More than 400 companies worldwide now develop robotics for food crop production, up from just 240 in 2022 and 330 in 2024. Yet an industry estimate cited by Reservoir CEO Danny Bernstein puts automation of high-value crop work below 2%.

The 2026 Crop Robotics Landscape, produced by The Mixing Bowl, maps companies across 15 product and task segments, four crop systems, and three functional areas:

• Crop systems: permanent crops, specialty field crops, row crops, indoor production
• Functional areas: autonomous movement, crop management, harvest

How much has the supplier base churned?

The map has turned over sharply. 20% of the companies listed in 2024 no longer appear in 2026. 36% of this year's entries are entirely new.

"The landscape shows a growing field of companies and substantial changes in who is represented", said Chris Taylor, Partner at The Mixing Bowl. "For growers, the practical question is how well these systems perform the tasks they need, at a cost and level of reliability that works on the farm."

Where is adoption actually advancing?

Ben Pallone, Senior Director of Commercialization and Automation at Western Growers, sees clear traction in physical weeding and thinning, and broader crop-care tasks such as pruning, mowing and de-leafing.

"We're getting later into the adoption phase", he said. "But now we're seeing some market competition between companies. Driving through California's Salinas Valley or Arizona's Yuma growing region, you'd be hard-pressed not to drive through without seeing smart cultivators, precision spray applicators, laser weeders and others."

Irrigation, input management and yield mapping also show solid deployment in orchards and vineyards. Autonomous tractors have more pull outside California for now, with Arizona and Washington leading the charge. Harvest continues to lag the others and remains what Taylor called the sector's holy grail.

Which regions dominate the map?

• Europe: 50% of all mapped companies
• Germany and the Netherlands: 10% each
• United States: 18% of total; more than 40% of US firms based in California

"That concentration reflects the state's unique mix of ag tech development and farmland to test it on", said Michael Rose, Partner at The Mixing Bowl and Better Food Ventures.

Bernstein flagged table grapes and strawberries as the most labour-intensive — and highest-pressure — targets for automation. They are also among the hardest and most capital-intensive crops to build robots for.

What does a working harvest robot look like?

Sami Robotics, supported by Western Growers, now automates harvest on broccoli, romaine and — following a recent breakthrough — iceberg lettuce. The machine weighs 70,000 pounds and costs around $3 million.

What should growers look for first?

Pallone's practical warning: do not test new equipment in your weediest patch.

"That's fundamentally wrong", he said. "You should be running this equipment over lots of acres with, to be quite honest, a little bit of weed pressure, in order to justify and get a capture and ROI."

Pallone also warned that ROI calculators get oversold. "Companies will develop an ROI calculator, and I spend a lot of time in these calculators, and then I start shooting holes in these calculators very quickly."

Cost can flip adoption fast. Bernstein cited Bonsai Robotics, which sells a platform for around $60,000 against competitors near $250,000. "They've sold over 400 robots", he said. "When we can see step function differences in cost and productivity, that makes it an easier and frankly less nuanced sale."

A recent Western Growers field day proved the point: two machines sold on the spot to growers seeing them run in-field for the first time. Both panellists flagged lightweight equipment as underrated because lighter platforms cut soil compaction and can enter wet fields earlier after rain.

Can smaller growers access this technology?

Pallone suggested cost-sharing with neighbours to trial expensive kit such as laser weeders. Robotics-as-a-service models let farmers try before they buy. He pointed growers straight to Western Growers for help with ROI calculations.

Automation is reshaping farm skills. Sebastián Sánchez, deputy secretary for immigrant and agricultural workforce at the California Labor & Workforce Development Agency, said digital literacy is climbing. "The tasks and skills that are required can change", he noted.

Pallone described one worker who moved from hand weeding to managing a fleet of six to eight smart cultivators across thousands of acres. "Moving into the future from a six-pound sledgehammer and a big pipe wrench to multimeters and iPads."

What should growers watch next?

Sarah Masterson, director of the California AgTech Alliance, closed the panel by stressing that innovation alone will not drive adoption. Capital, proving the business case, and cutting first-adopter risk remain the central barriers between 400 suppliers and widespread farm use.

The full 2026 Crop Robotics Landscape graphic and executive summary are available free at mixingbowlhub.com, alongside a recording of the source webinar — worth watching before the next equipment purchase decision.