There are visible signs of industry-wide disruption all around us. Uber has replaced the taxi, Redbox has replaced Blockbuster, Netflix, Hulu and others have replaced cable, Amazon has replaced the mall, and a whole host of other examples come to mind. However, some of the greatest advancements and innovations are going wholly unnoticed. Consider the case of Harvest Automation, and the $300B agriculture industry as a whole.¹

Perhaps owing to the slow, nuanced nature of agriculture, much of the advancements – outside of GMOs or the use of certain pesticides – go unacknowledged.² Griping aside, Harvest Automation’s first product is a really interesting robot, the HV-100 (pictured left). Billed as “The first practical robots for agricultural production,” the HV-100 works alongside humans, performing the more strenuous manual tasks, specifically moving potted plants.³ Although the HV-100 is built specifically for more non-food agriculture like shrubs farms and nurseries, it represents a major step for the agriculture, robotics, and automation industries. 

The Billerica, Massachusetts company just announced that they have closed a $11.75M in Series C Round.⁴ The round was led by Mousse Partners Limited, with participation from MassVentures – a quasi-public corporation creates by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.⁵ Earlier in October, Harvest Automation also received a glowing endorsement from current Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick:

Harvest Automation is an exciting part of a flourishing robotics industry here in Massachusetts…Harvest and companies like it prove that our strategy of investing time, ideas and a little money [through MassVentures] in education, innovation and infrastructure is a winning strategy for the Commonwealth.

–Gov. Deval Patrick 

Although $11.75M hardly registers as a drop in the bucket for the $300B industry, it is a good example of the slow, nuanced innovation within the sector. It is hard to imagine that there will be any rapid structural change within the commercial agriculture industry, but companies like Harvest Automation and others continue to succeed on a smaller scale, it will be hard to ignore their innovations.