By now, everybody has probably heard about self-driving tractors and combines that have revolutionized large-scale farming for crops like wheat and corn. Since there is a lot of money in this sector of agriculture, it was a good place for equipment makers to start in developing the underlying technologies. But agriculture ventures across the spectrum are adopting smart technologies to be more productive – all of which require decent broadband.

Weeding Robots. The market research firm IDTechEx says that the market for weeding robots will grow 11-fold over the next five years. Weeding robots are part of a new technology referred to as precision agriculture. Weeds have always been the bane for farmers, particularly for vegetable crops. The only viable way to weed vast vegetable fields has been through the over-application of herbicides.

Weeding robots can slowly roll through a field of vegetables and mechanically kill weeds while avoiding crop plants. This has the added benefit of reducing the amount of water needed for the crops since weeds use much of the water applied to a field.

Going hand-in-hand with weeding robots are spraying drones or robots that can precisely apply fertilizer just to that the plants that need it. Due to the ever-increasing cost of fertilizers, spraying in small amounts only where needed is a big money saver for a farmer. It also eliminates problems associated with over-fertilizing – too much leaf growth instead of vegetable growth, and eutrophication, where ground microbes grow rapidly and use up the oxygen supply in the soil.

Both techniques require creating detailed maps of fields and geolocation technology so that bots or drones know their precise location.

Growing Saffron in Greenhouses. The most expensive crop in the world is saffron, which comes from the stigma (tiny threads) of the crocus flower. A gram of saffron sells for $20, which is a little less than half the price of gold. When grown naturally, the crocus crop can be harvested for only three weeks a year and is highly labor-intensive – it takes one hundred flowers to harvest a gram of saffron.

Saffron-Tech has developed an automated way to grow crocuses using vertical farming in greenhouses. The process is fully automated using smart AI software and creates the  perfect temperatures, humidity, and irrigation that enables four crops per year.

This new growing method promises to revolutionize the saffron industry by increasing yields and smoothing out the supply chain. While most saffron ends up in kitchens, it’s also used in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. For years, the world’s crop saffron crop has been about 20 tons per year. To put that into perspective, the world crop for garlic is 28 million tons per year. It’s expected that increased supplies will mostly be used to make medicines.

Wine Robots. One of the biggest problems faced by wine-grape growers is mildew and downy mildew that damage the grape vines. Growers tackle this by a heavy application of pesticides. The problem has gotten worse as the weather patterns in vineyards has changed over the last decade to be wetter and hotter.

Cornell AgriTech and PhytoPatholoBots (PPB) have developed robots that hopefully will help to eliminate the mildew problem. The robots are first being deployed at the farms that propagate new grape vines. The robots can see mildew that is not visible to the human eye and can manually remove diseased plants and leaves before the disease spreads. More importantly, the robots are speeding up the process of selectively breeding varieties of grapevines that are mildew-resistant. The robots can scan new seedings and identify those that are still susceptible to mildew.

In the vineyards, the robots can be used to selectively spray plants at the first sign of mildew, which drastically reduces the amount of pesticide needed and also prevents the spread of the disease. The hope is that this technology can bring relief to the New York grape industry, which has been struggling due to the increasing mildew problem.

In Europe, there are now robots that are getting adept at harvesting grapes, and it’s not hard to imagine a future soon where vineyards are largely tended from beginning to end by robots.