t own a robot yet but is interested in adopting new technology. Beach, who grew up on a family farm in the United Kingdom, shared success stories and introduced his company’s Robots as a Service (Raas) programme.
Their discussion was moderated by GOFAR president Aymeric Barthes and can be viewed in its entirety in English or Français on the FIRA Forum YouTube channel. Below is a brief summary of the topics discussed.
Labour Dynamics and Operational Logistics
Minimising reliance on human workers is one of the major benefits of agriculture robots. But Beach cautioned against simplistic assumptions. "Robots add huge value. You can make someone more efficient and you can make someone's job better, but at the moment there isn’t a direct relationship between: you buy one robot, you lose one person," Beach said.
Georges said he wasn’t looking to replace people, but he hoped robots could make logistical tasks, such as preparing orders, much easier. He also expressed interest in solutions that would allow him to diversify his crops and make his business more resilient to fluctuating energy prices and labour availability.
Robots as a Service (RaaS)
Beach’s company, Autonomous AgriSolutions, started with the traditional model of selling robots to farmers. But growers were reluctant to invest in new equipment without clear evidence the purchase would benefit their business. So Beach and his team developed Robot as a Service (RaaS). RaaS allows farmers to trial new technology without making a large capital investment.
Beach highlighted the collaborative nature of RaaS. "We work very closely with the farmers to match up with their logistics and other operations,” Beach said. “We also optimse workflows, such as bringing fertiliser to the field rather than taking the sprayer back to the farmyard.”
In addition to collaborating with individual growers, Autonomous AgriSolutions can work with multiple farms in the same area. "If we have contracts with enough customers, we can buy a lorry and have a driver service the robots and move between fields, leaving [a robot] working for 12 hours, going to the next one and going to the next one," Beach said. "One operator can comfortably look after five robots in different fields."
Agbot Success Stories: Planting Parsnips, Weeding and Seeding
The roundtable included two success stories, one from the UK and one from France. The first was a Huntapac parsnip field prepared entirely by autonomous equipment.
"A customer came to us with a very clear question. How can we grow a field of parsnips without putting a tractor in the field?” Beach said. “This was a perfect challenge for us...we integrated different robotic systems together in the same field to do the primary cultivation of subsoiling all the way to the harvest — using standard methods."
Beach said his company is now doing this on a larger scale for other growers.
The second success story was a video interview with Christine François and Thierry François, aromatic plant producers with a 3.5 hectare (8.6 acre) farm in Plain de Rouen, Bouche de Rhone. They use Naïo Technologies’ Oz for weeding and seeding and employ only one person, half-time, for the summer season.
“The adaptability of the robot is really good. If you have an implement that works well, you can add the implement to the robot so that it does the same work,” François said. “Half a day’s work is carried out by the robot in less than an hour. We all work simultaneously...I can check what the robot is doing on my phone while I’m doing something else. It's much, much easier doing two things at the same time. We couldn’t do without it now.”
Watch the François’ interview in English or Français.
Bigger Farms, Bigger Questions
The panelists also discussed the practical challenges of adding robots to existing operations. Logistics, again, was a key consideration.
Georges described the challenges of managing dispersed fields. His 150 hectare (370 acre) farm is a, “big farm for some, very small for others, it depends what you farm," Georges said.
Beach noted, “Farms are getting bigger and fields are getting further apart. It's not unusual to have two fields 80 kilometers (50 miles) apart. When a farmer does their ROI calculations, they must consider getting the robot to the field and moving it between fields.”
View the Entire Roundtable Discussion
The 35-minute roundtable event is available to view in English and Français on the FIRA Forum YouTube channel. Additional roundtable discussions from World FIRA 2025 are also available online.
More Roundtable Recaps from World FIRA 2025