The Little Engine That Could, and The Little Robot That Did

“I think I can–I think I can–I think I can…”

Most of us fondly recall the words of the little blue engine in the popular children’s book as she pulled a greater load than she knew she could. 

In founding SwarmFarm Robotics, I have always identified with this tale because just like the book’s main character, I never guessed that our journey would lead us to discover agriculture’s most powerful, little robot. 

In fact, I started off in the opposite direction; Our farm went big, and just like most everyone else, I signed up for the promise of efficiency. 

I bought 400-plus  horsepower tractors, 36-meter spray booms - bigger, faster, stronger…more optimized equipment. 

But over time I began to experience the side effects of this new-found efficiency. I realized that while our ever-scaling equipment was made to cover a lot of ground, it wasn’t made to nurture that ground the way I hoped it would. 

Our soils were becoming increasingly compact under our heavy machinery. Our chemical applications were imprecise and wasteful. And most of all, our yields were not keeping up with our ever-increasing size and scale.

Something had to give…

So I set out to find a different answer, but most of what I found through conversations with friends, neighbors, advisors, and other industry experts felt oddly similar. It was as if talking about machinery made everyone think and sound the same. This feeling of an industry stuck in a rut made more sense when I realized that three companies create 95% of the farm equipment we use today. 

Einstein was right when he said, “when all think alike, no one thinks very much.”

Farm equipment and machinery was a place where everyone was thinking alike…and as a result most people weren’t actually thinking at all. 

A Different Approach to Farm Equipment

I began to think through what it might mean for our farm if we were able to adopt a different mindset towards the productivity of our equipment - what if more acres didn’t have to mean bigger machines? What if the answer to rising weed pressure was a more specific application method? What if we could produce the crops we needed today while laying the groundwork for better yields tomorrow? 

This made sense to me, so I set out to build it.    

A few short years later, we deployed our first SwarmBots on our farm and we started realizing the benefits of this fleet of small, autonomous robots:

• Our profits grew. With less physical impact on land and more precise input applications, our yields increased and our bottom line expanded.

• We were better able to properly allocate our time. Having autonomous robots working all the time allowed us to focus our attention where it was needed most. 

• We were able to do more with less. With smaller, nimbler equipment, our operation was able to reduce the number of inputs we needed to meet our efficacy thresholds. 

As soon as we started sharing our learnings with other farmers and industry professionals, we realized that we had something special. With the immediate feedback from these leading thinkers and the real-world application on our own farm, we were able to take that data and use it to inform our next generation of development. 

Today, I am proud that our team at SwarmFarm has successfully deployed autonomous robots to farmers who have covered over one million acres, operated for 55,000 hours, and reduced pesticide inputs by an estimated 580 tons. 

Just like the Little Engine That Could, we are proud to look back at the past and now say “we knew we could, we knew we could, we knew we could…”

And so for us, the mantra of the Little Engine That Could has transformed into the Little Robot That Did. While others are just talking about commercial viability, we’ve achieved it.

But we’re not done yet. 

Our Vision for the Future

It is with gratitude that we look back at what we have been able to accomplish alongside the farmers and organizations who have so graciously partnered with us. We are more than just an agricultural robotics company, we are on a mission to create better farming systems that are both sustainable and profitable - transforming the way farms can operate around the world. 

There is unquestionably more for our little robots to achieve and when we look at the problems that loom over our agricultural system and autonomous robotics, it can feel like there is a mountain to climb. Yet where some might despair, our experience has taught us to adopt the approach of our friend, the Little Engine That Could when we say, “we think we can–we think we can–we think we can…”

Please visit our website or contact us today if you want to learn more about our Little Robots That Did - we call them SwarmBots. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have and discuss how our technology can benefit your operation.