By Gerelyn Terzo, Global AgInvesting Media
Yamaha Motor, a company synonymous with motorcycles and other motorized vehicles, is bringing its brand to the ag industry. In an announcement that has ignited excitement through the ag industry, Yamaha Motor has launched Yamaha Agriculture, a company through which it intends to deliver autonomous equipment and AI-powered digital solutions to help growers in the specialty crop market become more sustainable, profitable and resilient amid the effects of climate change and dwindling resources.
Yamaha unveiling its ag platform alongside its recent acquisitions of Robotics Plus and The Yield. Through these deals, Yamaha Agriculture is introducing robotics solutions for spraying, weeding and other field operations. It is also harnessing advanced data analytics and AI to facilitate precision farming and data-driven decision making for growers of specialty crops like wine grapes, apples across North America, Australia and New Zealand.
While it might not seem obvious, Yamaha is no stranger to agriculture and considers its debut into the space to have happened four decades ago with the launch of unmanned helicopter technology. Those solutions made it possible to reach terrain otherwise inaccessible to traditional tractors and ground equipment. Yamaha gives the example of Japan’s challenging rice paddy fields, where over 2,200 of its machine units now cover 800,000 hectares (1.9 million acres) each year. Yamaha’s technology is also relevant for other use cases, including managing wine grapes, invasive weeds, tree fruit and sugar cane. The company said that the “establishment of Yamaha Agriculture is a natural evolution of this pioneering work in automating challenging environments”
Yamaha’s ag venture has seemingly been in the works for the past year, when Nolan Paul was named CEO of the ag company. Paul recently posted on LinkedIn, “I’m thrilled to finally announce the launch of Yamaha Agriculture!” Ag industry participants were quick to respond, with tech firms like North Valley Research saying they hope to partner with Yamaha Agriculture at some point in the future and others saying they hope to see South America receiving the products soon, too.
Demand for automated solutions in farming has been on the rise as operations look to cut down on costs and strengthen efficiencies. According to a survey cited by Yamaha, more than three-quarters of growers polled say that automation could play a role in various functions of their operations, including harvesting and sorting, while more than half say it could help with spraying and fertilizers. Another nearly 30 percent say automation would serve their needs for crop load and yield forecasting.
Yamaha Ag’s focus on specialty crops is intentional. Specialty crops, in particular, command a bigger dependence on labor compared with row crops. They have the highest labor costs at 38 cents per dollar in cash expenses vs. 4 cents per dollar for corn and soybean crops. Meanwhile, specialty crop growers dole out half-a-million dollars, on average, per year on automation to offset an unrelenting labor shortage, per the 2022 Western Growers Specialty Crop Automation Report.
Yamaha Motor Chief Strategy Officer Jim Aota stated, “With the launch of this new company, we aim to leverage Yamaha’s technological expertise to contribute to sustainable and profitable farming using a customer-centric approach. Growers will be able to better address challenges around labor shortages, resource scarcity and impacts from climate change.”
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