I had the chance to catch up with Clint Brauer, the co-founder and head of innovation of Greenfield Robotics. The company’s autonomous bots are sold out for 2026. Brauer says the technology has grown by leaps and bounds over the last few years, and the goal is to inch even closer to the ag mainstream within the next 18 months.

Clint Brauer: “These robots are getting pretty good now. Every year they’re making big jumps. Two or 3 years ago, I was apologizing a lot. We wrote checks to farmers when we had damage or when things weren’t getting done right. Traditionally, we’d say here are 5 disasters we’re pretty sure are going to happen. But they don’t (happen). They don’t anymore. They just don’t.”

Noah Newman: “Do you think that autonomy and this kind of technology on the farm might be arriving in the mainstream quicker than we expect?”

Brauer: “I’ve been on the adoption curve my entire career. There are always early-stage adopters no matter what it is. Non-GMO, strip-till and organic are going to be the early adopters on a lot of these things, although we work with every kind of farm now. You always have slow adopters and it’s about money. If you want to go to the mass market, the financial argument has to be concise. It has to be perfect, and you must understand what you’re going to have to do to adopt that technology. We’re clearly in the early adopter market but the goal is to cross over that into the next 18 months to where anyone can look at the financials and say I think this makes some sense I’m going to give this a try.”

Click here to watch my full conversation with Brauer and learn more about how the Greenfield bots work.