Good agriculture has always been about caring for the land—but today, that responsibility is more critical than ever. Innovative agriculture companies must now dedicate significant energy to ensuring future generations of farmers can continue to grow healthy, bountiful crops and feed the planet. The most innovative companies in agriculture for 2025 include forward-thinking businesses and nonprofits with at least one eye firmly on this future.
On the farm equipment front, Four Growers released a fruit-picking robot for vertical farms that's 10 times faster than human labor, automatically packs produce, and provides accurate yield forecasts to boot. Applied Carbon introduced a compact, seemingly steampunk-inspired incinerator that transforms harvest debris into carbon-rich biochar in a single pass, spreading it back onto fields to boost crop yields.
Last year was not vertical farming's best. Several top players bit the dust or went bankrupt (Bowery Farming, AeroFarms, Smallhold) after disclosing that they were struggling to scale. However, a new robot agtech startup called Four Growers has emerged that could perhaps turn a leaf for the industry: Its flagship GR-100 harvests produce grown in vertical farms.
But the pitch isn't that it's another cool robot that picks fruit faster than humans do; rather, it's machinery that more fundamentally reimagines vertical farming operations. It adapts to the farm, can pack the fruit it picks, and has sophisticated-enough AI built in to deliver accurate yield forecasts to growers.
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