September 3, 2020

photo credit: Saga Robotics

By Lynda Kiernan, Global AgInvesting Media

Few in agriculture can say that COVID-19 is good for business. Agriculture robotics however is an outlier. Despite employing 1.1 billion people worldwide, agriculture has been challenged with labor shortages in recent years – something that has only been compounded by the current pandemic, which has reduced the labor pool even further and has seriously disrupted food production systems. 

As agtech steps in to develop and provide sustainable solutions, Norway and UK-based Saga Robotics has come out a gainer, raising EUR9.5 million (US$11.3 million) in capital from Norwegian sovereign climate investment company Nysnø Climate Investments, ADM Capital Europe’s Cibus Enterprise Fund, Rabo Food & Agri Innovation Fund, the investment arm of Rabobank, and additional Norwegian investors including Propagator Venture – which chose Saga Robotics to be its first investment. 

“The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need to advance the use of robotics in agriculture, as technology will play an increasing part in reducing labour risk in the harvesting process,” said Alastair Cooper, head of venture investments, ADM Capital Europe. “The Cibus Enterprise Fund is excited to add Saga Robotics to its growing portfolio of sustainable agri-food tech investments.”

“Agriculture has experienced enormous development in recent decades which has enabled much of the population growth, as well as the growth in prosperity we have seen in the last 50 years,” said  Pål Johan From, CEO, Saga Robotics. “Now that we must double our food production again by 2050, we see that robotization and digitalization will be key elements in the agricultural revolution that is needed to achieve these goals.”

With the parallel goals of addressing the growing labor shortage, and making agriculture more sustainable and energy efficient, Saga has developed Thorvald – an autonomous and self-propelled robot that uses algorithms to navigate challenging on-farm conditions.

First built in Norway in 2014, Thorvald is based on a modular design – allowing for widely different robots to be built based on the same basic module using common hand tools. These variations can be easily customized to a variety of tasks and production models from greenhouse, to tunnel, open field, or orchard production. 

Today there is a fleet of 30 Thorvald robots operating in five different countries able to perform UV light treatment to control mildew on strawberries and vine crops, greatly reducing the need for fungicide applications. A second module is a soft fruit harvester that operates at 90 percent accuracy, while other additional tools are also in development.

“Saga’s robots improve sustainability in farming by reducing soil compression, CO2 emissions and production losses due to mildew,” said Alastair Cooper. “Using precision farming technology, Saga reduces pesticide and fungicide use and increases plant yields. With quality data applications we will start to see greater actionable intelligence provided to farmers.”

Not only does the Thorvald platform make ecological sense, it also relieves pressures from multiple fronts on agricultural managers by being able to work in extreme heat, during the night, and without the risk of human transmission of diseases.

“As a specialist food and agri investor, we at the Rabo Food & Agri Innovation Fund are deeply aware of the increasing necessity for automation in driving efficiencies in how we grow and harvest our food,” said Richard O’Gorman, managing director, Rabo Food & Agri Innovation Fund. “There are several aspects to the associated benefits, including improved labour, inputs, yield, cost and quality management and in turn tangible sustainability improvements.”

“Given the progress and deep R&D capability shown to date, we are very proud to partner with Saga Robotics as they roll out more functionality on the base Thorvald robot and look forward to scaling the company together with a strong group of investors.”

This sentiment was echoed by Siri Kalvig, CEO of Nysnø Climate Investments, who added, “The challenge is to increase food production in a changing climate. The Saga robot technology shows us a promising future where artificially intelligent and precise machines use less resources to achieve higher yield. Together with leading investors, we look forward to the further scaling of Thorvald and growth of Saga Robotics.”

– Lynda Kiernan is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, and HighQuest Group’s Oilseed & Grain News. She is also a contributor to the GAI Gazette. She can be reached at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.