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Jane Lanhee Lee reports on a Californian start-up that wants to grow produce organically for the same price as traditionally grown produce that uses pesticides and it wants to do it all with robots.

Iron Ox CEO Brandon Alexander, gave up his job as a Google engineer and is now getting into farming, just like his grandfather before him.

And he’s using his tech skills to boost production.

“Our mission statement isn’t just build core robots or just to build great machine learning. It’s to make high-quality fresh produce more accessible to everyone and we believe the way to do that is to leverage advanced robots, leverage things like AI but do it in such a way that we can actually supply better produce than they have access to today,” said Alexander.

But unlike crops like wheat, corn and soy, that have been cultivated using GPS guided sprayers and automatic combine machines, fresh produce is much more challenging.

Machines like those built by Agrobot can only pick berries grown in a structured way – although the next iteration promises to be one that can handle more chaos in the fields.

Abundant Robotics says its big challenge is to get the robot to pick apples without bruising them and avoid damaging the trees. It’s aiming to be ready for commercial use next year.

Iron ox chief technology officer Jon Binney believes that where his robots will out farm humans is not out in the fields but in a greenhouse.

Iron Ox is looking to set up greenhouses across the United States and will focus on fast-growing crops like lettuce, basil and any other greens that can go from seed to the table in six weeks.