CNH continues to actively support the development of intelligent harvesting technologies by expanding its partnership with the innovative California-based startup Advanced Farm Technologies. This company is already well known for its expertise in robotic harvesting of apples, strawberries and other fruits. By combining their efforts in research, development and commercialization, CNH and Advanced Farm Technologies intend to expand the horizons of industrial and ecosystem development in the agricultural sector.

The successful implementation of robotic harvesting has the potential to significantly increase the productivity of farmers specializing in high-value crops. In the United States, more than half of apple production costs and more than 70% of strawberry costs are incurred by manual picking, which puts significant financial pressure on farmers, especially in the face of growing labor shortages.

Advanced Farm Technologies uses advanced technologies such as computer vision and machine learning to select the best fruit even in low light conditions, the quality of the selected crop is important and these technologies ensure that each fruit is handled with the utmost care to avoid damage. Key features of their system include robotic arms with soft grippers, an advanced hybrid drive system, autonomous navigation, and automated container handling. This innovative platform simplifies the harvesting process by eliminating the need for manual picking and minimizing risks to the workforce.

CNH's management is positive about this investment, which fits in with their overall strategy of promoting advanced solutions in the agricultural sector. They particularly emphasize the importance of developing automated, autonomous and sustainable agriculture that meets the needs of their customers and contributes to solving the complex challenges facing agriculture today. Spare parts for CNH agricultural machinery can be purchased on our website.

On August 1, 2022, advanced.farm reached an important milestone by picking an apple with a robot for the first time. Over the next 3 months, the robots picked 80,000 apples.  Less than a year earlier, the company's founder had landed in Washington for the first time. He traveled around central Washington for two days and met with different manufacturers in the industry. At that time, we knew almost nothing about growing apples or planning apple orchards. I even asked farmers about the different types and asked pickers to show me how to pick apples by hand. Given this, it came as a shock that less than a year later, the company created 2 fully functioning apple harvesters equipped with advanced machine vision and robotic arms so they could autonomously navigate and pick apples.

Advanced.farm has been developing autonomous strawberry picking robots since 2018. When they were looking for investment in private markets, investors often asked if their technology could be applied to other crops on the farm. Their technological developments include cameras that see the fruit, manipulators and grippers that pick the fruit.  They used the same technology for apple harvesters. To better understand the importance of being able to reuse technology, it's important to understand advanced.farm's progress graph. For strawberries, it took 3 years before the machines reached a picking rate of 1000 berries per hour. For apples, it took only 1 month to reach a picking rate of 1000 apples/hour. This was not because apples were easier to pick, but because of the reuse of proven technology.