[Agtech Rising] Lee Kyu-hwa, CEO of Metafarmers: “The next generation of farmers will be robots... They will drive full-cycle automation”

The field of harvesting agricultural products is not an easy area for agricultural robots to penetrate. This is because there are many variables, such as different environments from farm to farm, various types of crops, different sizes even within the same crop, and harvest timing that is difficult to gauge. Because crop damage during a robot’s harvesting process can negatively affect farm income, developing robots capable of delicate work is essential.

There is a startup that has jumped into this field. It is Metafarmers (CEO Lee Kyu-hwa), which is leading the field of crop-harvesting robots in Korea. Metafarmers was founded in 2022 by four young people who studied robotics and AI vision in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Seoul National University. We met CEO Lee Kyu-hwa and talked about the current status of harvesting robot development and more.

The next generation of farmers will be robots... Engineers who went to farms to solve the labor shortage
CEO Lee Kyu-hwa’s reason for focusing on ‘agricultural robots’ among countless advanced technology fields was clear. It was because he was convinced that it is the field with the greatest social urgency.

CEO Lee Kyu-hwa emphasized, “The rural labor shortage I saw on the news when I was young remains the most serious social problem even now, when technology has advanced to an extreme degree”, adding, “The average age of the farming population has already passed a critical point, and foreign workers are also avoiding agricultural sites for various reasons. Amid a sense of crisis that the food industry, which is directly connected to food security, could collapse, we had confidence that we could definitely solve this problem with our technology”.

'Metafarmers' fully contains the ambitions of these young engineers. By combining Farmers with Meta, meaning Beyond, it conveys the meaning of pursuing a new form of agriculture created together by people and robots. It also symbolizes a paradigm shift in which 'the next generation of farmers will be robots.' Their defined core value is to help people focus on more valuable work, such as cultivation decision-making, branding, and developing sales channels, while robots take over arduous and difficult harvesting tasks.

'A proprietary gripper with a 99% recognition rate and general-purpose SW differentiate it from other companies’ robots
Metafarmers’ core weapon is an autonomous-driving-based strawberry and cucumber harvesting robot. The AI vision camera mounted on the robot scans crops, determines how ripe the fruit is, and carries out harvesting while avoiding obstacles.

According to Metafarmers, the robot currently developed is assessed as having greater versatility and precision than existing manually operated harvesting robots or competitors’ robots. Unlike existing robots that perform only a single task on a single crop, Metafarmers has directly built general-purpose software that can be flexibly applied to multiple crops and various tasks.

What is particularly notable is that it developed the core hardware, the 'robot hand' (gripper), in-house. In strawberry greenhouses where leaves and fruit are densely packed, a precision gripper that can penetrate narrow spaces is essential, and in the case of cucumbers, the robot must implement with one arm the human 'two-handed task' of holding with one hand and cutting with the other in the space between stems.

According to current field demonstration data, the crop recognition rate and identification accuracy reach 99%. The actual harvesting success rate is around 80%. Metafarmers explained that a significant portion of the unharvested crops are in limiting areas (20%) where they are completely hidden behind leaves or the robotic arm cannot physically reach them.

CEO Lee Kyu-hwa explained, “When harvesting cucumbers, skilled workers miss 5% of crops and unskilled workers miss about 20%, and our robot has now reached the level of perfectly replacing unskilled workers”, adding, “Based on the same amount of time, our robot is fully doing the work of 1 to 1.5 people”. Metafarmers has currently supplied two harvesting robots to a cucumber farm (iCOOP) in Jincheon, North Chungcheong Province.

In Seosan, South Chungcheong Province (Espiagri), it is also conducting demonstration work on strawberry harvesting robots in a smart greenhouse of about 17,851㎡(5,400 pyeong). Metafarmers is creating an efficient farm operation process that leads from harvesting->sorting->delivery by deploying robots during the time when people do other work during the day and in the early morning hours.

Farm economic feasibility analysis... Considering annual labor costs, ”investment recovery expected within 2.5 years”
Even if it is an advanced robot, it is useless if it lacks ‘economic feasibility.’ Because farms must spend tens of millions of won, economic feasibility must be examined more carefully. Accordingly, the cost of replacing existing labor costs through the introduction of Metafarmers robots was calculated.

According to CEO Lee Kyu-hwa, labor costs for each foreign worker amount to 30 million won per year (including room and board) to 40 million won (excluding room and board). Considering the cost of a harvesting robot (about 70 million won), the fact that it can work 24 hours a day, and the robot’s service life of 5 years, it was analyzed that the investment could be recovered within 2 to 2.5 years.

CEO Lee Kyu-hwa said, “Considering rising labor costs and labor shortages, I think it is well worth the investment," adding, “If government subsidies can be received, the recovery period will be reduced to just over 1 year”.

According to the National Data Office’s survey of production costs for paddy rice, labor costs, which were 100,335 won in 2010 (based on 10a), rose to 204,769 won in 2025, more than doubling. Employment labor costs for one head of Korean beef cattle (based on a 600㎏ liveweight fattening cow) also rose from 19,000 won in 2010 to 41,000 won in 2025. As the share of labor costs among farm operating expenses is rising in this way, attempts to reduce costs through the introduction of robots in rural areas are seen as a realistic alternative for securing farms’ self-sufficiency.

In addition, Metafarmers has proposed a subscription-based (RaaS) model for farms that feel burdened by the initial cost. It lowered the barrier to entry so that farms can introduce robots in the form of a subscription for several months, experience the practical effects of productivity improvement and labor cost reduction, and then make a reasonable purchase decision.

However, in the case of existing open-field farms or ordinary plastic greenhouses with outdated facilities, rather than smart greenhouses, it is difficult to secure autonomous driving routes for the robots, so there are limitations to immediate adoption. CEO Lee explained, "In order for the robot to demonstrate 100% of its performance, farms must first create standardized cultivation environments”, adding, "We are considering ways to lower the initial barrier to entry”.
 

Metafarmers’ technology is moving beyond harvesting toward full-cycle automation, including planting seedlings, packaging, and more. Through a national project (multi-ministry package-type innovative technology development project), it plans to complete the development of technologies for leaf removal (defoliation) and fruit thinning by next year. If defoliation work, which requires the most farm labor, is automated, crop management efficiency is expected to be maximized.

CEO Lee Kyu-hwa explained, “The global agricultural labor market, estimated at 600 trillion won annually, has different crops in each country and an enormous number of unexplored areas that have not been automated”, adding, “We are currently continuing demonstrations on cucumbers and tomatoes in a greenhouse within the Smart Farm Innovation Valley in Sangju, North Gyeongsang Province, and are developing a user app that can be operated with a smartphone”. He continued, “Targeting the fruit tree market, including apples, we will expand to harvesting and fruit-thinning technologies using humanoid-type dual-arm robots, apply them to other fruit trees as well, and lead automation innovation in the global fruit and vegetable and fruit tree markets”.