What changed
On 5 October 2026, Future Farming chief editor Geert Hekkert wrote that the first generation of agricultural field robots is starting to reach a second hand market. The piece is labeled expert opinion. Its useful facts are the manufacturer practices he reports, not a residual value table. No one has published a price series for a five year old weeding robot.
Hekkert's comparison is with tractors and combines, which farmers already know how to price from age, hours, maintenance, and brand. A tractor can still be working after 30 years, especially an older machine that does not need a software update. Field robots are different. Cameras, GPUs, lidar, and models move faster than gearboxes. He writes that Naio can put new hardware, GPS, and a modem on older Oz robots, and that other makers promise software and hardware upgrades. A robot built in 2022 might then keep doing the job of a newer unit. It might also become like a phone that still powers on but cannot run current software.
The money question for a smaller grower is the entry price. Hekkert puts a new agricultural robot at 100,000 euros or at several hundred thousand euros. A used machine is the path he says could spread autonomy the way used tractors did. The open items he lists are whether software licences and subscriptions transfer to a second or third owner, whether the maker keeps supporting that generation, and what happens if the company is gone in ten years. He notes that several robot makers have already disappeared or run into financial trouble. He does not name them in the passage reviewed here.
Burro, he writes, reports robots accumulating 20,000 to 30,000 hours in just four years, because autonomy can run far more hours than a supervised tractor. Electric motors and gearboxes still wear, so a robot can use up its mechanical life faster even while the software is current.
The cover is a FarmWise Titan weeder in a lettuce field. The photographs below are the same class of machine. None of them is an Oz or Burro unit, and none of them is a valuation.
Why it matters
A grower who buys autonomy is not only buying steel. The residual value now sits in a licence, a cloud connection, and a company that may be smaller than a tractor brand. That changes the lease, the insurance, and the second buyer. If support does not transfer, the cheap used robot is a stranded asset. If it does transfer, smaller farms get a route onto autonomy without paying the new unit price.
Who is affected
Smaller vegetable and specialty growers who have been priced out of new robots. Dealers who will be asked to take a machine in trade without a guidebook for hours or software. Lenders writing residual values. The makers, including Naio and Burro on the facts above, whose upgrade promises are now part of the resale story.
Photo: MB-one / Wikimedia Commons. XAG sprayer robot at Agritechnica 2023.
Photo: Simon Edelman / ENERGY.GOV, via Wikimedia Commons. A field phenotyping robot from the TERRA REF project. Not a used weeder for sale.
What to do next
Before buying a used field robot, get the support contract in writing: who pays for the model updates, whether the GPS and modem retrofit is included, and what happens to the licence if the maker fails. Ask for hours and for which components those hours actually wear. Do not use a tractor residual table.
What to watch
Whether Naio, Burro, or another maker publishes a transfer policy for software and subscriptions. Also watch dealer listings that show real asking prices for named models. Future Farming's own photograph on the column is labeled as generated with AI, so this desk did not use it.
Sources
- Secondary — Future Farming, Geert Hekkert, Can second hand robots make autonomous farming affordable for smaller growers? (5 October 2026). Expert opinion. Establishes the second hand question, the Naio Oz retrofit, the Burro hour range, the new unit price band, and the support risks. No company filing was available for those claims.
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