Building Climate-Resilient Farming with Robotics: Eric Adamson of Oishii and Tortuga

Building Climate-Resilient Farming with Robotics: Eric Adamson of Oishii and Tortuga

Author: Harvard Business School Business & Environment Initiative September 17, 2025 Duration: 43:13
Eric Adamson, Robotics Executive at Oishii and co-founder of Tortuga AgTech, joins Climate Rising to share how automation and AI are transforming fruit farming. Eric explains how his team designed a strawberry-harvesting robot capable of operating in outdoor tunnels and vertical farms, bringing operational efficiency, labor savings, and climate resilience to high-value crops. He discusses why harvest is the hardest—and most impactful—problem in agriculture to automate, what it took to move from lab demo to field-scale deployment, and how they integrated custom robotics and 17 on-device AI models to achieve 97% picking accuracy. Eric also shares his climate thesis on why controlled environments reduce emissions, waste, and chemical use, and how UV-powered robots and environmental buffering help adapt to floods, fungi, and labor volatility. This episode is part of our alumni series, which also features Danielle Colson of Mantel, a carbon-capture climate-tech start-up, and Hui Wen Chan of Crusoe, which uses stranded energy to power AI data centers. Explore the full series at climaterising.org

Hosted by the Harvard Business School Business & Environment Initiative, Climate Rising moves beyond abstract warnings to examine the concrete realities facing companies today. Each episode features candid conversations with senior executives, policymakers, and HBS faculty, dissecting the operational and strategic choices that define a business's relationship to a warming planet. You’ll hear how leaders are navigating pressures from investors, customers, and regulators while making pivotal decisions on everything from supply chain logistics and new technology investments to long-term risk assessment and competitive positioning. This isn't a theoretical discussion; it's a ground-level look at the practical dilemmas and innovations shaping industries. The podcast delves into the nuanced trade-offs managers face, turning climate change from a looming threat into a series of actionable, if complex, business problems. For anyone curious about how the private sector is actually responding-the successes, the stalled efforts, and the evolving playbooks-this series offers an essential and sobering dialogue. Tune in for a direct line to the thinking that is quietly redrawing the corporate map.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

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