A John Deere Can’t Outrun Bumble Bees

Tortuga AgTech

People may think that a thousand acres of table grapes is an impossibility – but scale is the future, and automation provides scale.

Growing up on a farm, my dad understood this too. He would always emphatically state that if he had to farm with horses and mules, he wouldn’t be farming. Curiously, I felt the same about grape farming. If we had to do hand harvesting and pruning, I could never bring myself to get up to scale on raising grapes. Enter Tortuga.

I was invited to look at Tortuga AgTech by one of my venture firms, Grit. I was first told about the company over dinner, and as it turned out one of my funds, Haystack Ventures, had also invested – later, I also participated personally during a subsequent round of financing.

Tortuga isn’t using off the shelf robotics, instead building an arm designed for pruning and harvesting. These little guys can fly through a row, don’t need water, and can work all night. Using sensors that determine the grapes ripeness, they perfectly time the harvest for optimal flavor and texture. Then, behind them a robotic mule will pick up the harvested grapes and transport them to the end of the row for collection. And unlike conventional grape harvesters, Tortuga gently plucks only the ripe grapes, leaving them unbruised and salable table grapes.

The old rule of thumb was one person for every two acres of harvest, and this innovation can take the place of two or three people. Instead of 500 workers on the farm, we can house a dozen to sort and complete the harvest.

A John Deere tractor may not be able to outrun bumble bees, but by adopting harvesting innovation on our family farm in Chapel Hill, we will be able to automate, scale and deliver on a thousand acres of beautiful southern grown grapes.