--- title: Small Robot Company sows the seeds for autonomous and more profitable farming description: In Europe, the cost of running a cereal farm – cultivating wheat, rice, and other grains – has risen by 85% in the last 25 years, yet crop yields and revenues have stagnated. And while farms struggle to remain profitable, it won’t be long before those static yields become insufficient to support growing populations. Reliance […] url: https://canonical.com/blog/small-robot-company-sows-the-seeds-for-autonomous-and-more-profitable-farming?format=md --- 1. [Blog](https://canonical.com/blog) 2. Article --- [Sarah Dickinson](https://canonical.com/blog/author/sarahfd "More about Sarah Dickinson") 7 June 2019 # Small Robot Company sows the seeds for autonomous and more profitable farming [AI](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/ai) [case study](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/case-study) [robotics](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/robotics) --- Share the article In Europe, the cost of running a cereal farm – cultivating wheat, rice, and other grains – has risen by 85% in the last 25 years, yet crop yields and revenues have stagnated. And while farms struggle to remain profitable, it won’t be long before those static yields become insufficient to support growing populations. Reliance on tractors is at the heart of both of these problems. Not only are tractors immensely costly to buy and maintain, they are also inefficient. The Small Robot Company (SRC), a UK based agri-tech start up, is working to overturn this paradigm by replacing tractors with lightweight robots. Developed using Ubuntu, these [robots](https://blog.ubuntu.com/2018/09/13/ubuntu-robot) are greener and cheaper to run than tractors, and generate far higher yields thanks to AI-driven precision. #### In this innovative deployment of robotics and AI for commercial farming, you’ll learn: * How the agri-tech start up is using robotics to grow crops and reduce waste, including its current partnership with a leading UK supermarket chain. * The emergence of Farming as a Service (FaaS) business model, eliminating the need to invest upfront in expensive machinery * How the use of Ubuntu in the cloud and on the hardware powers SRC’s three robots – Tom, Dick and Harry – plus Wilma, its AI system, to accelerate development and provide a stable platform. First Name: Last Name: Work email: Company Name: Job Title: Phone Number: I agree to receive information about Canonical’s products and services. In submitting this form, I confirm that I have read and agree to [Canonical’s Privacy Notice](https://canonical.com/legal/data-privacy/contact) and [Privacy Policy](https://canonical.com/legal/data-privacy). Download [Get in touch Interested in running Ubuntu in your organization?](https://ubuntu.com/about/contact-us/form) ## Sign up for our newsletter Get the latest Canonical news and updates in your inbox. Work email: \*I agree to receive information about Canonical's products and services. By submitting this form, I confirm that I have read and agree to [Canonical's Privacy Policy](https://canonical.com/legal/dataprivacy). Sign up ## Share on --- ## Related posts [### Arduino® VENTUNO™ Q is available for pre-order with Ubuntu pre-installed](https://canonical.com/blog/arduino-ventuno-q-is-available-for-pre-order-with-ubuntu-pre-installed) London, UK – August 25, 2026 – Following our initial collaboration announcement in March 2026, Canonical and Arduino (a subsidiary of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.) are excited... [Canonical](https://canonical.com/blog/author/canonical) 25 August 2026 [### A look into Ubuntu Core 26: Building a local AI inference appliance in a virtual machine](https://canonical.com/blog/ubuntu-core-26-ai-box) Welcome to this blog series which explores innovative uses of Ubuntu Core. Throughout this series, Canonical’s Engineers will show what you can build with this Core 26 release,... [Gabriel Aguiar Noury](https://canonical.com/blog/author/g-aguiar-noury) 16 June 2026 [### AI at the edge: simplifying infrastructure with Cisco and Canonical](https://canonical.com/blog/ai-at-the-edge-simplifying-infrastructure-with-cisco-and-canonical) Legacy infrastructure was not designed for the requirements of the AI era. While large-scale model training remains centralized in data centers, test-time inference is rapidly... [Pedro Lazzarotto](https://canonical.com/blog/author/pedro-lazzarotto) 11 June 2026 [### What is RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE)?](https://canonical.com/blog/what-is-rdma-over-converged-ethernet-roce) Previous articles walked through RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) as a programming model and InfiniBand as the fabric that was built around it. Both led to the same... [Benjamin Ryzman](https://canonical.com/blog/author/benjaminryzman) 9 June 2026