Soon, the cultivation and processing of your fruits and vegetables may be revolutionized by a fleet of drones and robots, some equipped with artificial intelligence. This transformative shift is already underway in farms across the United States.

Hylio, a tech company based in Houston, received an exemption from the Federal Aviation Administration in February, permitting a single pilot to operate swarms of robust drones over agricultural lands.

These battery-powered drones, some weighing up to 400 pounds each, are now authorized to spray fertilizer and pesticides on produce fields. Traditionally, such tasks were handled by farm workers or crop-dusting planes.

Previously, deploying such a drone swarm would have necessitated a team of licensed operators, resulting in a more complex and costly process.

With the ability to utilize three drones simultaneously, one operator can now cover 150 acres every hour, CBS News reported.

These crop-dusting drones were among the many advanced agricultural technologies showcased at the February 2024 World Agriculture Expo in Tulare, situated in the heart of California’s Central Valley.

The Expo boasted over 1,250 exhibitors and attracted more than 100,000 visitors this year.

Attendees witnessed demonstrations of various products, including an autonomous crop sprayer and an AI-powered robot delicately picking berries with a silicone “hand.”

The developers of these cutting-edge tools emphasized that their innovations could help alleviate the enduring labor shortage that has plagued the U.S. agricultural industry for decades.

Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that between 1950 and 2000, the number of hired farm laborers decreased by over 50%, and hiring challenges have persisted into the 2020s.

Written by B.C. Begley