Original 2021 statement: We’ll probably soon have little robotic micro-drones regularly tending crops in agriculture
What Jim has written about this
From “Daily Inspiration: “It’s time to move from triage to tomorrow!”” (January 2023)
There will soon be a lot of weed-zapping robots on farms, along with tiny robotic pollinating insects
We will soon have windows almost everywhere that generate solar electricity, simply by being windows
From “Article: “The Future is Now in Agricultural Technologies”” (March 2013)
Carroll says robotics will be having an impact on the farm quicker than people would believe. “The technology for autonomous vehicles is already pretty mature,” he says. “If you have a meeting with Google in San Jose, they’ll pick you up at the airport in an autonomous car. There’s a person inside ‘just in case.’ It will probably be easier to deploy on a farm than on a highway.
Given all the controversy around immigration reform, Uldrich says robots might fill in for harvest in the future.“There are people at MIT who have developed a robot so sophisticated that it can detect when a tomato is ripe and so sensitive it can pick it without damaging the fruit,” he says. “Robotic technology is getting better, faster, and more affordable. It will allow us to do much more in harvesting a wide variety of crops.”
From “Decoding Tomorrow: The Way Forward: #2 Agriculture- The farmer of the future is part biologist, part data scientist, and part roboticist—but is still 100% an optimist who plants a seed and believes in tomorrow.”” (September 2025)
Accelerated Agricultural Science & Genomics. Agriculture is fundamentally about science, and science is accelerating at an exponential rate. Advances in genomics, nanotechnology, and bioinformatics are transforming the industry. This allows for the development of new seed varietals engineered for specific microclimates and the discovery of new uses for crops, like using soybeans as a material in car seat cushions—creating entirely new markets.
This technology enables a strategic shift from the ” Goliath” model of ever-larger machines to a ” swarm ” model, where a single operator supervises a fleet of smaller, lighter autonomous robots. This reduces soil compaction and adds operational redundancy. Specialized robots are also targeting labor-intensive tasks. Robotic weeders like BoniRob use computer vision to distinguish crops from weeds and mechanically remove the latter, drastically reducing the need for herbicides and making large-scale organic farming economically viable.
Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) : By moving production indoors into vertical farms, CEA uses technologies like hydroponics and LED lighting to grow crops year-round with up to 98% less water and 99% less land. Business models range from Infarm’s in-store modular units to PlantLab’s large, centralized food factories.
Read the full pieces on jimcarroll.com:
Daily Inspiration: “It’s time to move from triage to tomorrow!”
Article: “The Future is Now in Agricultural Technologies”
Decoding Tomorrow: The Way Forward: #2 Agriculture- The farmer of the future is part biologist, part data scientist, and part roboticist—but is still 100% an optimist who plants a seed and believes in tomorrow.”