Climate Rising Building Climate-Resilient Farming with Robotics: Eric Adamson of Oishii and Tortuga
Sep 17, 2025
Eric Adamson, a robotics executive at Oishii and co-founder of Tortuga AgTech, dives into how automation and AI are revolutionizing fruit farming. He unveils the intricate journey of designing a strawberry-harvesting robot capable of operating in various environments. Eric highlights the challenges of automating harvest processes, achieving impressive picking accuracy with AI, and the climate benefits of controlled environments. He also shares insights about the partnership with Oishii, addressing market dynamics, and offers advice for future ag-tech entrepreneurs.
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Harvest Is The High-Impact Entry Point
- Strawberries were chosen because harvest concentrates huge value and labor costs in a manageable, high-impact market segment.
- Solving harvest unlocks broader farm-level sustainability and profitability gains.
Seasonality And Biology Make Robotics Hard
- Robotics faces long waits from demo to economic, scaled deployment because agriculture works on seasonal cycles.
- The tech challenge multiplies in delicate biological settings where perishable timing and low-error rates matter.
Specialize AI For Picking Decisions
- Focus AI on specialized decision-making, not general-purpose robots, to reach industrial-grade accuracy.
- Design models to decide approach, sequence, and damage risk for each delicate pick.